Obama administration has begun to distinguish itself in its Asia policy with the conclusion of new Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton's Feb 15-22 Asia trip, which took her to Japan, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea (or South Korea) and China. From her just-ended Asia trip, it is not hard to tell of the Obama administration's trio hallmarks on the Asia issue, namely, attaching even greater importance to its allies, to China and to the use of its overall "hard power".

The United States has all along taken ties with its allies as the basis of its external relationships, and the Obama administration is no exception. In her trip to Japan and South Korea, Hillary Clinton strove sedulously to demonstrate America's alliance ties with Japan and South Korea in an attempt to ram or solidify the strategic trust with Tokyo and Seoul.

Discerning people know quite clearly that Hillary's visit to Japan and South Korea coincides precisely with the time when rifts in its relations with Japan and South Korea are enlarging. In the later period of Bush administration, Japan felt the U.S. spurring the dialogue with North Korea on the denuclearization issue to the neglect of its concern, so that the U.S.-Japan rift expanded. Meanwhile, the present South Korean government has turned deeply wary of the U.S.'s increasing approaches to North Korea.

So, at the moment, the U.S. has announced Stephen Bosworth, a former senior State Department official, who had served US ambassador to South Korea from 1997 to 2000, as the US special envoy to North Korea, meanwhile terming its partnership with South Korea as the U.S.-South Korea strategic alliance. Thus, Hillary Clinton opened the East Asia chess game for Obama.

Given the extension of security connotation and scope of cooperation in the present era of increasingly mutually-reliant globalization, the U.S. attaches importance to more extensive national interests and co-ordinates more with non-allied countries. In fact, the humanity has to join hands to cope with new, non-traditional security threats in face of range alternatives imposed by such new issues as the global financial crisis, energy conservation, greenhouse gas reduction, and large-scale epidemic diseases.

Like the Bill Clinton government preceding George W. Bush's administration, Obama administration is most likely to take a rigorous, pragmatic approach and to cooperate most efficiently with concerted efforts of new-emerged economies, particularly with China in an all-round way. During her current trip, Hillary reaffirmed efforts to raise the levels of US strategic and economic dialogues with China, agreed to coordinate closely with it on response to global financial crisis and work for positive outcome of the G-20 London financial summit to be held in April.

People have noticed that Hillary Clinton thanked China for its continued confidence in US Treasury bond. "I appreciate China's continued confidence in US Treasuries," she told reporters last Saturday, Feb. 20 after meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. And the U.S. also looks forward to the large-scale cooperation with China in the sphere of environmental protection.

Moreover, Mrs. Clinton tried to apply the concept of "soft power" to the Asia diplomacy, not only abandoning former President George Bush's unilateralism but seeking to extend American interests via wide-ranging contacts or engagements with Asian cultural and economic circles.

Beyond any doubt, Hillary's itinerary includes Indonesia for the first time. She capitalized on sentimental factors to get in with Indonesia where President Obama spent part of his childhood, so as to help forge still closer cooperation with this big Muslim nation. Furthermore, the United States attempts to improve its ties with the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and raise or upgrade its image in the Muslim world while going on with its continuous, meritorious services in the global war on terror.

Hillary Clinton has come to visit East Asia at the time when the U.S is currently beset with difficulties both at home and overseas, and her polite gesture during the trip has been well received wherever she went. Nevertheless, the U.S. currently feels it not easy to accomplish several things as it does not have a fresh spurt of energy as it did before. The remarks on the North Korea nuclear issue she gave in Seoul does not have any new, fresh ideas and, its intended agreement of denuclearization for peace with North Korea alone is hard to attract Pyongyang. Hence, people have come to see that it is a normalcy for the U.S. to seek international cooperation, since it finds itself difficult today to resolve numerous thorny issues alone.

By People's Online, and its author is Shen Dingli, Dean of the American Studies Center at elite Fudan University and Vice-President of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies