Abstract

Starting with an almost single-minded emphasis on shared interests to engage China, the Obama administration made a policy adjustment about one year later to shore up US leadership in the Asia–Pacific even if it meant challenging China’s core interests. This paper argues that this adjustment was to bring hedge back to shape the regional context of China’s rise. While the precipitating cause for the shift was China’s newly founded assertiveness during the global financial downturn, the deep cause was the US anxiety about China’s great power aspiration in the twenty-first century. The policy adjustment, however, was not to contain China’s rise because a full-out confrontation against China would be self-defeating. It was a return to a centralist approach to engage China from a position of strength rather than weakness.

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