The U.S and China are engaged in a heated war of words. Is it the start of a long and nasty cold war?
It had been a bedrock belief of U.S. policy for 40 years that it was possible to bring the People's Republic of China smoothly into the family of nations—and now, one of the architects of that policy was finally acknowledging the obvious.
What had been a more confrontational, trade-centric relationship since the start of President Donald Trump's term, has now descended into bitterness in the midst of a presidential reelection campaign Trump fears is slipping away. Any chance that the pandemic might spur Washington and Beijing to set differences aside and work together on treatments and other aspects of the pandemic—such as how exactly it started—is long gone.
Would a President Joe Biden take a harder line toward China, which hopes to reduce dependance on American firms?"No one on either side of the political aisle in Washington is ignoring any of that," says one Biden adviser."The era of hope that China might evolve into a normal country is over. No one with any brains denies that."
For a few decades at least, the U.S.-China military competition will look vastly different from the hair-trigger nuclear standoff with Moscow. Instead, China will seek asymmetric advantages, rooted where possible in technology. It has, for example, already developed an arsenal of hypersonic missiles, which fly low and are hard for radar to detect. They are known as"carrier killers" because of their ability to strike U.S. aircraft carriers in the Pacific from long distances.
Washington, and its allies in East Asia and Europe, are paying attention. In a just-published book—The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West—David Kilcullen, a former Australian military officer who served as special adviser to U.S. General David Petraeus in Iraq, writes:"our enemies have caught up or overtaken us in critical technologies, or have expanded their concept of war beyond the narrow boundaries within which our traditional approach can be brought to bear.
The COVID-19 outbreak and China's response to it has greatly intensified that debate. Trump's trade war had triggered a slow-motion move toward an economic"decoupling," as companies in low-tech, low- margin industries began to move production out of China to avoid tariffs. The textile, footwear and furniture business have all seen significant movement out of China so far. But pre-pandemic, there was no mad rush for the exits and there was no reason to expect one anytime soon.
Paterson argues that the costs of total divorce from China is often overstated. He calculates that about 2 percent of U.S. corporate profits come from sales in the Chinese market, mostly from companies that manufacture there in order to sell there. Corporate profits overall are 10 percent of U.S. GDP. Eliminating the China portion of that"is a rounding error," he says.
That presumes coordination with allies, which has not been a Trump administration strong suit. But that would change under a President Joe Biden. Even before the pandemic, key European and Asian allies were souring on their relations with China. That includes Canada as well. A former senior Canadian official said Ottawa wanted to work with Trump and the Europeans to map out a tougher, united front on trade.
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