Opinion: Obama Forgets U.S. Made China's Rise Possible

Diplomacy: Barack Obama's 67-minute press conference with China's President Hu Jintao Wednesday underlined how unexceptional the U.S. is to its president. Funny, that's not how the Chinese leader sees it.

Ironies, some not so amusing, abounded in the lengthy joint briefing for the press at the White House this week. For starters, as radio commentator Rush Limbaugh observed, it was strange to see Obama, 2009 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, bend over backward to fete and flatter the leader who was responsible for repressing Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, winner of the exact same prize last year.

Obama dished out lots of praise for China's success, gushing "the development of China has brought unprecedented economic growth to more people more quickly than just about any time in history." Left out was any recognition that China's paddling as fast as it can to imitate the U.S. without democracy. To the extent it's succeeded in permitting a private sector, it did what we did.

Obama also insisted that China's ascent was absolutely no threat to the U.S. "We welcome China's rise," he insisted.

He noted that he wanted to "make sure" it was done peacefully. But that soft-pedals a rather large elephant in the room. The only reason China has money at all is that it emulates us, and the only reason China has been peaceful so far is that U.S. naval warships have been patrolling the Pacific Rim for about six decades.

The two are actually related: U.S. military might in the Pacific enabled Japan and the Tiger states of the Pacific Rim — Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia — to surge, an event that spurred China to turn to the markets to catch up. Without the U.S. Navy, none of this could have happened.

As for human rights, Obama slid into moral equivalence. Instead of stating the obvious about U.S. moral superiority on that front, he could only summon:

"China has a different political system than we do. China is at a different stage of development than we are. We come from very different cultures with very different histories."

So yes indeed, in a year such as 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights work freed millions while Mao's Cultural Revolution slaughtered millions, our histories were ... different.

As for the U.S., he was little more than a scold:

"Even as we were trying to stabilize the financial system, what was absolutely clear was that we couldn't go back to a system in which the United States was borrowing massively, consuming massively, but not producing and selling to the rest of the world."

It's a statement at odds with Obama's position as the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover.

To top it off, Obama didn't signal that U.S. leadership was essential to leading a global economic recovery. But the Group of 20 is.

Is it too much to ask for a president who recognizes the singular strengths of the U.S. and its free economy? Based on this speech, it's obvious Obama still sees his own country as just another nation of no exceptionality among many. That he's done it with an increasingly assertive China sends the wrong message to everyone.