Tensions between China and the United States have reached their highest levels since countries normalized diplomatic relations more than four decades ago, and the US government’s request that China close its Houston consulate is just the latest example.
In defense, trade, technology, human rights, and other categories, actions and retaliation from one side or the other have increased dramatically under President Trump’s administration, despite his repeated expressions of admiration for President Xi Jinping of China.
The administration is even weighing a blanket ban on travel to the United States by the 92 million members of the ruling Communist Party of China and the possible expulsion of any member currently in the country, an action that would likely invite retaliation against travel and American residence in China.
“I think we are in a dangerous and precipitous downward spiral, not without cause, but without the proper diplomatic skills to stop it,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center for US-China Relations at the Asia Society. The seriousness of the confrontation, he said, “has jumped over the wall of specific and solvable challenges to a clash of systems and values.”
Craig Allen, chairman of the United States-China Trade Council, said he was alarmed by the growing invective of two superpowers that together account for 40 percent of world economic output. “If we yell at each other and close the doors, the world is a very unstable place and companies cannot plan,” he said.
Here is a look at what has happened in recent years to exacerbate tensions:
Coronavirus and anti-Chinese racism
Trump and his subordinates have blamed China for spreading the coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. They have repeatedly described the virus in racist and stigmatizing terms, calling it the Wuhan virus, the China virus, and the Kung flu.
On July 4, Trump said China “must be fully responsible.” The administration has also rejected and ordered the severing of ties with the World Health Organization, accusing it of causing deficiencies in China’s initial response to the outbreak. On Tuesday, the Justice Department accused Chinese hackers of trying to steal information about the US investigation into a vaccine against the virus.
For its part, China has rejected administration attacks on the virus and has criticized the poor response of the US government to the outbreak. Chinese propagandists have also promoted the contrary theory, without evidence, that US soldiers may have been the original source of the virus during a visit to Wuhan last October.
A severe test on business ties
Trump won the position in 2016 in part because of his accusations that China was exploiting the country’s trade relationship with the United States by selling the country much more than it bought. In office, he enacted a series of punitive tariffs on Chinese products, and China retaliated in a trade war that has now lasted for more than two years. While a truce was effectively declared in January with the signing of what the administration called a ‘Phase 1’ trade agreement, most tariffs were not relaxed.
Showdown in the South China Sea
The Trump administration has increasingly challenged China’s claims of sovereignty and control over much of the South China Sea, including vital shipping lanes. Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who described China as a major security threat, decreed that most of China’s claims in the South China Sea are “completely illegal,” establishing possible military clashes between Chinese and American naval forces in the Pacific.
A growing battle for technology.
China has been accused by successive US administrations of stealing American technology. The Trump White House has further escalated the allegations by seeking an international blacklist from Huawei, China’s largest technology company, branding it against China’s efforts to infiltrate other nations’ telecommunications infrastructure to obtain a strategic advantage.
The company’s chief technology officer, Meng Wanzhou, has been detained in Canada since December 2018 on an extradition order to the United States on fraud charges. Last week, Britain declared that it was on the side of the United States to prevent Huawei products from connecting to its high-speed wireless network.
Expulsions of journalists and other media workers.
By accusing China’s state media of promoting propaganda, the Trump administration drastically limited the number of Chinese citizens who could work for Chinese news organizations in the United States. China retaliated by ordering the expulsion of journalists from the New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and took other measures that suggested new impediments to access by the American press in China were looming. The New York Times, concerned about the possibility of new limitations for journalists working in China, announced last week that it was relocating much of its main news center in Hong Kong to Seoul, South Korea.
Student expulsions
The Trump administration has taken steps to cancel the visas of thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers in the United States who have direct links to universities affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army, according to US officials familiar with the planning. Such expulsions herald possible additional educational restrictions, and the Chinese government could retaliate by imposing its own visa bans on Americans.
Suppression of democratic freedoms in Hong Kong
Last November, Mr Trump, with bipartisan support, signed legislation that could penalize Chinese and Hong Kong officials who suppress the dissent of democracy advocates in Hong Kong, the former British colony and the Asian financial center. that China was guaranteed a measure of autonomy.
In May, Trump said he was taking steps to end Hong Kong’s preferential trade status with the United States after China passed a new security law that could be used to stifle any form of expression deemed seditious by China. Chinese authorities denounced the measures and promised to retaliate.
Repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang
This month, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on several Chinese officials, including a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, for human rights abuses by China in the Xinjiang region against the country’s Muslim Uighur minority.
Beijing promised retaliation against US institutions and individuals it found guilty of “heinous” conduct on matters related to Xinjiang, a vast western expanse in China where authorities placed one million people in labor camps and imposed intrusive surveillance on others.
Other long-standing grievances: Taiwan and Tibet
For the Chinese government, American actions taken in the name of defending people living anywhere in China constitute a blatant interference in its internal politics, a complaint with deep roots that goes back to its struggles with the imperialist powers in the century XIX.
In May, the Trump administration approved a $ 180 million arms sale to Taiwan, part of a much larger arms deal that has angered Chinese authorities, who view the autonomous island as part of China. Another ancient source of Chinese anger is American deference to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader in exile from Tibet, the ancient kingdom of the Himalayas in the far west of China.
In 2018, Mr. Trump signed a bill that penalizes Chinese officials who restrict American officials, journalists, and other citizens to freely go to Tibetan areas. Last November, the State Department’s ambassador-general for international religious freedom, Samuel D. Brownback, warned that only Tibetans could choose the successor to the Dalai Lama, who turned 85 this month, establishing a new confrontation with Beijing, which He claims that he will choose his successor.
