Source: Global Times | 2023-08-25
Despite the resumption of high-level dialog between China and the United States after successive visits to China by high-ranking U.S. officials such as Antony Blinken, Janet L. Yellen, and John Forbes Kerry in June of this year, the outlook for the relationship between the two countries is still concerning. Due to a series of U.S. practices in the Taiwan Strait recently, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula not only continue to treat China as an object of isolation and suppression, but also try to continue to discredit and attack China’s vital and constructive role in Asian security, thus expanding the political-diplomatic and military intervention of the U.S.-led geopolitical cabal in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. These are dragging Asia into the shadow of a dangerous “New Cold War”.
Before and after the end of the Second World War, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union had a high degree of cooperation and solidarity, and rebuilt the post-war order on the basis of the consensus of the great Powers through the signing of the Yalta Agreement. Why did the United States and the Soviet Union fall into the Cold War in 1947? This was not only because the Soviets continued to occupy the countries of Eastern Europe in an attempt to expand their geostrategic sphere of influence; it was also because the leaders of the United States and Britain, fearing that the rise of the Soviet Union would destabilize the dominant position of the United States and the West, took the initiative to initiate an ideological rupture and a confrontation of camps against the Soviet Union. The outbreak of the Cold War was not only the result of the competition among the great powers, but also the product of the United States and the West’s eagerness to organize a global geopolitical confrontation between NATO and the Soviet Union. Today’s U.S. Asia-Pacific policy is an attempt to recapture its Cold War experience, to take advantage of U.S. strength and alliances, to reorganize the camp confrontation, and to seek to comprehensively expand its strategic competitive advantage over China.
However, 32 years after the end of the Cold War, benefiting from the impetus of globalization, China and the United States have developed a solid fact of interdependence in the areas of commerce, markets and people-to-people exchanges. At the same time, China is the principal trading partner of most countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The United States waged a “New Cold War” against China from trade and science and technology, trying to sanction China’s high-tech industry through the “small yard and high wall”. It placed obstacles in the way of China in the high-end semiconductor industry, such as chips, thus allowing the U.S. to regain dominance over the global industrial chain, supply chain and value chain of high-tech products.
The purpose of that is not only to limit the upgrading of Chinese industry, suppress China’s industrial competitiveness, but also want to stabilize the U.S. competitiveness advantage over China, and to re-widen the gap between the United States and China in the ratio of power. Nevertheless, the “New Cold War” that the United States wants to launch will not only go to “science and technology” field. A series of recent movements show that the Biden administration is trying to expand the war to the geopolitical and geostrategic field. Driven by the radical interests of the United States, Asia’s geostrategy and geo-economy are facing new risks of fragmentation and confrontation from the “Silicon Curtain” to the “Iron Curtain”.
First of all, the United States has deflated its long-held “One China Policy” on the Taiwan Issue, continuing to arch the fire and breaking the relatively balanced policy on cross-Strait relations in the past. The Taiwan issue has always been the most vital and sensitive topic in China-US relations. The fact that the United States is now openly taking a pro-Taiwan line is an important sign of the shift in its China policy.
Secondly, on the issue of regional security in Asia, the United States has utilized the situation in the Taiwan Strait, the disputes over sovereignty over the South China Sea and maritime rights and interests, the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands between China and Japan and the North Korean nuclear issue to define China as an “aggressive” country that wants to change the “status quo” in Asia. While peddling the so-called “China risk”, the United States has not only shifted the focus of its global security strategy to the Asia-Pacific region, but has also attempted to implement the strategy of “comprehensive deterrence” by promoting the enhancement of the deployment of troops and military forces in Asia. In the past, Europe was the principal battlefield of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Now, Asia has become the center of the U.S. “New Cold War” strategy.
Besides, from the United States and Britain joining hands to develop nuclear submarines for Australia to the recent provision of 200 Tomahawk missiles by the United States, from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue to Camp David Summit, and from pulling NATO eastward to interfere in the Asia-Pacific security situation to the addition of four new usable bases in the Philippines by US forces, the United States has been cobbling together “small circles”. Today, Its actions taken against Asia can be regarded as an announcement that the “iron curtain” against China has been lowered.
The Camp David Summit of the United States, Japan and South Korea is a historical setback for the geostrategic posture of East Asia. The summit has turned the U.S. comprehensive denial of China’s legitimate claims to rights and interests in the South China Sea in recent years, its reasonable actions to safeguard its rights and stability, and its positive pacifist regional role into an action that the three countries have unanimously agreed to and that Japan and South Korea have jointly endorsed for the United States. What does the Summit mean? It means that the U.S. is not only trying to expand its own alliance camp, but also trying to expand the U.S. bilateral alliance system since the end of World War II to a trilateral or even multilateral one. The U.S. created the U.S.-Japan-South Korea “Southern Triangle” after the signing of the Armistice Agreement at Panmunjom on the Korean Peninsula on July 27, 1953, which has long been a strategic initiative to keep the peninsula in a state of cold war. The Camp David Summit means that the “Southern Triangle” is being formed again.
In mid-August, the U.S., Japan and South Korea conducted a maritime ballistic missile defense early warning test, sharing missile warning data in real time. Japan will be also with the UK and Italy on next-generation advanced fighter jet development. More worryingly, the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in mid-July has begun to require the U.S. military to expand its military chain of command in the Western Pacific, to draw up a military plan for blocking energy deliveries to China in core strategic waterways such as the South China Sea, and to make substantial preparations for military interventions on the Taiwan issue.
The Biden Administration’s “Indo-Pacific strategy” is aggressive, but the creation of a “New Cold War” is unpopular. Since the end of the Cold War, East Asia has been one of the centers of gravity for world economic growth and the most stable and peaceful region in the world. Attempts by the United States, Japan and other countries to create and provoke “New Cold War” in Asia will only abduct and jeopardize the moral momentum of peace and sustainable development in Asia, which has lasted for decades. China has repeatedly advised the United States to move in the opposite direction of China and to establish a tone of engagement based on dialogue rather than confrontation and win-win rather than zero-sum. However, on the one hand, the Biden administration has emphasized “de-risking” China, while on the other hand, it has been ganging up on China and the U.S., constantly raising the risk of confrontation between China and the United States. China refuses to be “led” by the United States, rejects the “New Cold War”, and insists that all countries should respect each other, coexist peacefully, and cooperate for a win-win situation. This is the common wish and expectation of the peoples of Asia. Today’s China is by no means the Soviet Union in the past; but today’s United States is still the one in the past.