More than half of Chinese people questioned in a poll believe China and America are heading for a new "cold war". The finding came after battles over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, climate change, Internet freedom and human rights.
Now almost 55% of those questioned for Global Times, a state-run newspaper, agree that "a cold war will break out between the US and China".
An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America's foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama's decision to sell $6.4 billion (?4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.
Officially, China has reacted by threatening sanctions against American companies selling arms to Taiwan and cancelling military visits.
But Chinese analysts think the leadership, riding a wave of patriotism as the year of the tiger dawns, may go further.
Chinese indignation was compounded when the White House said Obama would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, in the next few weeks.
An internal publication at the elite Qinghua University last week predicted the strains would get worse because "core interests" were at risk. It said battles over exports, technology transfer, copyright piracy and the value of China's currency, the yuan, would be fierce.
During Obama's visit, the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, claimed relations were "really at an all-time high in terms of the bilateral atmosphere ... a cruising altitude that is higher than any other time in recent memory", according to an official transcript.The ambassador must have been the only person at his embassy to think so, said a diplomat close to the talks.
The truth was that the atmosphere was cold and intransigent when the president went to Beijing yet his China team went on pretending that everything was fine," the diplomat said.
In reality, Chinese officials argued over every item of protocol, rigged a town hall meeting with a pre-selected audience, censored the only interview Obama gave to a Chinese newspaper and forbade the Americans to use their own helicopters to fly him to the Great Wall.
President Hu Jintao refused to give an inch on Obama's plea to raise the value of the Chinese currency, while his vague promises of co-operation on climate change led the Americans to blunder into a fiasco at the Copenhagen summit three weeks later.
Diplomats say they have been told that there was "frigid" personal chemistry between Obama and the Chinese president, with none of the superficial friendship struck up by previous leaders of the two nations.
But there are a few voices urging caution on Chinese public opinion. (Source: The Sunday Times, Feb 7, 2010).