Obama Can Expect No Love From Beijing in 2010

China's brimming with confidence and that means a rocky year ahead for the world's most important relationship, writes Roger Cohen. US-China relations are likely to take a turn for the worse this year as Beijing, buoyed by its ever-expanding economy and $2 trillion in foreign reserves, rejects President Obama's overtures and decides "nationalism trumps globalism," Cohen writes in the New York Times.

China and America are codependent but increasingly antagonistic, Cohen writes, pointing to angry Chinese rhetoric over arms sales to Taiwan and predicting "rising protectionism, suspended military dialogue, Iranian discord, human rights disappointments, and wars of words" in 2010. But, "it could be worse," Cohen notes. "I don’t see outright confrontation now or any time. China wouldn’t risk its rise with that." (More Taiwan stories.)