In the first round of U.S.-China diplomacy after Biden took office, the Chinese Communist Party failed to get its way. The Chinese Communist Party had forcefully demanded that the U.S. fully restore the kind of bilateral relations that existed before the Cold War, in an aggressive and aggressive manner. But the Biden Administration did not respond, and the Beijing authorities could only acquiesce to the reality that U.S.-China relations are not what they used to be.
I. The Chinese Communist Party frequently shouts at the U.S.
Recently, there has been a flurry of news about U.S.-China relations. Will the tensions between Trump and the CPC ease after Biden takes office? This is a question of global concern, and the Chinese Communist Party is even more anxious. It is eager to improve Sino-U.S. relations economically and diplomatically, and has frequently shouted at the United States to that end.
As early as last December the CCP launched a series of diplomatic and outreach activities, and it has internal considerations for being in such a hurry. Since the real estate industry, on which the CCP has relied for years, is oversupplied and deteriorating and can no longer support its economy, the need to find another way out is urgent. The Communist Party’s attempts to package diplomatic rhetoric have three specific goals: first, to demand that the U.S. remove tariffs on China so that the Communist Party can resume large-scale exports to the U.S.; second, that the U.S. remove financial controls so that Chinese companies can resume their money-making operations in the U.S.; and third, that the U.S. remove technology controls and personnel controls so that the Communist Party can regain its “freedom” to steal intellectual property.
Before Biden entered the White House, the Chinese Communist Party had its ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, arrange for Yang Jiechi, the “No. 3” in diplomacy, to go to the U.S. for high-level talks since December last year, and even tried to get Xi Jinping to hold a summit with Biden. But the U.S. response was lukewarm, so it gave up. On January 26, the website published an article titled “Xi Jinping’s Time to Biden is Running Out,” urging Biden to make an early decision. The article said that the CCP has no reason to wait for Biden; Biden and his team cannot fail to understand that the CCP has consolidated its relative advantage over the United States on top of the reality of the G2. The CCP’s attitude of impatience and eyeing the U.S. leaps to the fore.
On January 26, former CCP Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan used the “Hong Kong China-US Forum” to say that the U.S. and China should launch a new round of economic and trade negotiations and eliminate the high tariffs since the trade war as soon as possible. “On January 29, Wang Qishan made a video message to the U.S. representatives attending the 12th round of the China-U.S. Business Leaders and Former Senior Officials Dialogue, setting the tone for future U.S.-China relations, and on February 2, Yang Jiechi made a video message to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, clearly demonstrating his intention to harness the Biden administration’s policy toward China.
In his speech, Yang Jiechi said that “the Trump Administration is carrying out extremely wrong anti-China policies” and that the United States should make efforts in four aspects: first, the Trump administration has made historical, directional and strategic mistakes towards China and must “set things right”; second, normal relations should be restored and the restrictions on International Students and foreign students should be abolished. First, the Trump administration has made a historical, directional and strategic mistake with China and must “make things right”; second, it must restore normal relations and cancel its erroneous policies toward foreign students, Chinese Communist Party media and Chinese Communist Party enterprises; third, it must effectively fulfill its commitment to the U.S.-China joint communiqué and strictly adhere to the one-China principle; fourth, it must develop mutually beneficial cooperation. The CCP said these four demands are only the first step that the U.S. should do.
The CCP’s shouting is very high-profile, soft with hard, actually trying to draw a red line for the Biden administration’s policy toward China. Of the four demands he made, the first three are non-negotiable; while the fourth point, “mutually beneficial cooperation,” although the word “cooperation” is repeated 24 times, is empty and purely hypothetical. In his speech, Yang Jiechi even lectured the United States not to keep mentioning the word “national security” in front of the Chinese Communist Party. Relatedly, Yang Jiechi did not mention a word about the U.S.-China military confrontation, as the CCP is holding the Biden administration hostage with constant military threats.
Second, Biden’s policy direction toward China is first set
In his foreign policy speech on February 4, Biden positioned the CCP as “the most serious competitor,” which seems to be a step backward from Trump’s positioning of U.S.-China relations in terms of a full-scale confrontation with the CCP. Biden did not lay out a clear and specific strategy to deal with the CCP, but only expressed a general direction.
In his speech, he said: We will directly confront the challenge to our prosperity, security and democratic values posed by our most serious competitor, China. We will confront China’s economic vices head-on, counter its aggressive and coercive behavior, and push back against China’s attacks on human rights, intellectual property rights and global governance. But we are prepared to work with Beijing when it is in America’s interest to do so.
When he speaks of the CCP’s “economic misdeeds,” he is referring to the CCP’s unfair trade with the United States and its fraudulent efforts to capture money from American investors; when he speaks of “countering its aggressive, coercive behavior,” he is referring to the CCP’s military build-up and threats to the United States and other countries; and when he speaks of “countering its aggressive, coercive behavior,” he is referring to the CCP’s military build-up and threats to the United States and other countries. By “countering China’s attacks on human rights, intellectual property and global governance,” he should be referring to the Communist Party’s crackdown on Hong Kong and other places, technological espionage and flagrant violations of international regulations.
After Biden took office, he put a hold on restricting investment in the CCP’s military industry, while shelving Trump’s decision to force the sale of Jitterbug to a U.S. company, and also revoked Trump’s decree on transparency of the CCP’s Confucius Institute’s background ties, and remained business as usual in terms of Trump’s other policies toward China.
The day after Biden’s remarks, Secretary of State Blinken spoke by phone with Yang Jiechi on February 5. The State Department released a short message stating that Blinken presented the U.S. position during the call.
For his part, Blinken made clear in a Feb. 8 interview with CNN that Trump’s tough policy on China is the right one and that Biden would only differ in his approach. In the conversation, Blinken spoke about two basic principles of the U.S.-China relationship: one, “We have to engage China [the Chinese Communist Party] from a position of strength. Whether it’s an adversarial relationship, a competitive relationship, or a cooperative relationship, it’s all for our common good, and we have to deal with it from a position of strength.” Second, to “secure our military posture to deter aggression, which means investing in our own people so that they can compete effectively.”
This talk by Blinken was not in diplomatic language and was therefore more specific. He emphasized the military posture between the two countries and the Chinese Communist threat, and linked maintaining U.S. strength to defending the U.S. economy, and argued that the U.S. and China would continue to fight each other. As secretary of state, Blinken would not talk about military confrontation between the United States and China, but he clearly understands the situation.
On Feb. 10, Biden and Xi spoke by phone. From the official release of the call between the two countries, it appears that, apart from polite words, both sides are still basically talking to each other.
III. No Peace in the Pacific
One of the key considerations for the Biden administration’s insistence on continuing to engage the Chinese Communist Party is that there is no peace in the Pacific Ocean.
Recently, the pace of the Chinese Communist Party’s military threat against the United States has gradually accelerated. The Communist Party originally planned to build 10 aircraft carriers to form a massive carrier fleet in order to seize control of the Pacific Ocean. However, due to the limitations of the shipbuilding project and the technical level of the equipment and aircraft on board, the CCP has realized that its carrier fleet cannot exert military pressure on the United States in the near future. Since last year, the CCP has quietly changed its naval strategy from relying primarily on aircraft carrier formations to relying primarily on a nuclear submarine fleet; more importantly, the CCP has also quietly changed its nuclear warfare strategy from a reactive nuclear counterattack during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War to an active nuclear attack.
Whereas in the Cold War era, nuclear submarines played the role of a “second strike” force, the CCP’s emphasis on the strategic nuclear submarine fleet now goes beyond the need for a “second strike”; the CCP’s navy is now pursuing a strategic nuclear submarine that will The CCP’s navy is now pursuing the strategic nuclear submarine to reach deep into the central Pacific Ocean, close to the U.S. west coast, and to form a deterrent capability for an active nuclear attack against the United States. To this end, the CCP’s strategic nuclear submarines are trying to break through the first island chain so that they can enter the deep waters of the Central Pacific Ocean, where they are safe and hidden, and where they can launch a sudden nuclear attack against the United States at any time. Thus the focus of the Cold War between China and the United States changed from above water to underwater.
The main base of the Chinese Communist Party’s nuclear submarine fleet is at Yulin Port in Sanya, Hainan Island. From the so-called “deep sea fortress” in the international waters of the occupied South China Sea, there are only three underwater channels for its nuclear submarines to enter the Central Pacific Ocean, and these three underwater channels are the key areas that the U.S. Navy is currently preventing. Among them, from Sanya to the northeast, is the closest to the United States in the Bus Strait, so the southwest waters of Taiwan has become one of the key sea areas for the underwater confrontation between the two sides. From October last year to the present, Communist nuclear submarines have continued to operate in the southwest waters of Taiwan, and U.S. submarines have continued to conduct underwater surveillance. This year, from January 2 to 9, then every day continuously from the 11th until the 20th, and then from the 22nd until the end of January, the Communist forces intensively deployed anti-submarine aircraft to repeatedly detect U.S. submarines off the Fujian and Guangdong junctions. The USS Roosevelt carrier formation crossed the Bus Strait from east to west into the South China Sea on January 23, both to break the Communist Party’s “deep sea fortress” of nuclear submarines in the South China Sea and to support the U.S. submarines that were battling the Communist Party’s nuclear submarines underwater in the waters southwest of Taiwan.
The Chinese Communist Party has not only repeatedly attempted to breach the Bus Strait with strategic nuclear submarines, but has also used unmanned underwater vehicles in the Java Sea of Indonesia to gather hydrographic information on submarine routes in order to open the Deep Sea Bastion southern route into the Central Pacific Ocean via the Java Sea and the northern coast of Australia. The Chinese Communist Party has also been preparing to build a submarine base on Daru Island in Papua New Guinea, near Australia, and has imposed economic sanctions on Australia for six months to force Australia to abandon its defense program.
- Facing the “Panda” with a sharp blade
While the Chinese Communist Party used to be imagined as a pleasant panda, a series of military threats against the United States since last year (see my article “The U.S.-China Cold War Enters the Fast Lane” posted on this website last year) show that this “panda” is not only flapping its teeth and claws, but also holding a sharp blade and pressing forward, and it is more like a panda in a panda’s skin. It is more like a tiger in panda’s clothing.
Graham Allison of Harvard University published an article on the potential conflict between China and the United States in the Financial Times as early as 2012, and later noted in his book “Doomed to War” that “China and the United States are now in the process of a war conflict. He borrowed the words of the ancient Athenian general Thucydides and introduced the concept of the “Thucydides Trap”. The implication is that when a great power is threatened by an emerging power, the possibility of war between the two countries is likely to fall into place. The evolution of U.S.-China military relations over the past few years proves that history is being pushed into the Thucydides Trap by the Chinese Communist Party, as if in accordance with Allison’s hypothesis. The term “Thucydides’ trap” has now become very popular precisely because the United States and China have entered a Cold War.
The Chinese Communist Party continues to exert military and diplomatic pressure on the United States because it is well aware that the economic goals it pursues and its hegemony over international waters for military purposes run counter to international economic rules and the international law of the sea, and that it cannot achieve them through fully cooperative diplomatic negotiations between the two sides alone. U.S.-China diplomacy will not be the only means of resolving the confrontation between the two countries in the future, and U.S. military defenses have already begun and will unfold gradually.
The U.S. military has recently released a series of reports and plans to deal with the Chinese Communist Party’s military threat, indicating that the military confrontation between the U.S. and China is gradually moving toward a Cold War peak. According to Radio France Internationale, a White House spokesman told The Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun on Feb. 9 that the policy of “strategic tolerance” does not apply to China. The so-called “strategic patience” policy means that the Obama administration has ignored North Korea’s development of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons on the grounds of “strategic patience. In Japan, there are now concerns about whether the U.S. will resume its “strategic tolerance” policy toward the Chinese Communist Party. A White House spokesman said on Feb. 9 that “in the past, the term strategic patience has been used to describe a particular policy approach” and that “we do not intend to adopt a strategic patience [policy] framework to develop a comprehensive strategy for the Indo-Pacific and China.”
So how will the United States respond to the Cold War between China and the United States in the future? The U.S. Department of Defense issued a news release on Feb. 10, the day Biden visited the Pentagon to announce the creation of a Strategic Study Group on China in developing U.S. defense strategy, consisting of 15 individuals from the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military services, and military intelligence, to assess U.S. Defense Department military policy toward China and related military programs in response to the Chinese Communist challenge. The working group, led by Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner, provides policy recommendations to the military brass after four months. I assume that the creation of this China Strategy Study Group, which has never been established in the history of the U.S. Department of Defense, would have been recommended by the DoD civilian staff in consultation with the military.
According to the Department of Defense, the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense believe that China is a “progressive threat” to U.S. strategic competition and that China is attempting to overthrow the existing internationally regulated structure of the Indo-Pacific region and is using all means to subjugate the countries in the region. The U.S. Department of Defense’s China Strategic Studies Group undertakes a “blitz mission” to examine top priorities in military strategy, force employment, technology application and force configuration, force management, and intelligence; and to assess U.S. allies and partners and their impact on U.S.-China relations and the U.S. Department of Defense’s relations with China. This study group is also expected to maintain communication with all relevant government departments.
The U.S.-China Cold War was ignited last year by the Chinese Communist Party, and the Trump administration is determined to push back hard in the final year of his term. Going forward, the U.S.-China Cold War will remain a fundamental aspect of U.S.-China relations. The U.S. in the midst of the Cold War naturally cannot pursue a strategy of a strong enemy and a weak self. Therefore, it will be difficult for the U.S.-China economic relationship to break away from the established pattern of the U.S.-China Cold War in the future, and it will not be able to return to the direction expected by the Chinese Communist Party. Faced with the Communist forces that provoked the Cold War between China and the U.S., the U.S. military has entered a state of high alert.
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