what is fair?

Just came back from China, I had hoped to post there but the great wall of fire prevented me from accessing blogspot.

While in China, I watched the CCTV 9 News program (English). It is not bad, I think I might even prefer it to Foxx News, if only because the biases are more cleverly hidden. One of the items that the CCTV News reported on was the Strategic and Economic Talks between the US and China. Rather than getting into the interviewer's questions or the line up of apparently experts, what stuck me was the different senses of what was a fair outcome for the China-US (more broadly China-West) relations.

The CCTV news provided the view that these S&E talks should not allowed to draw China in a G2, and that China should take as little responsibility as possible for fixing the world's current economic problems - including those of America. On the flip side, America are expecting that China will come to table to hammer out a deal that will help the US to recover (and thereby help China too).

The gap between these two going into the discussion seems large. No doubt there are areas of common concern at which an agreement can be made, but it seems to me that there is the potential here that once the crisis ends one or other party will feel "unfairly" done by. Probably China, as it is they who are being asked/forced to fork out more and more for America - (US treasury were bought at a record rate in this month, despite poor trade numbers, and in spite of warning by China about the risk of holding dollars).

If its expects are not met, it might be a wounded China that comes out of this economic crisis, and the possibility that China's disillusionment with the world system and US leadership do not bode well.