China Herald: China-US relationship: fast improving

Despite some rhetoric pointing in a different direction, Shanghai-based Asia-Pacific CEO of J.Walter Thompson Tom Doctoroff sees fast improvement in the always difficult relationship between both world powers, he tells Yahoo Finance.

Yahoo Finance:

“Obama’s trip and the agreements that he reached was an unheralded coup,” says Tom Doctoroff, the Shanghai-based Asia CEO of J. Walter Thompson. “Getting to ‘yes’ in these circumstances was a win for both sides and left me more optimistic about our ability to collaborate, and optimistic about the inherent pragmatism of the current regime.”...

The Chinese government has singled out a number of American businesses operating in Asia. Antitrust probes have been launched against Microsoft (MSFT) and Qualcomm (QCOM).

“The Chinese have very ambivalent feelings regarding [America],” says Doctoroff.

“But make no mistake,” he says, many Chinese citizens still want to come to America to study and work for American firms “because they offer impartial opportunity.”

According to Doctoroff, America is viewed as an absolutist country in China. “They think that we have a monopoly on the truth and [they] disagree with that fundamentally. The Chinese are profound pragmatists and relativists. So when we start preaching about the global order we have to tone it down a little and bring it back into a pragmatic question of efficiency.”

The U.S. and China are strategic competitors, says Doctoroff, there is hostility but also agreement—and as of late, more agreement than ever.

More in Yahoo Finance.

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