Asia's leaders must work together to solve their problems and leave the US out of it

What do you think would be the tenor of global debate if President Xi Jinping, on a tour of South America, were to give speeches at each stop about the threat posed to the region by the United States? While visiting Cuba, he would offer promises of "deepening our alliance". And, at the trip's end in Mexico, Xi would call that country "freedom's frontier … on this divided peninsula".

Anything of the sort would be greeted by the universal outrage of global commentators - and probably by calls for sanctions on the part of leading US politicians.

But switch China and America's places and this is almost exactly what happened when President Barack Obama visited Asia late last month. Those words above were Obama's - but directed to the Philippines and South Korea (rather than Cuba and Mexico).

Indeed, few issues nowadays can avoid being drawn into the ideological sinkhole of Sino-US competition. But the global nervousness goes further than that.

In a speech to students in Pennsylvania, Obama recounted that "countries like Germany, China and India - they're working every day to out-educate our kids so they can out-compete our businesses". Even the Hollywood press has been buzzing about whether studios are now "kowtowing to China", by editing their films in an attempt to enter the lucrative Chinese market.

Apart from creating an attitude of fear and mistrust among the next generation of Americans, this kind of narrative promotes a dangerous national solipsism.