America’s New China Policy
The US-China rivalry has shifted into new and unpredictable areas ever since the US administration claimed China intentionally covered up the leak of coronavirus and the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic to hoard medical supplies for themselves.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, announced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, on 23 July, in no uncertain terms, what the Trump administration wanted to do and how it planned to go about it.
America now wants regime change in China. The secretary of state said the US had ditched five decades of “engagement” policy. Pompeo said there would be a new form of engagement. “We must also engage and empower the Chinese people—a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “That begins with in-person diplomacy.”
To many, atleast in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) circles this would sound like a cry for war. It would appear that the Americans have realized the danger of the Communist Party’s challenge to America.
Chinese president Xi Jinping has not only shown China’s hegemony but also efforts to resurrect the imperial-era concept that China’s ruler has both the right and responsibility to rule tianxia, or all under Heaven.
This change in policy can be attributed to Beijing’s disinformation campaigns against the United States, in relation to the coronavirus epidemic. The US Administration also feels that following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police brutality, on 25 May, Beijing had gone all out, surreptitiously propagating a story, through text messages and social media feeds, to cause turmoil in America.
The US believes that it can no longer handle Beijing with traditional diplomacy. China presents a very complicated challenge. In the limited time since the coronavirus outbreak, the US Administration showed a tough attitude and a lot of provocative measures that did not yield results.
Chinese Frightening Actions
China’s militancy has since manifest itself in many way and many locations. On June 15 Chinese troops, in a premeditated action, killed 20 Indian soldiers south of the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.
Beijing has engaged in “Wolf Warrior diplomacy” across the world.
Call For Democracy
“It’s time,” Pompeo said on 23 Jul. “It’s time for free nations to act.”
Pompeo called for the free world to “induce” change in China, making an overt appeal for a new coalition of democratic nations to force the Chinese Communist Party change direction or face isolation. “The free world must triumph over this new tyranny,” he said in speech to an invited audience that included exiled Chinese dissidents.
China has roundly rejected the administration’s accusations and taken particular aim at Pompeo, who it has accused of fomenting anti-Chinese sentiment around the world. China maintains that it is only seeking to develop its economy and society for the benefit of its own people and the world.
U.S. Belligerent Posturing
On 19 July, U.S. authorities ordered the shuttering of the Chinese Consulate in Houston on the grounds that it was an espionage hub for Beijing. The Justice Department also said a fugitive Chinese scientist with ties to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, has been given sanctuary in the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco. In response the Chinese ordered the US consulate in Chengdu shut.
Separately, the Commerce Department announced sanctions on a new group of Chinese companies for their alleged involvement in China’s “campaign of repression” against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities, including the use of forced labor.
Pompeo met self-exiled Hong Kong student leader Nathan Law Kwun-chung, on 21 July, is seeking to harness growing global consternation with Beijing.
With some nationalist commentators inside China openly discussing the idea of an invasion of Taiwan, the United States has expanded arms sales to the island democracy that Beijing views as its own.
The State Department has curtailed visas for Chinese and Communist Party officials involved in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, and limited the number of Chinese students and journalists allowed to come to the United States.
In addition, the Commerce and Treasury departments have both announced new sanctions against China. They have warned private US and foreign firms of potential penalties and reputational risk if they start or continue business with Chinese entities implicated by the US in human rights abuses or clamping down on freedoms in Hong Kong.
Following India’s actions to ban Chinese apps, citing security concerns, President Trump said, early July, he was considering banning Chinese video app TikTok, WeChat and some of other applications that the Chinese government was allegedly using to obtain personal and private data of Americans. Facebook, Google and Twitter are all blocked in the mainland and are at risk of the same fate in Hong Kong.
Some of his top advisers want the US to undermine the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the US dollar to punish China for recent moves to chip away at the former British colony’s political freedoms.
Earlier, on 22 June, the US State Department designated four Chinese news outlets as “foreign missions”, months after it had given five other Chinese entities the same lable – China Central Television, China News Service, the People’s Daily, and the Global Times – are now part of a list that includes Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily Distribution Corporation, and Hai Tian Development USA that were designated on February 18 under the Foreign Missions Act.
Entities designated as foreign missions must adhere to certain administrative requirements that also apply to foreign embassies and consulates in the United States. This designation recognises PRC propaganda outlets as foreign missions and increases transparency relating to the CCP and PRC government’s media activities in the United States.
A day earlier, the U.S. administration’s announced visa bans on Chinese officials deemed responsible for barring foreigners’ access to Tibet. The new ban hit more senior levels of leadership, targeting Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang’s ranking leader and a member of the party’s Politburo, along with regional security officials Zhu Hailun and Wang Mingshan. They and their immediate family members are banned from entering the United States. The sanctions were announced after a press investigation showed forced population control of the Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities, one of the reasons cited by the State Department for the sanctions.
The U.S. Senate approved a bill, in mid-June, that would impose mandatory sanctions on people or companies that back efforts to restrict Hong Kong’s autonomy. It includes secondary sanctions on banks that do business with anyone backing any crackdown on the territory’s autonomy.
President Trump also ruled out, for the time being, a second phase trade deal with China, saying the relationship between the two countries had been severely damaged with Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
China’s Counter-actions
China, meanwhile, has embarked on its own effort to build alliances with infrastructure and financial assistance packages to developing nations. It has established a bloc of nations that vote with it at various and other international institutions, some of which the Trump administration has withdrawn from.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that China would retaliate against US officials and institutions following Washington’s imposition of sanctions on local officials of the ruling Communist Party over human rights abuses in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. Zhao said China “strongly opposes and condemns” the decision as relations deteriorated over the coronavirus pandemic, human rights, Hong Kong and trade.
US Elections
It is possible that Beijing has bared its fangs and given a preview of it might because of the power vacuum left by the United States with its America first and inward looking policies. China has also taken advantage of the world’s pre-occupation with the Covid-19 pandemic to demonstrate that it is unqualified for a position of sole global leadership.
Should Trump’s Democratic opponent Joe Biden emerge victorious in November 2020, the US will have to take a relook at its strategy. But by then the landscape may have changed completely.
The expectations are that threats and counter threats will only ratchet up further ahead of the U.S presidential election in November, with little prospect of a near-term reset.
There is a fast evolving realignment of forces happening. The spiraling threat will remain at least until the US election.
China is not just a foreign policy issue in the November election. It’s an issue that runs deeply through the troubles with the virus, which tanked the U.S. economy. Voters also will be asking themselves whether Trump or Biden can best defend the U.S. against China’s unfair trade practices, theft of intellectual property rights, rising aggression across the globe and human rights abuses.
See also ” US Rejects China’s ‘Historical’ Claim Over South China Sea.”
