After the Sino-US balloon incident last month, Sino-US relations seem to have entered a state of rapid decline.
Banning TikTok discussions has become fashionable again in the United States.
The U.S. intelligence agency once again raised the theory of a new coronavirus laboratory leak.
The U.S. keeps letting out the news that China is considering providing lethal assistance to Russia, and has begun lobbying its allies to impose sanctions on China.
In the Western Pacific, there are even more incidents such as the Philippines' access to US military bases close to Taiwan, the US increasing the number of troops in Taiwan, Taiwan's foreign minister entering the Greater Washington area for the first time, and Chinese and US aircrafts in the South China Sea making close contact again.
The China Special Committee of the US House of Representatives also held its first hearing under the banner of "the Chinese Communist Party's threat to the United States" with bipartisan support.
In the end, can the Sino-US competition "fight without breaking" and avoid the escalation of the conflict to the level of a hot war or close to a hot war?
American politics is often domestic politics, and if diplomatic issues are not encountered, they are an extension of domestic politics.
TikTok and the origin of the new crown, the two major disputes between China and the United States, both highlight the complexity of the US domestic politics in its attitude towards China.
Is blocking TikTok just a political tool of the Republican Party?
On February 27, the Biden administration gave federal agencies 30 days to delete the TikTok program on government equipment, which was almost in sync with similar decisions made by the three major EU institutions (European Commission, European Parliament, European Council) and the Canadian government. Following the recent policy trends of many state governments in the United States.
Two days later (March 1), the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives also passed a bill giving Biden the power to ban foreign-owned apps and impose related sanctions on TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps.
For a while, TikTok in the United States seemed to have a feeling that "the time of death has come".
The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted to pass a bill empowering the president to ban TikTok across the country.
(Reuters)
However, the attitude of Biden and the Democratic authorities towards TikTok is not as clear as "blindly anti-China".
In a vote by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all 16 Democrats opposed the passage of the bill, arguing that the bill was too aggressive and should be discussed more first.
In fact, the investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) launched at the end of Trump’s term once catalyzed the pressure on Bytedance to sell TikTok to American companies. The positions of the various constituent departments (Treasury, Commerce, State, Defense, Homeland Security) differ, and the "investigation" has stalled for two years, and despite repeated pressure from Republicans, it has not yielded results.
It can be seen that the Biden administration has no intention to block TikTok across the country in the Trump era.
However, the Republican-dominated state government and politicians in Washington continue to exert pressure. Last year, ByteDance was forced to admit that its Beijing employees had accessed the user data of two American journalists, trying to find leaks within the company from these people. The employees have caused TikTok, which has stored US user data on Oracle servers and established a so-called "Transparency Center" to promote its security, to once again enter Washington's political attention.
After the Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives this year, it is believed that it will continue to pressure Biden here, and even join forces with some hardliners on China in the Senate (not in the hands of the Republican Party) to send the TikTok ban bill to the White House, forcing Biden Deng can take tough action, or take the risk of being "soft on China" that vetoes Congressional legislation.
(Such pressure is already on the horizon: A recent Republican bill banning ESG investments from retirement funds passed Congress with the backing of two Democratic senators, likely forcing Biden to use Presidential veto.)
On February 21, Michael McCaul, chairman of the Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee, who is tough on China, visited Kiev.
(Reuters)
However, due to the protection of freedom of speech in the U.S. Constitution, even if Biden does decide to ban TikTok, its implementation is likely to be delayed due to legal disputes.
Can the debate on the origin of the new crown still be hyped?
The differences between the two parties are also more clearly reflected in the issue of the origin of the new crown.
The Wall Street Journal quoted confidential documents on February 26, revealing that the U.S. Department of Energy had revised its judgment for 2021, arguing that the novel coronavirus was "most likely" leaked from a Chinese laboratory; FBI Director Christopher Christopher Wray also said in a subsequent interview that the FBI had assessed for some time that the virus "most likely" came from a laboratory accident in Wuhan.
The Department of Energy's and FBI's judgments are reported to be at "low confidence" and "moderate confidence" levels, respectively.
These news of course drew a response from China accusing the US of political manipulation.
However, the response from the White House seems to be to downplay the incident.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan (Jake Sullivan) said on February 26 that US intelligence relations "do not have a firm answer" about the origin of the new crown virus, and other White House spokesmen have since repeated the same statement.
In fact, there are 17 different agencies in the U.S. intelligence system, and the FBI and the Department of Energy are just two of them. According to the "Wall Street Journal", 4 intelligence agencies still believe that the virus was transmitted from animals to humans ("low confidence"). The CIA and another intelligence agency are inconclusive between the two hypotheses.
US national security adviser Sullivan said US intelligence relations "do not have a firm answer" about the origin of the new coronavirus.
(Reuters)
From a scientific point of view, because people have been unable to find the source of the new crown virus from humans to animals, and some scholars who have positions may even be regarded as pro-China, such as the chairman of the new crown committee of the famous journal "The Lancet" Sachs ( Jeffrey Sachs and others also put forward the hypothesis of laboratory leakage, and called on China and the United States to jointly trace the source. The theory of laboratory leakage and animal-to-human transmission are still two major hypotheses in the United States.
From a political point of view, the American left generally completely denies the argument that the laboratory leaked, equating it with the political smearing of the term "Chinese virus" in the Trump era. Based on a paper that has not been peer-reviewed, the front-page report "has a high degree of evidence" that the new crown virus came from animals, which was criticized by the US media peers.
On the contrary, the right wing in the United States insisted that the virus came from a laboratory or even a biochemical weapon with almost no evidence (this statement has been unanimously denied by the US intelligence system).
This time, the "re-hype" about the origin of the new crown may not be impossible to come from this faction.
But in this political environment, even if Biden really wants to use the virus traceability to fight a public opinion war against China, he will encounter resistance from the left wing of the party.
The bipartisan consensus on China lies in geopolitics
However, on purely geopolitical issues with China, the Democratic and Republican parties have a relatively consistent consensus.
On February 28, the House of Representatives’ bipartisan overwhelming majority of the “China Special Committee” held its first hearing. Among them, the chairman of the Republican committee, Mike Gallagher, stated that the Sino-US competition “is not a polite tennis match.” , but an existential struggle for what life will look like in the 21st century”; and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top member of the Democratic Party in the committee, called for bipartisan unity: “We must realize that the CCP misses us. Falling into division, partisanship and prejudice ".
Gallagher, chairman of the House Special Committee on China.
He was endorsed by former Secretary of State Pompeo during his campaign.
(Reuters)
The four witnesses at the hearing were Trump-era national security adviser HR McMaster, "China Connect" deputy national security adviser Bo Ming (Matthew Pottinger), Wei Jingsheng's female secretary Tong Yi, and a representative of the U.S. manufacturing industry. Scott Paul.
Everyone has put forward different opinions from the aspects of policy, personal economy and industry, and the coverage is very comprehensive.
Although the "China Special Committee" came from Republicans, the pro-Democrat "Washington Post" also published an editorial praising the committee's first hearing as "a promising start."
The "Aid Russia Card" against China
Although there are differences between the Trump faction of the Republican Party and the mainstream Republican Party and the Democrats on the Russia-Ukraine War, it is probably a bipartisan consensus to use the Russia-Ukraine War as a threat to China.
Since the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly warned that China was considering providing "lethal assistance" to Russia during the Munich Security Conference in February, news of China's possible escalation of aid to Russia has been almost daily.
Biden, Sullivan, and CIA Director William Burns have also spoken out on this one after another. Among them, Burns even expressed his confidence that the Chinese leadership is considering providing lethal equipment to Russia.
After Wang Yi met with Blinken at the Muan-Ann meeting, he was received by Putin in Moscow, Putin said many times that Xi Jinping would visit Russia in the spring, Xi Jinping recently met with visiting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and other developments , It also exacerbated the West's concerns about China's increased aid to Russia.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) holds talks with visiting Belarusian President Lukashenko (left) at the Great Hall of the People on March 1. (Reuters)
Although China's "China's Position on the Political Solution to the Ukraine Crisis" proposed by China on the first anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian War on February 24 was not very innovative and did not clearly bring about any change in the situation, European concerns about China's role are very obvious ——French President Emmanuel Macron has stated that his visit to China in early April is to call on Beijing to put pressure on Russia to stop its invasion of Ukraine. Ursula von der Leyen recently criticized China for "choosing a side" in the Russia-Ukraine war.
By March 2, Reuters quoted U.S. officials and other sources as reporting that Washington was discussing with its allies the possibility of imposing new sanctions on China if China aids Russia with military aid.
According to the report, some U.S. allied officials who were consulted said they only saw sporadic information about China’s consideration of military aid to Russia, but U.S. officials said they were providing specific intelligence information to their allies.
With the upcoming G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in India this week and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Washington, the “Russian aid card” targeting China will be a short-term way for the United States to win over its allies and further contain China. important means.
Taiwan Strait and South China Sea continue to escalate
On the Western Pacific side, the "Wall Street Journal" reported on February 23 that the United States is planning to increase the number of soldiers it provides military training in Taiwan from 30 to between 100 and 200. trained.
At the same time, Taiwan government personnel in the United States also crossed the unwritten rule that Taiwan's current president, vice president, foreign minister and other high-level officials should not enter the Greater Washington area after the severance of diplomatic relations between the United States and Taiwan. When Japan visited the United States, it broke this rule and met with the US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and others.
On February 9, Philippine President Marcos Jr. met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
(Reuters)
And since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (nicknamed Bongbong) took office as Philippine President last year—especially after his visit to China in January this year—the Philippines seems to have taken a clear pro-American turn. During Lloyd Austin's visit, he decided to increase the number of Philippine military bases available to the U.S. military from five to nine, including some in the Philippines closest to Taiwan.
Later, Marcus Jr. visited Tokyo and signed a military cooperation agreement with Japan, allowing the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to conduct natural disaster and humanitarian rescue training in the Philippines; Proposal for a tripartite security agreement.
Manila also accused China on February 13 of firing a military-grade laser at a Philippine supply ship, which was backed by diplomatic statements from the United States.
The "Taiwan card" and "ally card" of the United States in the Western Pacific region seem to be more and more threatening.
What is even more worrying is that U.S. military planes have frequently appeared in the South China Sea recently, and Chinese and U.S. military planes often appear close to the verge of misfires.
Just on February 24, a PLA J-11 fighter jet equipped with four air-to-air missiles accompanied a U.S. Navy P-8 patrol aircraft in the South China Sea. The gap between the wings of the two aircraft was only about 500 feet (about 152 meters). ).
Some US officials said that in the South China Sea, similar encounters are happening almost every day, and they are becoming more and more dangerous.
Since the Sino-U.S. militaries stopped communicating after Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August, Blinken’s visit to China in early February, which was supposed to resume communication, was allegedly canceled due to disputes over Chinese and U.S. balloons.
It is not impossible for the two sides to accidentally escalate the conflict.
In the current tense situation, can China and the United States still "fight without breaking"?
Optimistically, the answer is "yes."
From Xi Jinping's call in Bali last year to the calm end of the China-U.S. balloon dispute, we can see that China and the U.S. Biden administration are also willing to control Sino-U.S. competition and avoid unintentional escalation of conflict.
Although it is very difficult to do, the existence of will leaves room for the continuation of "fight without breaking".
At this moment, it is hard to say that China and the United States are not entering another new cold war.
In contrast to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, many people believe that the Cold War itself is not a crisis, but the crisis is the early stage of the Cold War when the rules have not yet been formed.
What we are witnessing today may be a repeat of the latter.
Which government departments in the United States have once again sparked the discussion of the leak of the new crown virus from the Wuhan laboratory?
Department of Energy and the FBI.
Will the United States block TikTok?
Biden has put the TikTok investigation on hold for two years in office, but may change his policy under pressure from the Republican Party.
The balloon turmoil subsides, the United States raises the "Wuhan laboratory leak" debate on the Russo-Ukrainian war | Will China endorse the "truce"?
Beijing no longer minds going to power before the detailed rules of the Chinese chip law are released position on the issue
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