中文
By Azhar Azam
The U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken unveiled the U.S. strategy toward China last May and summed up the Biden administration's cold war mindset in three terms: invest, align and compete. America's new National Security Strategy (NSS) interlinked all three elements to reestablish a unipolar international order to outcompete China across the realms of technological, economic, political, military, intelligence and global governance.
The White House Fact Sheet insists the U.S. doesn't see the world "through a competitive lens." This is an empty-worded statement, since Biden's doctrine identifies China as America's "most consequential geopolitical challenge" and "most consequential competitor" for it's the "only competitor," which can stymie the American hallucination through a collaborative arrangement of promotion of international peace and global economic growth.
In his NSS, former U.S. President Donald Trump portrayed Beijing as a "strategic competitor" and wanted to transform the Asia-Pacific into a region of"geopolitical competition." By accusing China's economic and peaceable approach vis-a-vis states in the Asia-Pacific as an effort to stretch its"sphere of influence," describing the region as the "epicenter of 21st century geopolitics" and declaring its competition with China more pronounced in the region – there are broad echoes of his predecessor's rhetoric in Biden's strategy to undermine the regional economy and peace.
Biden's White House wants the Asia-Pacific to play a vanguard role for the U.S. to implement its unruly policy across the wider expanse. But threats to its regional autonomy, security and prosperity do not emanate from China, since the U.S. is blowing up regional harmony, growth and peace by conducting high-wire acts of military exercises, challenging the sovereignty of China and meddling in its internal affairs.
Trump's NSS argued that the U.S. showed "strategic complacency" in the 1990s when the country assumed the collapse of the Soviet Union had guaranteed its military superiority and the world would chart the course of a liberal-democratic engagement. He alleged that China attempted to erode the U.S. security and prosperity and stole U.S. intellectual property to justify his tariff and tech crusade against the Chinese government, companies and people including science students.
The belief was misleading. It has been America's arrogance and craving for global dominance through its invasions of independent nations with the intent to impose its governance system on them, which devoured trillions of American taxpayers' dollars.
Biden is treading on the same dangerous path. His "strategic competition with major powers," according to his NSS, is a much riskier proposition than his predecessor's "great power competition." Indeed, the latest NSS is a continuation of the U.S. aspiration of world dominance and goes beyond China, since it intends to coerce an "unrivaled" network of allies and partners to advance America's interests the world over.
Apparently, Washington is too optimistic in expecting sovereign nations to cede their own national interests and act as the U.S. instrument to challenge its rivals on America's behalf. Hence, the growing notion of a multipolar world can be receded to the distance and a U.S.-centric international order could be restituted. The U.S. containment strategy against China, particularly in technology and economy, is just a foot in the door to implement a sweeping U.S. global offensive plan.
The U.S. pledges to replenish the "reservoirs" of national power through "targeted" investments in areas such as foundational technologies and innovation; the "targeted" export controls from the U.S. Commerce Department just a week prior to the release of the NSS pointed out America was putting full-throttle attacks to limit Chinese peaceable technology advancement.
At a time when the world needs global cooperation on science, technology and innovation to achieve economic diversification and higher levels of productivity, a slew of new aggressive restrictions on Chinese companies impedes international tech collaboration and threatens the global industrial and supply chains. The high-tech containment could backfire over non-support from the U.S. allies and partners and will inflict harm to America's innovation from the growing muscle of this increasing nationalism.
China's phenomenal growth rates in the past have allowed it to lift over 800 million people out of extreme poverty and improve their quality of life. The achievements fascinate the developing countries to draw closer to the country and learn how to handle the complex development challenges including transitioning to a new growth model, building a cost-effective health system and promoting a low-carbon energy path, all of which the world's second largest economy has successfully encountered.
Despite concerns over a slowdown in China's growth, it continues to exceed the leading economies, holding a bright spot for multinational consumer conglomerates. Given that the developed world's markets are stagnated by rising interest rates and higher energy costs, the Chinese economy is estimated to account for about one-third of the global growth next year, more than three times than the U.S.
China's economy is projected to take over the U.S. within this decade. In order to prevent this shock from happening, Biden's NSS declares the next 10 years as "decisive" and tries to replace global values with America's.
Biden's NSS can be anything but rational. It strives to stir dissent among the regions yet provides no layout to unite the divided America and doesn't address the plight of inflation-battered Americans. The U.S. cannot secure itself by defining the era of international development and economic and technological cooperation as a contest between "democracy and autocracy;" the new strategy is self-defeating and self-destructive right from the outset.
Azhar Azam works in a private organization as a market and business analyst and writes about geopolitical issues and regional conflicts.
