US President Barack Obama pledged to continue pressing for his Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal on Tuesday despite opposition from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, candidates for the next president.

Supporters of the TPP praise it as "groundbreaking" and "historic," hoping the sprawling trade deal could set the benchmark for free trade 2.0. But after negotiators reached a final agreement last October, it has flagged.

The bumpy road ahead of the TPP is believed to be repercussions for difficult bipartisan politics and the rising anti-trade trends among the American middle class. However, the actual major cause of the TPP dilemma is its geopolitical orientation that has deviated from being a real economic and trade-driven program.

The TPP is a linchpin for Obama's rebalance to the Asia-Pacific strategy, primarily aimed at countering China's rise. One of a series of strategies the US employs, the TPP focuses on economic containment. By excluding China in a new advanced free trade zone, the US intends to supersede the current global trade architecture from which China benefits a lot, to maintain an advantageous position in the world economy. Through the TPP, the US tries to push emerging Asian economies such as Vietnam and Malaysia out of their established value chains with China, and reorganize new ones to marginalize China.

This strategy, however, is surely doomed to fail. Not only because it will ruin the current close-knit economic fabric, but also it will set fire to the US itself, with negative impacts to consumption and on the job market. In this case, the US is not a builder, but a destroyer.

The US should get China and the global economy into perspective. The era when countries played zero-sum games has long gone. Globalization has literally turned the entire world into a profoundly inter-connected community.

There is no way the biggest economy could manage to foil the second-biggest economy by containment. The side effect of such a narrow-minded conservative scheme will eventually backfire and cause the US great loss.

Technically speaking, according to the analysis and expectation of many economists, the TPP might lead to a more developed phase in the global economy. However, without China's participation, the prospect can hardly be realized.

 The US, playing the role of global leader for decades, must be aware of the fact, and give due respect to China's position in the international community. If the TPP fails, it should serve as a lesson to the US; if it can stagger along, it must be reformulated to fit into the real landscape of the world.