Visit marks attitude change

US President Barack Obama will pay a state visit to China Sunday through Wednesday, a critical stop on a trip across Asia.

This major foreign trip for the president, coupled with a visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nine months earlier, is heralded as a strategic shift in the attitude of American leadership toward Asia. Budding at the beginning, and implemented during the first year of his young presidency, the overture is lauded by watchers the world over.

By culture America is Eurocentric. However, for the past 75 years the United States has titled culturally toward the Asia-Pacific region. The green holistic Asian "high touch" values provide a healthy balance to America's "hi-tech" heritage, nurtured in part by the Asian-Americans who have helped make the US a technological powerhouse. In this respect, Asia has been good to America.