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From TikTok to the NBA, tensions between the United States and China are increasingly difficult to ignore. While the relationship hasn’t been exactly friendly for some time, the past two weeks seem like a tipping point, not so much for one individual event but for several simultaneous events across a wide range of issues and locations. The current bad blood between the two powers feels less like a periodic outbreak than the underlying dynamics behind a series of geopolitical developments.
Here is a look at some of them.
Sanctions and Xinjiang
On Monday, Beijing announced sanctions against four American politicians: the senator. Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Chris Smith and Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, who have been particularly critical of the Chinese government and its human rights record. This was in retaliation for the Magnitsky Law sanctions that the Trump administration announced last week against four officials for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including the Communist Party secretary for the region.
The Chinese government is accused of detaining more than a million people from Uighurs and other ethnic groups in reeducation camps and prisons in Xinjiang. According to an AP report last week, China has been forcing IUDs, sterilization, and abortion on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, despite encouraging many members of the majority Han ethnic group to have more children, a practice that It has been described as “demographic genocide.”
Not everyone in the United States is so upset about this. According to the book recently released by former national security adviser John Bolton, President Donald Trump told Chinese leader Xi Jinping that building concentration camps for Uighurs was “exactly the right thing to do.”
south china sea
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that the United States considers most of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea to be “illegal.” China claims that almost the entire sea is within the “nine-pointed line” of its maritime territory, and has tried to reinforce those claims through an island-building campaign. Beijing has increased the political and military pressure behind its claims in recent months, while much of the world has been distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s claims conflict with those of five other Asian countries, and although the US has opposed China’s general position in the past, Pompeo’s statement marks a change in the sense that Washington is now rejecting specific Chinese territorial claims. What this means in practice is unclear, though the Wall Street Journal suggests that “it could presage America’s tougher efforts to challenge the disputed Chinese claims through military, diplomatic or other means.” The day after Pompeo’s declaration, a US destroyer sailed near the Chinese-claimed Spratly Islands, defying Chinese attempts to limit the passage of ships through the area.
Huawei
The US campaign against Chinese tech firm Huawei achieved a major victory on Tuesday, when the British government announced that UK mobile phone providers will not be able to buy Huawei 5G equipment and will have to remove existing Huawei equipment from their networks. by 2027. The US government accuses Huawei of maintaining a back door to allow the Chinese government to extract data from the networks it maintains, which Huawei denies. The Trump administration has also been campaigning with mixed success to get European countries to exclude the company from their networks. The UK had previously rejected the concerns of the US and agreed to allow Huawei equipment to enter part of its telecommunications network in January, but Washington increased pressure in May with new rules prohibiting Huawei from using the technology. and EE software.
The United States is also currently fighting to have Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei and the daughter of its billionaire founder, Ren Zhengfei, be extradited from Canada to face charges related to violations of the United States sanctions against Iran.
Hong Kong
The Trump administration is considering suspending the U.S. extradition treaty with Hong Kong, Foreign Policy reports, in the latest escalation in a showdown over Beijing’s challenge to the city’s political autonomy. In May, the Trump administration responded to the passage of a controversial new security law, which would penalize much of Hong Kong’s political opposition, by announcing that the State Department no longer considered Hong Kong to have significant autonomy under the Chinese government, opening the door to tariffs and other measures. In early July, Congress passed new sanctions on Chinese officials involved in suppressing the Hong Kong protests. Pompeo also announced new visa restrictions for Chinese officials involved in “undermining Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy,” prompting Beijing to threaten retaliation against US officials.
Students
In late May, the Trump administration issued an order canceling the visas of Chinese students and researchers linked to universities affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army. While this order affected only a small percentage of Chinese students in the U.S., many saw the move as part of a campaign to isolate and demonize the 370,000 Chinese citizens currently studying at U.S. universities, the highest of any country. A much wider swath of these students could be affected by new rules revoking visas for students whose universities move online classes in the fall. While there are some legitimate concerns about espionage and the influence of the Chinese government on US campuses, much of the rhetoric on this issue has become dangerously xenophobic. In the end, US Senator Tom Cotton has suggested that Chinese students cannot study STEM subjects in the United States.
COVID-19
Tensions between the United States and China continue to overshadow the global response to the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, Trump began the formal process of withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization, which he accused of being overly committed and influenced by China. (The withdrawal won’t take effect until next year, so with the Paris climate agreement, whether it really happens depends on the November elections.) WHO experts are in China this week to investigate the origins of the virus. While the organization publicly praised Beijing for its response to the virus from the start, a June AP investigation showed that private officials were frustrated by the lack of Chinese cooperation and the exchange of information.
Meanwhile, Trump administration officials are doing everything in their power to discredit those who pose legitimate questions about China’s behavior. Trade representative Peter Navarro suggested last week that the fact that the virus did not disappear in the summer heat is evidence that COVID-19 is indeed a biological weapon designed by China. Trump has continued to use the racist term “kung flu” in campaign rallies.
Gun control
Last week, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official rejected a suggestion by the United States that China join the nuclear arms control talks, saying it would only do so if the United States was “ready to go down to the Chinese level.” . [of nuclear weapons]. “The Trump administration has suggested that it is only interested in renegotiating the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, with Russia, which expires next year, if it also includes China. (This is a strange demand. China has approximately 290 nuclear warheads – the United States and Russia have more than 6,000, hence the sarcastic response from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
China is also challenging America’s nuclear policy by negotiating an economic and security partnership with Iran, the New York Times recently reported.
It is tempting to assume that this is all part of a temporary crisis in the tensions caused by the coronavirus and the impending election of the United States. For one thing, the Joe Biden campaign has been accusing the Trump administration of being very soft in China And while a future Biden administration may present less unfocused belligerence and fewer conspiracy theories than the Trump team, certain problems, the genocide in Xinjiang, China’s territorial conflicts with its neighbors, will remain, no matter who the president in the fall. (As for Xi Jinping, he could theoretically be president for life.)
Whether it attributes it to conflicting ideologies or strategic interests, the “new cold war” seems increasingly real, and is unlikely to fade quickly.
