The China Turnaround

James Fallows rounds up the headlines and finds sudden progress being made on just about every issue on which Obama’s trip to China was deemed a “failure” by the media consensus. To reiterate what I said before, I do think it’s fair to observe that it seems slightly strange to have gone ahead with the trip in the absence of a clear signal that there were important bilateral deals ready to be signed. But it looks like Fallows’ earlier argument that this lack of blockbuster headlines was obscuring a broad range of successes now has the bulk of the evidence on its side.