Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is a precise and disciplined speaker, minimalist in her articulation of the Biden administration’s wide-ranging policy towards its greatest competitor – the People’s Republic of China.
The spy balloon incident earlier this year is a background, but her speech in February at the Brookings Institution, America’s leading foreign policy think tank, was aimed at placing the latest diplomatic clash between the world’s two superpowers in the context of their multi-layered competition. It was a reminder that the tolerance for incidents in both Beijing and Washington is low, but also an effort to take down the temperature of the debate in Washington on how best to punish China.
She somewhat succeeded. In almost every paragraph of her speech – a cautionary note about the sheer burden of responsibility both powers share to keep the world peaceful – she was at pains to emphasise that the United States is not seeking conflict with China. But she was also clear about America’s willingness to compete with China across all domains of global power.
The formula of the Biden administration’s China strategy – invest, align and compete – is a combination of grand strategy and domestic politics.
A week after Sherman’s speech, across town at Georgetown University, a rising political star of the Biden administration, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, was articulating another piece of Washington’s competition policy puzzle for China. It was by far its most consequential and complex element – the Chips Act.
The Act aims to bring the advanced research and manufacturing of semiconductors – the backbone of the digital economy – back to America. Marking a return of the industrial policy only comparable in scale and ambition, in Secretary Raimondo’s own words, to John Kennedy’s Space Program of the 1960s, the Chips Act is about regaining America’s strategic advantage in key technologies while creating new manufacturing and research and development jobs across America. It’s a policy – if successfully implemented – that will build American technological resilience and superiority for the protracted competition with China, while providing high-quality training and well-paid jobs for American workers – a key tenet of President Joe Biden’s election platform.
Outside the administration and think tanks, the views on China in the US Congress, with a few exceptions, are also remarkably united and almost uniformly antagonistic to Beijing. The sentiments are driven by both domestic public opinion hostile to China and Beijing’s actions. The newly established Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is well-resourced, active and influential, creating an even more challenging political landscape for any efforts to take the heat out of the relationship. Its first round of hearings and grilling of the TikTok CEO are indicative of the mood on the Capitol Hill.
It is a stark reminder how fundamentally the US policy ecosystem’s view of China has been transformed in the last five years. The debate in Washington these days is not about whether China is a threat, but about the scale and proportionality of American response to it. Surprisingly, the views in the Pentagon and State Department insert some much-needed pragmatism and moderation. Last month, for example, the Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley called for “lowering the rhetoric on China” and disputed perceptions that the United States and China are on the brink of war.
But political and diplomatic tensions over Taiwan, China’s support of Russia, and multiple other issues in the relationship, such as China’s role in the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to the United States, are continuously adding fuel to the fire.
The American business community’s views are more diverse, but there is a general agreement that the risks of doing business with China have gone up substantially. And so America’s economic de-risking and decoupling from China is gathering steam, so far most visibly in the technological domain, but spreading to other parts of the economy.
The irritants in the relationship are aplenty, and points of engagement are increasingly hard to find.
Across the Pacific, the mood in Beijing is also far from optimistic. China’s policy towards the United States is also becoming more confrontational. In his speech to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March, President Xi Jinping took a rare direct aim at the United States, accusing Washington of “containment, encirclement and suppression” of China. His newly appointed Foreign Minister Qin Gang warned that the United States and China are heading for conflict if Washington doesn’t “hit the brake”. Xi’s visit to Moscow – his first after being re-elected for a third term – and China’s continuing economic, political and diplomatic support for Russia have further darkened the mood in Western capitals.
For Australia, China’s ratcheting rhetoric towards the United States, and Beijing’s political trajectory – its growing authoritarianism, and the close partnership with Russia – are deeply uncomfortable.
China is ramping up its own decoupling from the United States and its allies, including Australia. Despite the recent stabilisation with Canberra, Beijing does not consider Australia a reliable long-term supplier of energy and resources. It just has not found another partner yet. Underneath China’s willingness to return the relationship with Australia to some normalcy is a deep distrust of Australia as a long-term economic partner and reliable commodity and energy supplier. To China, AUKUS – the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States – is a confirmation that Australia does not run an independent foreign policy. Canberra may disagree, but this view is deeply entrenched in Beijing. China pursues an active diversification and economic resilience strategy – evident in the new energy and commodities agreements with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Adding to these challenges are the directions of China’s economic policy aimed to boost sovereign capabilities and trusted energy and supply chain partnerships. Australia’s commodities trade with China had saved the economic relationship during its worst period. While Australia has made some progress in trade diversification, China remains the most attractive market for Australian iron ore and coal, as well as some agricultural products and education.
