WASHINGTON – The signal was not subtle.
While China practiced amphibious landings in a disputed area of the South China Sea earlier this month, the US Navy sent two aircraft carriers to the area “to support a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the Navy said in a statement.
It is unclear how close American and Chinese warships approached. But it was one of the most dramatic recent illustrations of how relations between the United States and China have drifted toward what some experts call a new version of the Cold War.
Another turning point came on Tuesday. First, the British government reversed its decision and announced that equipment made by Chinese tech giant Huawei would be banned from that country’s 5G networks, a blow to one of China’s leading companies.
Then President Donald Trump signed legislation and an executive order aimed at punishing China for its actions in Hong Kong, the former semi-autonomous British colony where Beijing has implemented a new draconian security law in violation of international agreements.
Also Tuesday, the United States Navy announced that it had carried out one of its periodic “freedom of navigation” operations near the disputed Spratly Islands, sending a guided missile destroyer into the waters that China claims to be its own. It was the first such mission since Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Monday that China’s claims to much of the disputed areas in the South China Sea are “completely illegal” and accused Beijing of “a intimidation campaign. “
China on Monday imposed sanctions on certain US lawmakers and other US officials, in retaliation for US measures against senior Chinese officials allegedly responsible for mass arrests, religious persecution and forced sterilization of Uighur Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang province.
Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a stern warning calling Chinese espionage “the greatest threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality.”
All of that happened after a month-long war of words over the coronavirus, in which the United States accused China of initially covering up the outbreak, with Trump and other officials advancing a theory that the virus could come from a Chinese laboratory. In turn, a Chinese official blamed the US military, and the US government accused China of trying to use hackers to steal vaccine technology.
For decades, conventional wisdom in American foreign policy held that if the West were to trade and engage with China, it would gradually open up its political system and curb its dishonest behavior, from outrageous maritime claims to trade protectionism to widespread theft of intellectual property. But in recent years, as Chinese President Xi Jinping has duplicated these policies in a hard-line approach, that consensus has changed.
These days, President Trump and his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, clash in campaign announcements about who is tougher on China. And in Congress, China has few, if any, friends on either side of the aisle.
“We have come a long way,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, who was one of the first cybersecurity experts to publicly identify piracy campaigns sponsored by the Chinese state. “In a city with such deep party divisions, this is an issue on which there is a bipartisan consensus: that China is not a friend of the United States.”
The feeling can be mutual.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a speech to a group of experts from Beijing last week that relations between the United States and China “face the most severe challenge since the establishment of diplomatic relations.”
China’s policy in the United States, he added, “is based on misinformed strategic miscalculations and is full of McCarthyist excitement and whim and fanaticism.”
Former State Department official James Lewis, who has frequently traveled to China as a cybersecurity expert and member of the think tank of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sees the situation worsening.
“At some point in the past five years, Xi decided it was time to displace the United States; it was time for China to be the world’s hegemon,” he said. “And that just means that he is going to fight us. It is not going to be another Cold War, but it will definitely be a conflict.”
The Cold War analogy doesn’t quite work, experts say, because the post-World War conflict between the U.S.-led West and the Soviet-dominated East featured two competitive political and economic systems that were independent and separate. .
In contrast, China’s economy is deeply intertwined with that of the United States and Western Europe through trade and investment. Chinese tourists roam the world, and hundreds of thousands of Chinese students settle each year in American and European universities.
But after two decades of trying to gently persuade China to follow the rules that developed nations imposed after World War II, American policymakers of all political tendencies have concluded that Gentile persuasion was not working.
“China does not respect international order,” said Paul Scharre, a defense expert at the Center for New American Security that is leaning toward democracy. “China believes that power does the right thing.”
The UK’s decision to block Huawei was motivated in part, according to experts, by US sanctions imposed on Huawei in June that limit access to US technology. Without that American team, Huawei may not be able to continue as a major 5G provider, experts say.
But Scharre notes that it comes after China’s decision to break its accord with Britain and crack down on Hong Kong; after a border dispute between China and India that left dozens of Indian soldiers dead; and after Chinese attempts to force countries to use Huawei, he said.
“Why would you give such a country more influence over your critical infrastructure?”
Although the Trump administration has been tough on China on trade and security, it has not always expressed its opinion on human rights issues. In a new book, former Trump national security adviser John Bolton alleges that Trump was willing to abandon his hard line in exchange for business benefits to increase his chances of reelection. Trump calls Bolton a liar.
In May, Biden accused Trump of not facing China in Hong Kong, saying Trump “has allowed Xi Jinping impunity when it comes to suffocating freedom.”
Several Trump campaigns add, meanwhile, accused Biden of being soft on China.
“China is one of the few things that Democrats and Republicans agree on in Washington,” Scharre said.
What would a new type of Cold War be like?
The crackdown on Chinese spies in the United States will continue, experts say, as will economic measures to punish China for what the West perceives as international misbehavior.
The Chinese will continue to build missiles and other systems to deter the projection of power from the United States to the western Pacific, and the United States will seek technology to counter those weapons.
And China can harm the United States by not imposing sanctions on North Korea. Just this week, the Pyongyang ambassador to Beijing “expressed full support and solidarity” with the Chinese Communist Party and its “resistance to US interference in China’s internal affairs, such as Hong Kong affairs,” in an interview with a Chinese website.
In the wake of the coronavirus-induced shortage of medical equipment, American policymakers are already rethinking the United States’ heavy reliance on manufacturing in China, including pharmaceutical ingredients.
There has also been a bipartisan push to boost government spending in areas of technological competition between the United States and China, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
In June, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, teamed up with Tom Cotton of Arkansas, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, on a bill to support semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.
“There are not many things that unite Tom Cotton and Chuck Schumer,” said Scharre.
