While China and the United States have embassies and regular contacts today, the deal appears to be increasingly rare.
Pompeo spoke after Washington ordered the closure of China’s Chinese consulate in Houston, amid allegations that it was related to espionage and theft of intellectual property. Beijing responded on Friday, ordering the closure of the United States consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu.
The events come at a time when “many believed that tensions between the United States and China could not worsen,” said Natasha Kassam, a China expert and former Australian diplomat at the Lowy Institute.
The loss of its consulate in Chengdu, he said, “would limit Washington’s communication channels with Beijing, as well as the ability of outsiders to monitor and report on what is happening within China.”
Kassam likened it to the recent crackdown on Chinese state media in the US, which led to the expulsion of American journalists working in China, decimating the Beijing press corps and hampering reports about the world’s second-largest economy. world in the midst of a global pandemic.
Many analysts who spoke to CNN in the wake of the consulate closings warned of spiraling tensions, as the removal of diplomats and pathways for talks makes it difficult for both countries to understand each other’s movements and creates a barrier to future de-escalation.
“The United States and China have spent the past three years removing software from the relationship,” said Jeff Moon, a former US diplomat in China. “Now we are literally ripping up the hardware.”
Choose sides
Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, said the Trump administration’s apparent push for an economic “decoupling” from China could have “long-term geopolitical consequences.”
Many of America’s top companies, from manufacturing and technology to Hollywood to the NBA, depend on China as a major source of income. Countless American cultural institutions and schools also operate in China. And as mutual distrust grows, so does the risk to ordinary citizens on both sides.
“When they do a lot of business together, they must work together to prevent problems (and) irritants from turning into major crises,” he said.
In his speech, Pompeo spoke of the need for an international coalition against China, which can put pressure on Beijing on issues such as democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang and unfair trade policies. But the recent record on the effectiveness of this as a tactic is not strong.
Beijing have It faced widespread international condemnation, at least by Western powers, as it forced Hong Kong into a new security law earlier this month, but responded by doubling down and threatening countermeasures if countries acted against it.
Nor is China alone on the world stage. Beijing has been building its own coalition of like-minded countries that can counter any pressure Washington tries to exert.
Saint-Jacques supported the idea of encouraging Beijing to comply with the international norms and rules to which China has adhered through organizations such as the WTO, but was suspicious that the Trump administration was creating a new division among the countries that take a hard line. Beijing and those who want to maintain influence and economic ties.
Pompeo’s counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been quietly cultivating allies against Washington, even as Beijing has generally avoided the kind of aggressive rhetoric coming from the United States government.
‘Red meat’
While China has equaled the United States in escalating tensions, Beijing would much prefer the opposite, and in the past has been a major driver of greater engagement with Washington, particularly on the economic front. But President Xi Jinping’s aggressive and nationalist stance also makes it difficult for China to back down or not respond publicly to Washington’s provocations.
This makes it easy for Chinese hawks in the White House to “move the dog,” prompting China into action that can then be used to justify an aggressive stance by the United States, when it comes to ties between the two nations. potentially for their own internal political purposes
Speaking to CNN after the Houston consulate closed, Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who meets with Democrats and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “There certainly is a good reason to confront China. My The concern is that this tension is increasing, is it really about confronting China, or does it have something to do with an election in four months? “
President Donald Trump has made being tough on China a key element of his reelection effort, criticizing his Democratic rival Joe Biden for being soft on Beijing. Pompeo’s speech was only the last by a senior US official who attacked China, and they all came as the elections increased.
“Trump has proudly said many times that when he is beaten, he returns twice as hard,” said Moon, the former diplomat. “Current circumstances encourage him to follow that instinct because getting tough on China is a theme of the presidential campaign and there is broad Washington consensus for a strong response to China’s aggressive behavior.”
He added that China may have played its hand poorly by choosing to climb by closing Chengdu instead of Wuhan, as expected, especially if this leads to further escalation by the United States.
Wuhan’s consulate in the United States has been effectively closed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic, so its formal closure would have had no real operational impact and could have allowed tensions to temporarily cool down.
“China derives far more benefit from its consulates in the United States than it does in China,” Moon said. “Chinese diplomats benefit from wide access to the open society in the United States. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has an official bureaucracy dedicated to systematically obstructing American access to Chinese society. Therefore, closing consulates is a losing game. for China and I’m amazed why China has chosen to escalate in this situation. “
The economies of the US and China are closely interrelated, and both are already suffering from the ongoing trade war. Militarily, there are also several potential hot spots, including the South China Sea and Taiwan, where both countries have recently conducted drills or patrols.
For years, the South China Sea in particular has been a major flash point, with both countries deploying vast amounts of naval power in the region. Given the recent bloody fight over an equally tense border between China and India in the Himalayas, there is no reason to suppose that the current detente will always resist.
Closer to home, U.S. federal prosecutors are looking for a Chinese military-linked scientist to hide in the San Francisco consulate, a situation that shows no signs of disappearing, while Trump himself has threatened to close more consulates. .
Any such move would surely be matched by Beijing, which has now set a precedent with Chengdu, reducing the ability of both sides to avoid potentially serious misunderstandings in the event of a crisis.
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