U.S. getting tough with China?

Faced with a Chinese government increasingly intent on testing U.S. strength and capabilities, the United States unveiled a new policy that rejected China’s claims to sovereignty over the whole South China Sea. It rebuffed Chinese demands that the U.S. military end its longtime policy of conducting military exercises in the Yellow Sea. And it is putting new pressure on Beijing not to increase its energy investments in Iran as Western firms leave.

The U.S. maneuvers have prompted a backlash among Chinese officialdom and its state-run press, which has accused the United States of trying to contain China. Yang Jiechi, the minister of foreign affairs, issued a highly unusual statement Monday charging that the United States was ganging up with other countries against China. One prominent academic, Shen Dingli of Fudan University, compared the planned U.S. exercises in international waters of the Yellow Sea to the 1962 Russian deployment of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba…

The strategy has won rare acclaim in Washington among the generally fractious community of China watchers. James Mulvenon, director of Defense Group Inc.’s Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, called it “a masterful piece of diplomacy” in dealing with China, which, he said, “continues to be this paradoxical combination of bluster, swagger and intense insecurity and caution.”