Hillary likes to take the credit, but never the blame

Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton departs a discussion on national security during a campaign stop at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia, US, June 15, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's rhetoric may resonate with her supporters when she talks tough and claims lots of credit, as she did in her national security speech earlier this month, but for people in China, the words ring a bit hollow.

It's a well known truth that politicians like to take the credit and never the blame, but when Clinton said "I wrestled with the Chinese over a climate deal in Copenhagen," it is a pat on the back she certainly doesn't deserve.

Most experts in the field know well that China's strong resolve to fight pollution and climate change is not a result of outside pressure from people like Clinton, but rather the desire of its 1.4 billion people.

In Washington last week, Nick Stern, known for his Stern Review on climate and economics, praised China for being a global leader in the fight against climate change and for its action and ambitious goals in its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

Clinton loves to tout her experience. "I have sat in the Situation Room and advised the president (Barack Obama) on some of the toughest choices he faced," she said.

What she did not say is that as secretary of state, she was directly responsible for some of the worst decisions he ever made, such as the regime change in Libya in 2011. Libya is in total chaos today and has become a haven for Islamic State (IS) terrorists largely because of US intervention. The IS group itself is largely a by-product of the US' invasion of Iraq, which Clinton endorsed as a senator from New York.

Despite being accused of all sorts of things by US politicians like Clinton, China has never done anything even remotely as damaging to peace and stability in a country or region.

To many Chinese, Clinton's rhetoric reflects a Cold War, zero-sum mentality, something many people working on China-US relations have warned against. She claims Moscow and Beijing are "deeply envious of our alliances around the world, because they have nothing to match them".

Yet she conveniently avoids mentioning that China by principle is a non-aligned country and the US' alliances are a legacy of the Cold War, which ended more than 20 years ago.