WASHINGTON – Step by step, blow by blow, the United States and China are dismantling decades of political, economic and social commitment, setting the stage for a new era of confrontation shaped by the opinions of the strongest voices on both sides.
With President Trump crawling badly in the polls as the elections approach, his national security officials have stepped up their attack on China in recent weeks, targeting its officials, diplomats and executives. While the strategy has reinforced a key message from the campaign, some U.S. officials, concerned about Trump’s loss, are also trying to engineer irreversible changes, according to people familiar with the thought.
China’s leader Xi Jinping has fueled the fight, setting aside international concern over the country’s growing authoritarianism to consolidate his own political power and crack down on basic freedoms, from Xinjiang to Hong Kong. In doing so, it has hardened attitudes in Washington, fueling a clash that at least some in China believe could be dangerous to the country’s interests.
The combined effect could prove to be Trump’s most important foreign policy legacy, even if it is not one that he has constantly pursued: the entrenchment of a fundamental strategic and ideological confrontation between the world’s two largest economies.
A state of wide and intense competition is the ultimate goal of the President’s aggressive assassins. In his opinion, confrontation and coercion, aggression and antagonism should be the status quo with the Chinese Communist Party, regardless of who leads the United States next year. They call it “reciprocity”.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated in a speech Thursday that the relationship should be based on the principle of “mistrust and verification,” and said that the diplomatic opening orchestrated by President Richard M. Nixon nearly half a century ago had undermined American interests. .
“We must admit a harsh truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come: that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century that Xi Jinping dreams of, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply will not.” Mr. Pompeo said, “We must not continue it and we must not return to it.”
The events of the past week took relations to a lower level, accelerating the downward spiral.
On Tuesday, the State Department ordered China to close its Houston consulate, prompting diplomats to burn documents in a courtyard. On Friday, in retaliation, China ordered the United States to close its consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The following day, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced what it called “forced entry” at the Houston consulate on Friday afternoon.
In between, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against four members of the People’s Liberation Army for lying about their status to operate as undercover intelligence agents in the United States. All four have been arrested. One, Tang Juan, who was studying at the University of California, Davis, sparked a diplomatic confrontation when she sought refuge at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, but was detained on Thursday night.
This is in addition to a month in which the administration announced sanctions against senior Chinese officials, including a member of the ruling Politburo, for the mass internment of Muslims; revoked Hong Kong’s special status in diplomatic and trade relations; and declared that China’s vast maritime claims in the South China Sea were illegal.
The administration also imposed a travel ban on Chinese students at the graduate or higher level with ties to military institutions in China. Authorities are discussing whether to do the same with members of the Communist Party and their families, a radical movement that could blacklist 270 million people.
“Under the president, Secretary Pompeo and other members of the administration appear to have broader goals,” said Ryan Hass, director of China at President Barack Obama’s National Security Council now at the Brookings Institution.
“They want to redirect the relationship between the United States and China towards a global systemic rivalry that cannot be reversed by the outcome of the upcoming elections in the United States,” he said. “They believe this reorientation is necessary to put the United States in a competitive position against its 21st century geostrategic rival.”
From the beginning, Trump promised to change the relationship with China, but mainly with regard to trade. Earlier this year, some attendees called the truce negotiated in the countries’ trade war a distinctive achievement. That agreement is still in force, although hanging by a thread, overshadowed by the broader fight.
Beyond China, few of the administration’s foreign policy objectives have been fully achieved. Trump’s personal diplomacy with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has done nothing to end the country’s nuclear weapons program.
His withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran has further alienated allies and made that country’s leaders even more belligerent. His effort to change the government in Venezuela failed. His promised withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan has yet to occur.
In Beijing, some officials and analysts have publicly dismissed many of the Trump administration’s moves as campaign politics, accusing Pompeo and others of promoting a Cold War mindset to earn points for an uphill reelection fight. However, it is increasingly recognized that the roots of the conflict are deeper.
The breadth of the administration’s campaign has vindicated those in China, and possibly Mr. Xi himself, who have long suspected that the United States will never accept the country’s growing economic and military power, or its authoritarian political system.
“It is not just about electoral considerations,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor at the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing. “It is also a natural escalation and the result of the inherent contradictions between China and the United States.”
Already recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, some Chinese officials have tried to avoid an open conflict with the United States. They urged the Trump administration to reconsider each of its actions and called for cooperation, not confrontation, albeit without offering significant concessions of its own.
“With global anti-China sentiment at its highest level in decades, Chinese officials have shown an interest in exploring possible ramps into the current death spiral in relations between the United States and China,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a political scientist at the Cornell University studying Chinese. foreign policy and public opinion.
“Beijing is not spoiling an all-out fight with the United States,” he said, “but at the very least the Chinese government will retaliate to show the world, and a future Biden administration, that China will not feel intimidated or pressured around.”
Given the size of each nation’s economy and its intertwining, there are limits to the unwinding of relations, or what some Trump officials call “decoupling.” In the United States, tycoons and business executives, who wield enormous dominance among politicians from both parties, will continue to push for a more moderate approach, as members of Trump’s cabinet who represent Wall Street’s interests have done. China is making leaps in science, technology and education that Americans and citizens of other Western nations will want to share. In his speech on Thursday, even Mr. Pompeo acknowledged: “China is deeply integrated into the global economy.”
Just two weeks ago, Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on the United States to walk away from the confrontation and work with China. In reality, officials in Beijing seem resigned to the likelihood that nothing will change for the better before next year.
“There is very little that China can do to take the lead,” said Wu Qiang, an independent analyst in Beijing. “He has very few proactive options.”
Mr. Trump points out in his language about China. You called Mr. Xi “a very, very good friend “and even privately encouraged him to continue building mass internment camps for Muslims and handle pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in his own way, according to a new book by John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser. When he spoke on the last time with Mr. Xi, he expressed “much respect!” on Twitter.
With the impending election, Trump’s tone has changed. He returned to attack China, as he did in 2016, blaming Beijing for the pandemic and even referring to the coronavirus with a racist phrase, “Kung flu.” His campaign aides have made aggressive rhetoric in China a cornerstone of his strategy, believing that it could help energize voters.
The heated language, combined with the administration’s political actions, could be having a galvanizing effect on Chinese citizens, say some analysts and political figures in Beijing.
“I strongly urge Americans to re-elect Trump because his team has so many crazy members like Pompeo,” Hu Xijin, editor of the nationalist newspaper Global Times, wrote on Twitter on Friday. “They help China to strengthen solidarity and cohesion in a special way.”
The relationship may not change course even if former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. defeats Trump in November. The idea of orienting US policy toward competition with China has had strong bipartisan support for the past three and a half years.
The Chinese government’s initial mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak and its actions in Hong Kong, which is widely seen as a beacon of liberal values within China, have been key moments this year, contributing to the tectonic shift in views across the spectrum. political.
China’s hawks in the administration have seized them to publicly advance their perspective: that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to expand its ideology and authoritarian vision worldwide, and that citizens of liberal nations must wake up to the dangers and stick with it. to a conflict that could last for decades.
Since the end of June, the administration has deployed four senior officials to present that case.
Attorney General William P. Barr accused US companies of “corporate appeasement,” while Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, said his agency was opening a new China-related counterintelligence investigation every 10 hours.
Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien warned that the Chinese Communist Party aimed to remake the world in his image. “The effort to control thinking beyond China’s borders is underway,” he said.
Mr. Pompeo’s speech on Thursday was the punctuation mark. He chose the presidential library of the man credited with opening relations between the United States and China to declare that the policy was a failure.
“President Nixon once said he feared he had created a ‘Frankenstein’ by opening the world to the CCP,” Pompeo said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, “and here we are.”
Edward Wong reported from Washington and Steven Lee Myers from Seoul, South Korea. Claire Fu contributed to Beijing investigations.
