ARTICLE: What more can China do to boost ties, By David Shambaugh, China Daily, 2009-11-13

Very impressive bit of logic in China Daily prior to recent Obama visit.

Guts:

While Washington should ask for more from Beijing, it must also be careful not to expect too much. The history of Sino-American relations over the past 30 years is replete with examples of one side or the other having unrealistically high expectations of the other, only to be disappointed by the other's ability to match expectations. Today, the Chinese government continues to have great domestic responsibilities, and its international positions are often at considerable variance with the US. Thus, the partnership has to be pursued within limits and often in parallel rather than directly, although both sides should constantly look for further opportunities to expand global and regional Asian cooperation.

At present, two potential new areas of cooperation are Afghanistan and western Pacific maritime security. The first will require adjustments in thinking in Beijing, while the second will need adjustments in Washington and Tokyo.

China could provide a great deal of useful security, aid, and other humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan - if it decided to and Washington and its NATO partners welcomed it. To date, Washington has not asked and Beijing has been reticent to contribute. But China could allow the People's Armed Police (Wujing) to help train Afghan police (a pressing need), and the People's Liberation Army could perhaps even participate in the multinational military operations against the Taliban and Al-Qaida (also China's enemies).

China could also do much to build hard infrastructure in Afghanistan - roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings - as well as contributing personnel to tertiary education and public health clinics across the country. China has much experience in these areas in Africa and elsewhere - the time is now ripe to get involved in partnership with NATO and others on the ground in Afghanistan.

Maintaining maritime security in the western Pacific region has been primarily an American responsibility since World War II. But as the Chinese navy continually expands its operational range and China's interests in keeping the sea-lanes of communications (SLOCs) open and secure increase, it should naturally play a greater role in Asia-Pacific maritime security.

This will require a fairly major adjustment in the strategic thinking of Japan and the US - seeing China's expanded operations in terms of co-management of the maritime commons - while it will require Beijing to accept an expanded role for the Japanese maritime forces in the region. It will also require intelligence sharing and joint naval and air operations, things that adversaries do not do.

Thus, underlying such maritime cooperation requires the US and Japan to abandon the "strategic hedging" and "balancing" mindset - while China must open up its military operations to external scrutiny and fully engage the American and Japanese militaries as partners.

See? I'm not a complete nut on this subject, just ahead of the wave by design.

(Thanks: historyguy99)