A tiresome affair of US demands

"Define the relationship," may have been the promising words to start Jon Huntsman's speech last Thursday to several hundred Tsinghua University students, but the United States ambassador to China came up far short of a clear definition of the China-US relationship.

Though he later compared the relationship to that of a romantic couple in response to a student's question, his speech did more to show that relations between the two countries is lopsided: The US is keen on issuing demands and wants China to follow them.

Huntsman's speech is rife with demands. They are the same demands that we've seen recently from the US: China must immediately join the US and other Western countries and agree to impose sanctions on Iran for its nuclear enrichment program; China must shoulder the blame of the global financial crisis and revalue its currency; China must cooperate with the US on global climate change; China must stop its support for regimes that the US dislikes; China must not convict any citizen if the US government defines these individual Chinese as political dissidents.