[ad_1]
BEIJING- "Both ignorant and wicked", how does the official China Daily The paper recently described the comments of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, offering a striking insight into the bitter tone of the discourse between countries.
The White House's decision to widen the dispute between Washington and Beijing beyond trade and technology and to accuse political interference has put the relationship between the two largest economies in the world at the lowest level since cold War.
On Oct. 4, US Vice President Mike Pence delivered an important speech, revealing at the highest level that US strategy was moving from engagement to confrontation. Pence accused China of intervening in the midterm elections to undermine President Donald J. Trump's harsh trade policies against Beijing, warned other countries to be wary of Beijing's "debt diplomacy" and warned denounced the actions of China in the South China Sea.
"What the Russians do is far less than China does in the whole country," Pence told an audience at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington.
The two sides are sharing growing accusations against human rights and global hegemony, thus revealing an ideological divide that opposes them to confrontation without a clear solution in sight.
Although military conflict has not been ruled out, US-based badysts are considering Trump's continued dominance over Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, China's most dominant leader – and the most repressive since Mao Zedong. Xi's aggressive foreign policy and authoritarian methods have changed China's views in all areas.
"What has happened is a radical change in the perception of China by the United States," said June Teufel Dreyer, an expert in Chinese politics who teaches political science at the University of Miami. While Chinese officials say they are privately worried about the sharp deterioration of ties, especially because of the close links between trade, immigration and education, it seems that Beijing is more than willing to go from the front in the new circumstances.
Increasingly, the perception that as China becomes more prosperous, it would align with global values and international law would have exploded. American rhetoric about Beijing and the actions undertaken to counter, deter or thwart China's progress in the international sector, in particular its "Belt and Road" (Trade and Infrastructure) initiative to expand economic and political footprint of Beijing from Cambodia to Cairo.
Trump's first national security strategy, released last year, also described China as a "revisionist power" alongside Russia.
The outrage from Beijing to Pompeo was motivated by recent warnings to Latin American countries about the dangers of accepting infrastructure loans in China, a key feature of Xi's flagship project in China. foreign policy.
"US-China relations have deteriorated to their worst level" since the Beijing Tiananmen Square Democracy Demonstrations in 1989, which were crushed by the Chinese army, said Michael Kovrig, senior advisor for Northeast Asia with the International Crisis Group.
"It may not be a clash of civilizations, but a conflict of national, political and economic national interest and systems that has reached a breaking point," Kovrig said.
Xi has abandoned the strategy outlined by reformist leader Deng Xiaoping that China should wait for its time and refrain from advertising its ambitions to become a world power. Instead, he has been accused of overstepping his efforts by promoting China's desire to become a global technology leader by 2025, including forcing foreign companies to pbad on their know-how and know-how. promoting China – funded energy and transportation projects that left unsustainable countries with debt. .
On the military front, a Chinese destroyer maneuvered dangerously last month near the USS Decatur in the South China Sea. The Chinese also refused a request for a US Navy vessel to travel to Hong Kong and rejected the US concerns about its policy towards other countries.
"The United States is simply aiming to widen the gap between China and the countries concerned with this," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hua Chunying said Monday. "He is meaningless and futile."
The rhetoric of the pie is evident on both sides.
Nikki Haley, US ambbadador to the United Nations, said in a speech last week that the Chinese government "is engaged in the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities that reports directly to George Orwell," referring to the "unjust". internment of Muslims in the northwest of the country political re-education camps.
This month, the United States went further by threatening to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union because the treaty allowed China to send packages at reduced prices to the United States at the expense of US companies.
The reason is that Beijing lacks reciprocity, taking advantage of open markets and free societies to expand its interests, while depriving businesses, governments and individuals of the same benefits.
"My conclusion is that Xi Jinping played his hand too much, taking advantage of restraint and moderation. [former President Barack] Obama, "said Robert Sutter, China expert at George Washington University. "Now he has to face a huge set of American challenges without easy solutions."
While Chinese companies – often backed by easy credit from state-owned banks – have taken foreign badets, Beijing restricts foreign purchases in key sectors such as energy, transportation and energy. telecommunications. Although China has eased some joint venture requests, including in the auto sector, it may be too little and too late.
China is "not very willing to submit to rules that it believes have been imposed on it," said Dean Cheng, senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "This includes the international trading system, which is dominated by the United States."
Nevertheless, trying to keep China in the direction indicated by the cold war would be "difficult if not impossible" given the wide range of contacts in the political, economic and personal spheres, Cheng said.
The United States has also strengthened its ties with Taiwan – claimed by China as its own territory – by building a new and impressive de facto embbady, approving a major sale of military parts and services, and allowing businesses to badist Autonomous island democracy to build submarines defend themselves against China's threats to use force to place it under Beijing's control.
Tensions are accentuated by political uncertainties in both countries. Trump must be the subject of a referendum on his policy in mid-term elections next month, while Xi has been the subject of rare criticism at home since he forced a constitutional amendment in March to him allow to run indefinitely.
Xi is also plagued by the economic downturn, aggravated by US tariffs that threaten the jobs of millions of Chinese workers. While China has fought back with its own tariffs on US products, the loss of US markets will probably weigh on growth.
All of these factors seem to speak badly for an immediate resolution of friction.
Michael Mazza, foreign policy expert at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said "competition will remain the norm" between the two countries unless China wants to make significant changes to its domestic policies, economic and foreign.
"At this point, there is little reason to think that such a change is in sight," Mazza said.
Source link
