With mass riot and violence against Chinese workers and enterprises in Vietnam, disputes between the two countries have become the hotspot again. Thanks to the efforts of both, the situation is brought under control while mutual relation is not experiencing any big trouble at present.

China-Vietnam territorial disputes have existed for long and they have maintained stable relations equally long. It was only recently that Vietnam sought trouble by interrupting Chinese enterprises’ exploring operations near Xisha Islands; even after that and collision of their ships the two sides still kept constraint and avoided any upgrading of events.

However, the situation changed drastically with US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Daniel Russel’s visit to Vietnam on May 7. With open support from US, Vietnam raised its tone against China and speculated the incident by holding press conferences and sending more ships to interrupt China’s operations; later it even connived in domestic protests against Chinese enterprises, which finally resulted in casualties of Chinese citizens and huge damage to Chinese enterprises in Vietnam.

In the evolution from territorial disputes to friction then to bloodshed, a third party US’ role is evident. It is obviously using dispute between China and Vietnam and other disputes in South China Sea to contain China.

But US might not benefit from its strategy, which is well implemented though. It has lost, first of all, the moral high ground that it always claimed. US has always been telling the world that by rebalancing in Asia-Pacific it aims at maintaining regional order and stability, not containing China; what happened in Vietnam – violence, social unrest, even bloodshed – has proved how hypocritical this lie is.

Asia-Pacific has not been more peaceful or stable with US’ strategic attention; just on the contrary, it is filled with crisis. The region used to be on the path towards higher integration and more flourishing prosperity, and was considered the engine of global economy before US implemented its rebalancing policy; now the process is disrupted and people are discussing the possibility of World War I being repeated here. All those owe thanks to US’ rebalancing strategy.

Asian countries are not the only victims – US also counts. Having suffered from the 2008 global financial crisis, US faced the problems of slower economy, bad international credit and lack of public confidence in the State; it was then Barack Obama won the presidential election with a call of reform and he honored his promise by employing a strategy that emphasizes Asia-Pacific with abundant economic vitality. However, US invested too much in politics and military and paid little attention to economy, and as a result its strategic shift to Asia-Pacific is against China without benefiting the US.

US might be performing well in containing China, but at the same time it is also getting farther away from the initial objectives of using international situations to boost domestic recovery. Maybe a Chinese idiom can best describe the situation as “harvesting the smaller potato and forgetting the bigger one”.

What the US loses in the contest is more than potato. China and the US have never had any territorial disputes, but currently US gets deeply involved in China’s disputes with its neighboring countries, which casts a shadow upon Sino-US relations. The wail in countries around South China Sea is shaking the dog in the US.

Of course, in making the rebalancing strategy the US aimed at employing small allies to carry on its strategic arrangements, thus cutting military expenditure; the decision-makers might never expect that their nation, of which they are so proud, is becoming a chess piece of small allies and being dragged into their own balancing among big powers.

Third-party interference is increasingly an obstacle that curbs Sino-US relations. Some countries believe they have US support so they do not care about worsening relations with China; US is kidnapped by the interests of its allies in this way. If the US continues its strategy of containing China amid rebalancing it would not get rid of the dilemma of being used by small allies.

The author is a researcher with China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.