Once again it is John Milligan-Whyte and his partner Dai Min, who write a weekly column for both People's Daily and China Daily. If you recall, they mentioned my stuff once before, sent me a copy of one of their books, and I wrote a WPR column about it. As I said in the WPR article, their stuff is clearly biased toward the Chinese case, much as mine is biased toward the U.S. case (they make no bones about it and neither do I), but it's the best, most straightforward counterparty example I have come across on the Chinese side for Sino-American alliance in this century, so you have to take it seriously if you take that goal seriously.
To remind from their byline:
John Milligan-Whyte has been called the "new Edgar Snow" and "21st century Kissinger" and is the winner of Social Responsibility Award from the 2010 Summit of China Business Leaders. John Milligan-Whyte and Dai Min are co-hosts of the Collaboration of Civilizations television series, founders of the Center for America-China Partnership, which has been recognized as "the first American think tank to combine and integrate American and Chinese perspectives providing a complete answer for the success of America and China's success in the 21st century," and the authors of the America-China Partnership Book Series that created a "New School of America-China Relations."
I recently had a long Skype call with the two, because I wanted to check them out and get some sense of where they're coming from. John has a long legal background as a lawyer in Bermuda for several decades. He connects with Dai Min a few years back and makes the permanent leap to Beijing, sensing an historic 
opportunity for business dealmaking, especially as China's second-tier cities take off. But what really drives these two is their unwavering commitment to fostering a better relationship between China and the U.S., which is what drew them to my stuff.
I get asked a lot: does anybody push for Sino-American strategic alliance in the US like you do? And I always say, in terms of the strategic thinking community, no. Some, like Niall Ferguson, speak about the symbiotic nature that already exists, but more as a symptom than as a basis for larger cooperation. The reason why I push on this is that, like I argued in China Security (see just below) back in 2008, my logic of global integration and globalization's advance says this relationship must be or globalization essentially goes backward, something I don't think the planet could handle in many ways, because the sheer numbers involved in an emerging global middle class mean we've reached that all-sink-or-all-swim-together moment--resource- and cooperation-wise. Knowing my timeline on the inevitability of political pluralism in China (I target a late 2020s/early 2030s as the rough half-century mark after Deng's initial revolutionary reforms), I then see the next two decades as perhaps the most crucial in human history--as in, get the big pieces right and all works out, but set the two biggest pieces against one another, and this can all go very badly--and backwards.
So I'm comfortable being perceived as too out-there and a bit naive on this subject, because I know I'll see the day when this logic comes to pass, and I'll be on the right side of history--betting on improvements and compromise and cooperation over degradation and ultimatums and conflict.
And so I do find these two thinkers awfully interesting, because they're tilting at the same windmill, but on the other side, where, quite frankly, I think the receptivity is much better at this point in history (a faltering #1 is more scared and thus more inflexible than a rising #2). Thus I see a future collaborative effort between my work and what these two are seeking to accomplish via their center and foundation. Collectively, we're a bit rag-tag compared to the powers-that-be, but I enjoy living and working primarily on the basis of the power of my ideas, and John and Dai Min are very similar in this regard (John, arguing like a lawyer in court, and Dai Min, possessing the mind of a business-developer/marketer). Like most visionary types, they come as awfully self-promoting (John's theatrical way of speaking makes you realize this guy is ALWAYS in court), but being one myself (and long being accused of the same--to include the "entertaining" delivery), I don't have a problem with that. I enjoy working with people who really want to change the world and aren't shy about it (working with Steve DeAngelis is very similar, as he too is always about not just a business but a revolution in doing business). I have no desire to live a life that does anything less.
Anyway, here's snippets of the piece (the start and the finish--where I am mentioned again):
President Obama announced he was launching a new era of partnership when he was in the process of recruiting the team of veteran China policymakers and advisors. Nonetheless, the positive approach he instinctively favored disappeared. Conventional and then hostile policies and actions began defining his administration's relationship with China.
His policymakers are implementing an increasingly hostile approach referred to as hardball in the US press. It could be deliberately seeking to cause China to not continue Deng Xiaoping's successful policies of opening up economically to U.S. companies and of peaceful coexistence with America and or other nations. It could be simply disastrous U.S. policymaking responding poorly to the U.S. economic and national security crises. In any case, the hardball approach makes collaborative and therefore successful U.S. and Chinese policies hard to imagine or implement.
A U.S. president launching a new era of partnership with China is unconventional. It goes against the US policymakers' views and widespread U.S. feelings that China is a threat to Americans. But leading the changing of the direction of U.S. policies toward China is a presidential prerogative whether it begins covertly at the height of the United States' unsuccessful Vietnam War or covertly and then when private agreement is reached, it is changed once more overtly during the current U.S. economic, employment and other crises.
A U.S. president cannot effectively begin to successfully establish a new era of partnership or solve economic and national security problems until he finds advisors and experts with policies able to achieve his goals. To do so, President Nixon reached out to Professor Kissinger at Harvard because Kissinger shared his worldview and goals and others did not. President Obama is currently overseeing the changing of many advisors who were key players in the first two years of his administration. He is looking for but not yet finding breakthroughs or new policies providing solutions to U.S. economic and national security problems.
Neither America nor China can fully meet the economic and national security needs of their nation without the sincere, coordinated and constant help of the other. It is not possible in this century for one of the two largest economies in the world to fail, and the other to succeed. Because his administration is not finding the effective policies toward China needed to solve the U.S. crises, President Obama is open-minded and decisive. If China presents him with and supports solutions, he will grasp why they are solutions and lead in explaining them to U.S. policymakers and in implementing them. But until he finds solutions and has China's support in implementing them, he cannot take on the fear of China and hardball thinking policymakers in the US. Let's be clear about this, he needs Chinese policymakers to reach out to him with solutions because neither he nor his advisors have them today. Second, he can only act when a set of solutions has been privately negotiated and agreed, Kissinger style, and he is absolutely sure China will support the solutions when he announces his support for them . . ....
. . . President Obama has pledged that he will double U.S. exports to China in an effort to increase U.S. competitiveness and stimulate its economy. To increase exports to China, the United States will need to remove policies that restrict trade with China and propose policies that are mutually beneficial for both nations.
Increasing U.S. exports to China also requires preventing a trade or currency war. Nonetheless, economic and trade policymakers in President Obama's administration have implemented tariffs on steel, tires and other goods made in China, introduced more than 23 anti-dumping, anti-subsidy and special protectionist tariffs, and launched at least six Section 337 investigations against China for alleged unfair practices in export trade. At least a 53 percent increase in the number of cases involved 7.6 billion U.S. dollars worth of Chinese exports, which is 800 percent more than in the previous year. The U.S. is seeking to increase its exports to China while setting up trade barriers for China's exports. China is the world's largest importer, and currently China and the U.S. are each other's second largest trading partners. There are threats of new tariffs if China does not agree to the United States' proposed carbon emissions cap and trade proposals and lately talk of a currency war and tariffs over cap and trade. This is occurring in addition to longstanding U.S. trade restrictions on what can be sold to China because U.S. military strategy is traditionally preparing for war with China.
This is not the optimum path for American policymaking. Or is it? Americans are suffering from relentless and unsuccessful wars, unsustainable global trade deficits and government debt, high unemployment and the worst economic crisis in a hundred years. To many U.S. policymakers who learned their craft in the Cold War, hard ball seems to be the realistic approach to the United States' most important bilateral and multilateral relationship. It is obvious to them that China, with its second largest and fastest growing economy, is an increasingly dangerous threat to U.S. economic and national security. Their zero sum game view of how global economics and geopolitics work assumes and acts as if for America to be successful, China must be unsuccessful. They are wrong. They do not realize that or they do realize that and are trying to engineering or blundering into a showdown.
The key point is that until President Obama and the American people are presented with a plan for how America and China can both be successful in the 21st century, we are on the slippery slope. Chinese policymakers' safe response is to provide President Obama with a new grand strategy introduced for discussion in a white paper for the Presidents of American and China. China's leaders and President Obama should also read and discuss Thomas Barnett's "The Pentagon's New Map and Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating." The Sino-U.S. relationship must be made profoundly better soon. Therefore it must be fundamentally different soon. The 20th century is over.