Stark difference between Pence's words and US' deeds

It was neither the most amicable speech on US-China relations nor the most hostile. Yet, despite harping on the same string as his last major address on China in October last year, US Vice-President Mike Pence's speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington on Thursday revealed something new.

Like last year, Pence tried to claim the moral high ground for the United States and criticized almost all of China's practices, both at home and abroad, without any trustworthy evidence. Amid all the rhetoric, though, he surprisingly found some kind words for an "emboldened" China.

Seemingly abandoning efforts to "tame China", Pence's remarks suggest Washington considers the days when it found a friendly partner in Beijing are over, and China, with its economy growing more than nine-fold in the past 17 years, has now become a "strategic and economic rival" whose behavior is "aggressive and destabilizing".