US State of the Union address smacks of China bashing

There is no doubt US politicians have not talked enough with their people about the positive aspects of US-China ties, which accounts for a large part of the full picture of bilateral relations. On the contrary, they have made increasing use of China as a bogeyman.

We saw that when incumbent US president Barack Obama battled Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential campaign on who was and could be tougher on China, making it seem the US could solve its problems by just blaming China. We saw it again last week when Obama gave his State of the Union address.

While several experts on US-China relations I talked with earlier did not even expect China to come up in the address this year, because they believed it would focus on domestic issues, Obama sprang a big surprise. The Republicans surely didn't expect to see a cockier-than-ever Obama speaking for the first time before a Congress with both chambers controlled by the Republicans. He touched on bipartisan cooperation, but the words and tone he used were absolutely confrontational.