Asia-pacific Strategy’s Adjustment In Obama’s Second Term And Its Impact On The Sino-American Relations

At the present time, China and the United States are the two most important great powers in the world. The United States, as an established power, and China, an emerging power, their every single action will arouse wide concern of the international community, and any subtle change of their foreign policies will have a far-reaching influence on the world pattern. In the new period, the Obama Administration’s global strategy and its position to China has and will surely have direct influence on the direction of Sino-American relations, world peace and its development.Historically, the United States has long embraced a strategic plan of "returning to Asia". However, due to the occurrence of the incident of “9·11” terrorist attacks, the United States had to put a lot of energy and resources into the anti-terrorist cause, and successively launched two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After many years of the wars on terrorism, the domestic economy of the U. S. goes downhill, and the unemployment rate once reached to as high as 8%~9%, and the above conditions have caused domestic discontents continue to rise in the States. Since President Obama came to power, he had to take his responsibilities for revitalizing domestic economy as well as realizing the balanced allocation of strategic resources. Meanwhile, he announced an all-round “returning to Asia” strategy faced with the fact that China is rising rapidly and expanding her international influence. The first term of Obama Administration made some significant adjustments in many areas of its Asia-Pacific strategy, such as in political, economic, military and cultural fields. Now the intention of the U. S. Asia-Pacific strategy has been wholly revealed after the 4-year strategic organization and assignment. On the one hand, to recover the U. S. economy through the Asia-Pacific booming economy and its giant market, and to reinforce the alliance with the U.S. partners on the other hand, so as to provoke the territorial disputes over China with its neighbors to“besiege” China’s development and rise, with purpose of consolidating the U.S. utmost status in this region and the world. However, Obama’s excessive buildup on his Asia-Pacific military strategy has brought deeply mutual suspicion between Sino-American exchanges, which on the contrary has affected the U. S. returning process to this region. As Obama won his second general election and appointed his new diplomatic team in 2012, how to stabilize the Asia-Pacific rebalance and how to polish its relationship with China has been a focus by the spotlights from all over the world.Based on the objective reality, this paper, by using three methods in combination---historical analysis, literature analysis and case analysis, gives a systematical analysis to the Asia-Pacific strategic adjustment and its impact on Sino-American relations during Obama’s second term. By discussing the following aspects to better grasp the Asia-pacific rebalancing strategy in Obama’s second term and the change of its policy toward China, this paper tries to explore the future trend of the development of Sino-American relations. Firstly, this paper discusses the background and motivation of American Asia-Pacific strategic adjustment. Through a review of Obama’s first term in the deployment of Asia-Pacific strategy and its many effects, this part analyzes the domestic and international factors, the internal and external factors that caused the adjustments of Asia-Pacific strategy in Obama’s second term, thereby to grasp the strategic intention of the adjustments of American Asia-Pacific strategy. Secondly, by paying close attention to the comments and changes in policies of Obama’s foreign team, this part is mainly to discuss the Asia-Pacific strategy adjustment of Obama’s second term in several areas including political, economic, military, diplomatic fields and its policy toward China to compare the differences of Asia-Pacific strategy in Obama’s second term with his first term. Thirdly, based on the above two aspects’ analysis, part three tries to discuss what the impacts that Obama’s Asia-Pacific strategy adjustment on China and Sino-US relations in his second term are, that is, to keep doubt or to improve mutual strategic trust, to strengthen mutual cooperation or to deepen internal contradictions, to maintain the Asia-Pacific region stable or to cause regional unstable. Based on the above analysis and study, the last part is to explore China’s countermeasures faced with the Obama’s Asia-Pacific strategy adjustments, meanwhile to make bold predictions to the future of Sino-US relations.Sino-American relationship is a set of very complicated bilateral relations. Here I’d like to cite Professor Niu Jun’s definition on Sino-American relationship as "an increasingly interdependent and competitive relationship". Because of the increasing mutual interdependence between the two countries, both sides will not easily touch each other’s bottom line. Therefore, in Obama’s second term, Sino-American relations will maintain steady and healthy development, and strengthening all-round cooperation is the common task of both countries. As long as the two countries will be able to be straightforward and honest to each other, better control their differences, Sino-American relations will go towards a healthy and harmonious direction.