HONG KONG -- As the United States debates the security implications of the Cox report on Chinese spying in the U.S., and as China continues to deny the spying and to denounce the NATO attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, it is easy to lose sight of a basic reality: There is a remarkable symmetry in the current deterioration in Sino-American state-to-state relations.

The U.S. increasingly sees China as being at fault in the downward plunge of ties, even when the evidence is less than compelling. China increasingly sees the U.S. as the perennial troublemaker, even when the U.S. merely reacts to events, as with the new U.S.-Japan security guidelines or when the U.S. concludes a new status-of-forces agreement with the Philippines.

As the U.S. debates these allegations of spying, China is seen as increasingly unreliable. As the upper echelons of the Chinese government and communist party debate China's increasingly doubtful accession to the World Trade Organization, the U.S. is increasingly seen by important factions within the Chinese Communist Party as being untrustworthy.