Obama

"I thought that Clinton and Bush had made the right call in encouraging China’s integration into the global economy—history told me that a chaotic and impoverished China posed a bigger threat to the United States than a prosperous one."

"To pull ourselves and the rest of the world out of the recession, we needed China’s economy growing, not contracting."

"The one thing we had going for us was that in recent years China had started overplaying its hand, demanding one-sided concessions from..trading partners and threatening the Philippines and Vietnam over control of a handful of small but strategic islands in the South China Sea."

"U.S. diplomats reported a growing resentment toward such heavy-handed tactics—and a desire for a more sustained American presence as a counterweight to Chinese power."

"[the] 'pivot to Asia' wasn’t to contain China or stifle its growth. Rather, it was to ..to strengthen the very framework of international law that had allowed countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region—including China—to make so much progress in such a short time."