America's relationship with China

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/18902.htm#relations

I looked at the United States Department of State website to find out more about the relationship the U.S has with China. There is a lot of information on the page regarding China but I chose to focus on the U.S relations with China section, especially the part from 2003 onwards.

According to the website relations began to gradually improve with the Presidency of George W. Bush. He regularly met with Chinese presidents and this is something that has continued into the Presidency of Barrack Obama. The website also states that since George Bush first met with President Jiang Zemin that “U.S. China policy has been consistent” and that the U.S. has always encouraged China’s integration into the global system. However we must keep in mind that this is a website run and updated by the United States and therefore is going to hold some bias towards the U.S. relationship with China.

“As a result, China has moved from being a relatively isolated and poor country to a key participant in international institutions and a major trading nation” this quote from the website shows that the United States seemingly believe that they have played a crucial part in China’s development in becoming a globally dominant country. It would be interesting to see if China agrees!

The next section of the website focuses on China’s standing on terrorism and it is suggested that they are very much in agreement with the United States. China were publicly supportive of the U.S. after the 9/11 terrorism attacks and served an important partner is U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Another aspect that America and China agree on is threats to global security, both are against North Korea and Iran (in particular) gaining or keeping any nuclear weapons. China publicly stated that they did not want Iran to acquire any nuclear weapons and the United States expects China to with the international community in finding solutions to these problems.

The last paragraph of the section I focused on was very interesting in revealing what America’s real relationship with China is like, as this quote shows. “While the United States looks forward to building a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship with China...areas of potential disagreement remain.” From this we can see that the U.S. continue in their attempts to make some sort of relationship with China but will always have disagreements with them. These disagreements are inevitable due to fact that China is a communist country.

Overall, the website has a highly positive tone to it and uses positive language such as “encourage” and “support” which would suggest a positive relationship between the two countries but I have a feeling this is not the case. The text is biased towards the United States as it is a website from the United States so therefore they are not going to describe their relations with China negatively as they want to keep them onside. Ultimately, if the U.S. is losing its super power status it needs to keep China happy in order to stall this from happening. However there is also evidence that the U.S. is not losing its power so maybe they just want a new friend. But this is politics, so I doubt it.