Sinica continendus est

From the WaPo, China begins to push other countries around:

From the Copenhagen climate change conference to Internet freedom to China's border with India, China observers have noticed a tough tone emanating from its government, its representatives and influential analysts from its state-funded think tanks...

In a case in point, one senior U.S. official termed as unusual China's behavior at the December climate conference, during which China publicly reprimanded White House envoy Todd Stern, dispatched a Foreign Ministry functionary to an event for state leaders and fought strenuously against fixed targets for emission cuts in the developed world. Another issue is Internet freedom and cybersecurity, highlighted by Google's recent threat to leave China unless the country stops its Web censorship. At China's request, that topic was left off the table at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland...

The unease over China's new tone is shared by Europeans as well. "How Should Europe Respond to China's Strident Rise?" is the title of a new paper from the Center for European Reform. Just two years earlier, its author, institute director Charles Grant, had predicted that China and the European Union would shape the new world order.

"There is a real rethink going on about China in Europe," Grant said in an interview from Davos. "I don't think governments know what to do, but they know that their policies aren't working."...

[I]n another vignette, confirmed by several sources, a senior U.S. official involved in the economy hosted his Chinese counterpart, who then made a series of disparaging remarks about the bureau that the American ran. Later that night, the two were to dine at the American's house. The Chinese representatives called ahead, asking what was for dinner. They were informed that it was fish. "The director doesn't eat fish," one of them told his American interlocutor. "He wants steak. He says fish makes you weak." The menu was changed...

With Europe and India, China's strident tone has been even more apparent. In autumn 2008, China canceled a summit with the European Union after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama. Before that, it had denounced German Chancellor Angela Merkel over her contacts with the Tibetan spiritual leader. And in recent weeks, it has engaged in a heated exchange with British officials over its moves to block a broader agreement at the climate conference...

China also suspended ties with Denmark after its prime minister met the Dalai Lama and resumed them only after the Danish government issued a statement in December saying it would oppose Tibetan independence and consider Beijing's reaction before inviting him again.

"The Europeans have competed to be China's favored friend," Grant said, "but then they get put in the doghouse one by one."

China's newfound toughness also played out in a renewed dispute with India over Beijing's claims to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders Tibet. Last summer, China blocked the Asian Development Bank from making a $60 million loan for infrastructure improvements in the state. India then moved to fund the projects itself, prompting China to send more troops to the border.

And the U.S., at least, has belatedly realized the need to push back:

For the past year, China has adopted an increasingly muscular position toward the United States, berating American officials for the global economic crisis, stage-managing President Obama’s visit to China in November, refusing to back a tougher climate change agreement in Copenhagen and standing fast against American demands for tough new Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Now, the Obama administration has started to push back. In announcing an arms sales package to Taiwan worth $6 billion on Friday, the United States leveled a direct strike at the heart of the most sensitive diplomatic issue between the two countries...

[T]he Taiwan arms announcement came on the same day that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly berated China for not taking a stronger position on holding Iran accountable for its nuclear program...

“The Obama administration came in [seeking to befriend China],” said Steven Clemons, director of foreign policy programs at the New America Foundation. “They needed China on economic issues, climate change, Iran, North Korea. So they came in wanting to do this lovely dance with China, but that didn’t work.”

Instead, China pushed back hard, including at the Copenhagen climate change summit in December, when Beijing balked at American and European demands that China agree to an international monitoring system for emissions targets. Twice, the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, sent an underling to represent him at meetings with Mr. Obama, in what diplomats said was an intentional snub. Mr. Obama later had to track down Mr. Wen, surprising him and appearing at the doorway of a conference room where Mr. Wen was meeting with the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India...

[T]he whole incident left a bad taste in the mouths of many Obama administration officials, who believed China had deliberately set out to belittle Mr. Obama, and who were determined to push back and reassert American authority...

And Mr. Obama announced in his State of the Union address last week that he planned to double American exports in the next five years, an ambitious goal that cannot be met unless he somehow persuades China to let its currency appreciate, making Chinese products more expensive in the United States and American products more affordable in China.

A few years ago, Brad DeLong put forth the viewpoint that the single most important task for the United States is to befriend China - as Britain once befriended a rising U.S. - so that in decades to come, China will remember us as having helped their rise, and will be willing to cut us in on their new world order. It is safe to say that DeLong's dream is dead. (He would have done well, in any case, to remember that Britain also befriended Imperial Japan...)

More recently, Matt Yglesias and others have expressed the more modest belief that the U.S.'s single most important foreign policy goal must be to avoid a New Cold War with China. That looks like a very achievable goal - if you define a "Cold War" as a nuclear standoff, worldwide proxy wars, competing ideologies, shutting off of trade, etc. If you define it more broadly - as prolonged unfriendliness and hostility between major powers - then it looks like Yglesias is also out of luck.

Just as nuclear weapons ensured that the Cold War was a different sort of great-power struggle than the World Wars, economic interdependence ensures that we will not "fight" China the way we did the USSR. Our struggle will be a more urbane one, played out in natural-resource contracts, arms sales to allies, cyberwarfare, espionage, macroeconomic manipulation, and diplomatic maneuvering. That should be heartening to Yglesias & co.

But a struggle it will be, nevertheless. China's leaders are too anxious to see their country influential and powerful, and there is no possible way they will not see the U.S. as their chief rival. China's internal insecurities also require that the regime act more belligerent than it would want to be if it felt secure. And for our part, we depend too much on the international system we've built; to let it fall by the wayside under a concerted assault from a single huge throwback of a nation-state would signal the end of America's self-appointed purpose on the international stage - and, hence, the unarguable beginning of our real decline.

Oh, but the Chinese economic official did have a point. Steak is good.