Obama vs. Romney 101: 4 ways they differ on China

China's rise has led President Obama to “pivot” his foreign policy toward Asia, hoping to enhance US power and expand its cooperation with China. Romney speaks more in terms of confronting a country whose interests often clash with those of the US. 

3. Regional flash points

Chris Dickson/Australian Department of Defense/AP/File
US Marine Corps personnel stand at attention with the 5th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment during an official welcome ceremony at Robertson Barracks in Darwin, Australia, on April 4, 2012.

Obama has taken a number of steps to put meat on the bones of his Asia “pivot,” including establishing a permanent Marine base in Australia, making the US part of existing regional forums, developing closer ties to countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, and advancing negotiations toward a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade area.

But Obama has also worked to allay China’s concerns that the US is set on challenging its regional rise: The administration has called for multilateral negotiations to settle territorial disputes in the South China Sea and declined to sell advanced F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan.

In speeches and position papers, Romney suggests that his administration would be a lot less focused on reassuring a rising China about US intentions toward it, and more concerned with buttressing American leadership in Asia and using strong US action to persuade China to play a benign regional role.

Romney, his China and East Asia policy paper states, “will implement a strategy that makes the path of regional hegemony for China far more costly than the alternative path of becoming a responsible partner in the international system.”

Romney says the US should expand its presence in the western Pacific, and he gives strong hints that he would reverse Obama policy and sell Taiwan the F-16s.

3 of 4

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.