After the dramatic confrontation between the U.S. and China in Alaska, each took stock of its “troops,” with European and Asian allies on one side and Russia, North Korea and Iran on the other, two of which were classified by former U.S. President George W. Bush as the “triple axis of evil,” but who are China’s They are allies of China. AFP commented that both sides are seeking to consolidate their alliance around an irreconcilable rupture – democracy.
The first U.S.-China contacts in the Biden era have already led to damage at all levels of China-West relations, especially between Europe and China, which had previously more or less maintained contacts with the Chinese side.
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political scientist and head of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Hong Kong Baptist University, sums it up: “They are moving toward a bipolar, toward a new Cold War, with good (the democratic camp, the West) on one side and evil (dictatorships, China, Russia) on the other.”
His observation is that “a new sacred alliance has emerged around Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and human rights in China” and that “what is new for the United States is their need to unite their allies as a counterweight to the rapidly rising power of China”.
Why has the world come to this? According to Alice Ekman, director of the Asia Department at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, the Chinese Communist Party is currently practicing a two-way diplomacy. It is seeking to expand its circle of allies, especially with the so-called “southern” countries, ultimately marginalizing the U.S. alliance. China’s diplomacy is so calculated that when it comes under fire at the United Nations from two dozen European and American countries over the fate of the Uighurs in Xinjiang or the situation in Hong Kong, the Communist Party has mobilized some 50 countries to defend its human rights. In this expert’s view, the Communist Party is becoming more divided than ever before.
Beijing-based political analyst Hua Po argues that Biden’s strategy of uniting the democratic camp to meet the Communist challenge is succeeding after making the defense of freedom a priority. If Americans and their allies have different interests when it comes to China, they are fully aligned when it comes to human rights, which has become a symbol of close solidarity between the United States and its Western allies.
Chinese Communist Party Foreign Minister Wang Yi has continued to strengthen ties with countries with which the West has delicate relations, starting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who took advantage of his visit to China to reiterate that in their eyes “the Western model of democracy is not the only one.
Wang Yi next went to Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia, where Crown Prince Salman highly praised the Chinese Communist Party’s Xinjiang Muslim Zheng policy.
On Saturday, in Tehran, Wang Yi and Iran’s foreign minister signed a 25-year agreement on long-term strategic cooperation in China-Iran trade.
On the U.S. side, Biden decided to hold a “four-nation alliance summit” including India, Australia and Japan before the U.S.-China dialogue in Alaska, an informal coalition of democracies aimed at countering Chinese Communist Influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
As a result, the Chinese Communist Party faces a “multiple encirclement policy” that combines strategy, technology and trade in Washington, observed Huapo. He argues that the triple threat is a disproportionate combination of the Chinese Communist Party with Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Secretary of State John Blinken, for his part, began a trip to Japan and South Korea, China’s immediate neighbors but U.S. allies, in preparation for his first face-to-face with the Chinese. After the U.S.-China dialogue ended last week, Blinken continued to lobby in Brussels, promising that the U.S. would re-enforce its alliance with the European Union in the face of the Chinese and Russian threats.
Almost simultaneously, the U.S., EU, UK, and Canada sanctioned a group of senior Communist Party officials over the massive crackdown on Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Paradoxically, Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, analyzed that behind this fire-and-brimstone war-wolf language, Chinese official media focused on the positive aspects of the U.S.-China dialogue in Alaska. Emphasis was placed on the fact that China and the U.S. agreed to cooperate on climate and Epidemic prevention issues. Close to Russia, she argued, China seeks to show that it has another option for friends.
At the same Time, “the Chinese side seems to clearly show that they want to have a stable relationship with the U.S. and that the world is not divided into two poles of confrontation.”
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