In this past month’s news cycle, the state visit by the Chinese delegation, … got little attention. Yet, Historians will probably look back on that visit as the most important finishing touch of the past decade, even though it happened a few days into this current one. (Decades begin in the 1 years).
Alas, giant snowstorms and football playoffs have the tendency to suck up America’s attention in January. 🙂
What was notable;
A. China and the US are now equal players, both dependent on what the other does.
B. Both sides recognize that the other entity will do what is best in their self interest, and that neither party can make the other change course.
C. Both countries suffer malignancies the their hard line conservative movements (the mother-in-law syndrome), that slow the machinations of better relations.
The best description we have in today’s world to describe this relationship, at least that comes to this mind, is that of a marriage.
For an enjoined relationship has now grown up between these two partners; one that appears beneficial on all fronts for us both to continue; but one, which if ever split apart, will cost us both, ….. half of everything we own ad infinitum.
With that in mind, … the unilateral dominance that America has enjoyed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, is no more. We have a marriage now, whose new rules may cause us both some internal turmoil, but one that is better resolved through negotiation and discourse, than unilateral actions to the contrary………..
The US and China relationship …. has matured.
kavips 
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February 3, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Duffy
Please tell me you’re joking. China is not on par with American in terms of power. They don’t have a blue water navy and their force projection pales in comparison. They have us in numbers but they cannot match our tech.
They have a big economic club but how big is up for debate. Their opacity wrt to their economy may be their undoing. We have no idea what their balance sheet looks like and some opine that they don’t really know either.
China also has major demographic problems. Their m/f imbalance is forcing a brain drain that is going to hurt them in the near future.
They also have a prosperity problem. As their economy has grown their labor rates have climbed ever higher which narrows their margin and makes them less attractive to manufacturers. That has forced them to move ever westward to the interior of China which extends supply chains and drives up delivery costs etc. They are also going to run out of poorer places to move to.
They hold our paper which is not good. They are not our spouse at least not in any marriage I want to be in. Rather they are crown prince who sees us, the king, as weak right now and seek to usurp the crown.
February 3, 2011 at 11:30 pm
anonymous
US and China relationship ….that Republicans created.
The miss matched, high stakes union, that makes one wonder……
Rumors, calculations, examinations of the financial affair, have speculators and the ‘unlikely pair’ whirling, as the debtee/debtor coldly eye each other’s connections and dance.
Can they last till debt due thee part? Sole mates, they are not and without tillion dollar up keep, the pawned trophy wife could quickly turn ugly, broken. China’s labor would have been for nought, its’ slow calculated advances, devastated.
Some dam of tears or fears could burst, a destabilization, a petroleum upset, some natural aggression, an unnatural catastrophe… could throw the all too delicate choreography off onto slippery balance sheets, dollars crashing around the cold stone bed, the honeymoon over, the world spinning off, creating more horrors of the ‘W.”
February 4, 2011 at 3:30 am
kavips
No, Duffy. not joking.
The China you describe is one of 5 years ago… that would be the mid-term election year of George Bush’s second term.
Today, things are different.
China is not equal in all areas, and they are behind us in some, and they are ahead of us in some….
But they need us, and we need them….
And I think the Democrats get the credit for opening the door to China, at least that is how I remember it. Particularly during the late nineties, when China, jumped from Ten men in a square in ’89, to holding most of the US debt in 2009. Of course, if we had a budget surplus still “ranging as far as the eye can see”…… they wouldn’t be holding that debt for us, now would they?…
February 4, 2011 at 3:40 am
kavips
By most accounts, China remains a generation or more behind the United States in military technology, and even further behind in deploying battle-tested versions of its most sophisticated naval and air capabilities. But after years of denials that it has any intention of becoming a peer military power of the United States, it is now unveiling capabilities that suggest that it intends, sooner or later, to be able to challenge American forces in the Pacific.
February 8, 2011 at 9:39 am
Duffy
That last NYT quote is laughable. Any denials they’ve issued have been kabuki theater. Hell they published a white paper in the late ’90’s talking about the coming war with the US (within 30 years). Further their “intentions” are wonderful but there are immutable facts they have to address first.
Their Navy is a littoral one and again, THEY DO NOT HAVE AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER. Let alone a carrier group. Or several carrier groups. You simply cannot rival the US without them. Further they have geographic problems wrt their “sting of pearls” strategy and VLCC channels and on and on.
The other guy always has problems you don’t know about. In this case that may be doubly true.