{"id":28922,"date":"2021-04-18T19:32:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T11:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=28922"},"modified":"2021-04-23T03:46:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T19:46:26","slug":"biden-and-xi-escalate-us-china-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2021\/04\/18\/28922\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden and Xi escalate US-China conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Positions harden over Taiwan, Xinjiang and \u201cdemocratic values\u201d in new Cold War<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Biden\u2019s presidency, not yet 100 days old, has continued and intensified the anti-China policies of his predecessor Donald Trump. The president sums up his position in the slogan, \u201cextreme competition\u201d. Expectations in some quarters \u2013 including sections of the Chinese regime (CCP) \u2013 that the new Cold War between the superpowers would moderate after Trump left the White House have not materialised. Rather the direction is towards further escalation. This is what ISA warned before last November\u2019s US election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Trump took a piecemeal and often erratic approach, \u201cBiden is inheriting the destructive results of his predecessor and systematizing the China containment policy,\u201d noted the Global Times, an influential CCP tabloid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we anticipated, the Democrats under Biden are adopting a more \u201cideological\u201d approach, using issues like democracy and human rights as camouflage for what in reality is an imperialist power struggle to determine whether Washington or Beijing will exercise ultimate dominion over the global economy. \u201cThis is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century, and autocracies,\u201d Biden said in March at his first press conference as president. Plagiarising Trump, he said China planned to be the most powerful country in the world but \u201cthat\u2019s not going to happen on my watch\u201d. (Trump said the same in 2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s administration has retained all of Trump\u2019s tariffs, which apply to 66 percent of China\u2019s exports. Sounding much like her predecessor, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo defended the tariffs stating she would \u201cuse all the tools in my toolbox as aggressively as possible to protect American workers and businesses from unfair Chinese practices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, on technology, an increasingly central battlefield in the US-China Cold War, the US government announced in February a \u201c100-day review\u201d of supply chain resilience. Its focus will be blocking China\u2019s access to cutting edge technologies like advanced semiconductors, which are crucial for both sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those expecting the US to dial back on its tech war against China \u201cwill be disappointed\u201d predicted James Crabtree of Singapore\u2019s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. \u201cBiden is likely to push forward with an evermore Chinese-style industrial policy,\u201d he predicted. The aim being, \u201cto cajole global chip suppliers to shift to the US, and deny China access to that industry\u2019s most advanced products\u201d (Nikkei Asia 10 March 2021). This of course, \u201cnegates market economy principles\u201d, as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April, in another move aimed at hobbling the development of China\u2019s tech sector, Washington added seven more Chinese computer companies to its blacklist, the so-called Entity List, which cuts off their access to US components, citing links to China\u2019s military. This was the first expansion of the blacklist since Trump left office. Trump\u2019s administration placed more than 60 Chinese tech companies on the Entity List, most famously telecom giant Huawei, which has been severely affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, Biden\u2019s proposed $2.25 trillion infrastructure package contains an explicit Cold War dimension. Announcing the plan in April, Biden mentioned China six times. As The Wall Street Journal (Gerald F. Seib, 5 April) noted, \u201cThe Biden team sees the plan \u2013 and wants the Chinese to see the plan \u2013 as a sign the US intends to put itself in better position to compete with Beijing economically. Thus, infrastructure marks just the latest example of how the specter of a long competition with China is beginning to color all manner of American policy moves, in both parties.\u201d As this example also shows, the US-China rivalry is increasingly a weapon used by both sides to overcome internal opposition and engender a mood of \u2018national unity\u2019 behind government policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in the first months of 2021, it is the geopolitical conflicts between Beijing and Washington that have moved to centre stage. Tensions have risen over Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and disputed territories in the South China Sea. In Xinjiang, where millions of mainly Muslim Uighurs and other minorities face horrific repression, the State Department has accused the Chinese regime of \u201cgenocide\u201d and hinted at a possible boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. In Taiwan, a dangerous poker game is unfolding in which both Beijing and Washington are raising the stakes with endless military manoeuvres and increasing psychological warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in Myanmar, where a heroic revolutionary general strike movement is fighting to bring down the military dictatorship, there is a growing danger of a Cold War dynamic being injected into the situation should the army\u2019s increasingly bloodthirsty tactics push the country over the brink into all-out civil war. In such a scenario, China, Russia, the US, and possibly other outside powers, could intervene for their own geopolitical reasons by sponsoring proxy forces, with little more than crocodile tears for the people of Myanmar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The escalation of tensions in the vast Indo-Pacific region between US and Chinese imperialism, not in the form of a direct military confrontation at this stage, but following a tit-for-tat spiral of military drills, provocative diplomacy, bloc-building, and so-called \u2018grey zone\u2019 warfare, poses serious risks to the region\u2019s economic development and creates a potential breeding ground for toxic nationalism and racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disaster in Alaska<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first high-level meeting between Biden\u2019s team and their Chinese counterparts, in Anchorage on 18-19 March, began with an extraordinary slanging match. On the eve of the meeting, the US State Department sanctioned a further 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials in response to China\u2019s decision to impose a new political system on Hong Kong, giving Beijing full control. The US sanctions were largely symbolic, in line with previous sanctions by Trump\u2019s administration, but their timing raised the temperature for the Alaska meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Alaska meeting was \u201ca disaster\u201d according to economist Stephen Roach. \u201cThe situation is going from bad to worse and it doesn\u2019t have to do that,\u201d he lamented. This view was shared by Allison Sherlock of Eurasia Group, \u201cAnyone who was hoping there would be a significant de-escalation \u2013 largely people in the business community \u2013 can see that\u2019s not going to be possible, at least in the near term.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The representatives of both governments used the meeting to grandstand to a wider audience. This was a historic but rather bizarre encounter with each side seeking to talk up their national strengths. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken lectured the Chinese not to \u201cbet against America\u201d and slammed China\u2019s actions as a \u201cthreat to global stability\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yang Jiechi, the director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs and a member of China\u2019s ruling Politburo, launched a scathing attack of the US record on human rights, its \u201clong arm jurisdiction and suppression\u201d, and declared that \u201cChina\u2019s development and strengthening is unstoppable\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking for sixteen minutes without a pause for translation, clearly for the benefit of the Chinese media rather than his American hosts, Yang told the Americans not to talk down to China: \u201cThe United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.\u201d Within days this statement had gone viral on China\u2019s social media. Even tee shirts were selling printed with this slogan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s momentum<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The significance of Yang\u2019s comments has been widely discussed in China and the US. Many Western observers were shocked. China has previously inflicted its jingoistic \u2018wolf warrior\u2019 diplomacy on lesser powers \u2013 Australia, Canada, Sweden, even the WHO\u2019s formerly China-friendly director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus \u2013 but never before in the modern era has it addressed US representatives in this way. Even in the face of Trump\u2019s many provocative measures, official Chinese statements were relatively restrained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Biden administration gets a taste of China\u2019s \u2018wolf warrior\u2019 diplomacy\u201d, was one headline in the Washington Post. Several US pundits conclude that Yang\u2019s tirade was a sign of the Chinese regime\u2019s rising self-confidence and sense of its global power. \u201cChinese leaders believe they have momentum and time is on their side,\u201d former Chinese diplomat Victor Gao told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In China too, the official and most common interpretation is that Yang articulated China\u2019s superpower status as an equal or even superior force to the US. Chinese media gave extensive coverage to Yang\u2019s speech and made comparisons with the humiliating \u2018Boxer Protocol\u2019 signed in 1901 between the decaying Qing Empire and the Eight-Nation Alliance of Western powers plus Japan, which forced China to pay crippling indemnities. The CCP\u2019s People\u2019s Daily published photos of the 1901 defeat and the Alaska meeting side by side to hammer home the message that 120 years later this is a different China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n