U.S.-China relations have been called “tense” and “stalemated.” That they are.
After calling U.S. policy “misguided” and “dangerous,” a Chinese envoy told reporters the “fundamental reason” for tensions is America’s positions on issues like Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. Read story here.
This is why tensions have increased:
- China wants to absorb Taiwan, a democracy, and subject its 25 million people to communist dictatorship, and hasn’t shied away from threatening to do so by force.
- China is rounding up Xinjian’s indigenous Uighur people, forcibly sterilizing them, and packing them into “re-education” camps to turn them into a compulsory labor force.
- China has violated its own guarantees of Hong Kong autonomy, suppressed free speech and press, and cracked down on dissent and protests there, to forcibly subject its people to Beijing control and communist dictatorship.
- China claims ownership of the South China Sea, attempting to seize its resources, and attempting to assert control over navigation there by military means.
It’s not America who’s destabilizing relations. China has become far more aggressive. Each of these actions represents a major change to a longstanding status quo. Beijing expects Washington to simply surrender. Their browbeating is becoming more strident, their military more provocative (e.g., more jets invading Taiwanese airspace, and more frequently).
There’s nothing new about a country wanting to raise its power and standing in the world, expand its territory, and exert greater influence. That’s how most wars originate. Global orders are fluid and dynamic, and their reordering flows from the waxing and waning of national power; China thinks its power is growing and ours is declining, and is embarking on an imperialist foreign policy course.
This is new, a product of Xi’s ascension to power and his personal ambitions, and puts the U.S. and its Pacific allies on a collision course with Xi’s government — unless we’re prepared to kow-tow to him and throw those allies under the bus.
President Biden appears disinclined to do that. CNN describes his decisions to pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq as “the best illustrations of Biden’s effort to shift American foreign policy away from decisions made nearly two decades ago [in response to 9/11/01, and] focus on threats from China.” (Read story here.)
The abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan won’t be pretty, and seems likely to subject the Afghan people to Taliban rule. But our military resources aren’t limitless, and it’s hard to argue with Biden’s sense of priorities.
China’s top military leader has been quoted as saying war with the U.S. is inevitable. Our government remains reluctant to believe that. But our policymakers can’t afford to ignore how they’re looking at things.
And right now, they’re telling us how to run our foreign policy, too. Look, we can’t get along with China’s government. That’s just a fact. That relationship is changing, rapidly, and we’d better adapt to it.