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“China said Monday it will impose sanctions on three U.S. lawmakers and one ambassador in response to similar actions taken by the U.S. last week against Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses against Muslims in the Xinjiang region. U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Rep. Chris Smith and Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback were targeted.” AP News
“The United States on Monday rejected China’s claims to offshore resources in most of the South China Sea… China has offered no coherent legal basis for its ambitions in the South China Sea and for years has been using intimidation against other Southeast Asian coastal states, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.” Reuters
On Tuesday, “Britain said it decided to prohibit Huawei from working on [its] 5G system after U.S. sanctions made it impossible to ensure the security of equipment made by the Chinese company.” AP News
Last Saturday, the New York Times reported that “Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investments.” New York Times
The right calls for a tough response to China’s aggression.
“The most senior official on this latest sanction list is Chen Quanguo, a member of CCP's elite 25-member Politburo, which is the most powerful political body in China and counts CCP's General Secretary Xi Jinping as its most senior member. No previous U.S. administrations had ever imposed sanctions on any CCP official at this senior level… The rest of the world has been aware of the CCP's human rights abuses in Xinjiang since 2016, yet other than paying lip service, no other government nor the United Nation's Human Rights Council has taken any meaningful steps to address such abuses like the Trump administration has done… It's time American people give the Trump administration credit where credit is due, for its global leadership and all the remarkable actions it has taken to hold the CCP accountable for human rights abuses in China.”
Helen Raleigh, Fox News
“China’s increasingly intimidating stance is a problem the United States will have to deal with. America’s response ought to focus on the target for Beijing’s temper tantrum — and it is probably not America… China’s [retaliatory] sanctions aren’t so much designed to push against an immovable geo-political object as they are trying to flow around U.S. power and intimidate others. There is little likelihood, they’ll ever try to extradite Cruz or Rubio. No, they want to send a message to others…
“When it comes to battling wolf warrior diplomacy, the free world has to stand together… we are going to have to tell our friends and allies the hard truth: a country that wants to be part of the free world must stand with the free world in pushing back China’s destabilizing actions that undermine our security, prosperity and values.”
James Jay Carafano, Fox News
“U.S. officials are increasingly telling allies that they have to choose between China and the United States in the coming years… with the United States ratcheting up the pressure and with China making threats of its own, these nations will increasingly have to make the hard choice that Britain just did…
“China is the only nation in the world that can seriously threaten the United States, and its open drift toward seeking global leadership makes its intent crystal clear. Its sheer size — China’s population is more than four times as large as that of the United States — means it will be a serious competitor to the United States within a decade if it continues its rapid growth. Better to confront the problem now rather than delude ourselves and wait until our adversary is stronger.”
Henry Olsen, Washington Post
Regarding Pompeo’s comments about the South China Sea, “The Trump administration isn't simply rejecting China's claims. It is suggesting that other regional nations have far better rights to the waters in question. Pompeo wants to impress the idea not simply of China's claims being unlawful in legal terms but also absurd in practical reality. We see this with his assertion that China has ‘no lawful territorial or maritime claim to (or derived from) James Shoal, an entirely submerged feature only 50 nautical miles from Malaysia and some 1,000 nautical miles from China’s coast.’…
“Identifying the legal basis for rejecting China's claims and concluding with a commitment that ‘America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights,’ the Trump administration is establishing the justifying authority and cause for the prospective use of military force — stages one and two, that is to say, under the general understanding of just war theory in international law. This is not to say that Trump and Pompeo seek war in the South China Sea. But the choice of language here, ‘unlawful,’ ‘unprecedented threat,’ ‘sovereign rights,’ ‘will not allow Beijing,’ will raise eyebrows in foreign ministries the world over and must be considered to have been designed as such.”
Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner
“Monday’s State Department decision, along with shows of military force, signals that the U.S. may be toughening its strategy against Chinese regional bullying… This is one of those Trump-era diplomatic moves—like moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem or pulling out of failing arms accords—that a more risk-averse Administration would not have tried. China won’t be happy. Yet the decision brings official U.S. policy in line with international law and geopolitical facts. No matter who wins the White House this year, a key priority of U.S. foreign policy in 2021 will be deterring Chinese lawlessness and expansion. This is a necessary first step.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
The left calls for increased engagement with allies to develop a joint strategic response to China.
The left calls for increased engagement with allies to develop a joint strategic response to China.
“It’s tempting to assume that this is all part of a temporary flare-up in tensions brought on by the coronavirus and the impending U.S. election. For one thing, Joe Biden’s campaign has been accusing the Trump administration of being too soft on China. And while a future Biden administration may feature less unfocused belligerence and fewer conspiracy theories than the Trump team, certain issues—the genocide in Xinjiang, China’s territorial conflicts with its neighbors—are going to remain, no matter who is president in the fall… Whether you attribute it to conflicting ideologies or strategic interests, the ‘new cold war’ is looking more and more real, and it’s unlikely to fade away quickly.”
Joshua Keating, Slate
Some point out that “The cold war was a system based on an original lack of recognition between the two superpowers, a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the opponent’s social system and universalist pretensions. What ensued, at least in the first years of the post-second world war period, was an absence of interaction… [By contrast] Over the past 50 years we have seen a process of global integration that frequently puts the Sino-American relationship at its very centre: interaction between the two countries has become both a product and a decisive driver of globalisation…
“US firms locating part of their production in China; American investments there and, later on, Chinese investments in the US (and the rest of the world); the unique ability of the voracious American market to absorb durable goods produced in China; Beijing’s willingness to hoard dollars and US treasury securities in order to subsidise America’s consumption and to keep the value of its currency artificially low; the millions of Chinese students in US colleges and universities: such interdependencies now define US-Chinese relations and are revealing in how particular and determined these connections are.”
Mario Del Pero, The Guardian
“Preventing China’s rise is beyond America’s capacity, and our economies are too entangled to decouple. The U.S. can, however, shape the environment into which China rises, taking advantage of the web of allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific—from Japan and South Korea to a rising India—who worry about China’s ascendance. That will require working with them—and engaging Chinese leadership directly—to bound rivalry with Beijing, define the terms for coexistence, prevent competition from becoming a collision, and preserve space for cooperation on global challenges…
“Armed with a clear sense of priorities, the next administration will have to reinvent U.S. alliances and partnerships and make some hard—and overdue—choices about America’s tools and terms of engagement around the world. And it’ll have to act with the discipline that so often eluded the U.S. during its lazy post–Cold War dominance.”
William J. Burns, The Atlantic
“If Iran and China come to terms, it will yet again highlight the failure of the Trump administration’s maximum-pressure campaign against Iran. The stated logic behind the U.S. strategy of unrelenting sanctions is that they will cut Tehran off from access to world markets, forcing it to the negotiating table. Yet Iranian officials don’t seem terribly concerned…
“China cares little about the regime’s transgressions against the Iranian people. Beijing appears prepared to help keep this regime afloat for the foreseeable future. Any potential influence Washington hoped to have with Iran has been ceded to Beijing. Our inflexible policies have cost us an opportunity to influence the course of events in Iran in the short term and perhaps for many decades to come. After trying to cut off all of the options available to the regime, we should hardly be surprised if the regime is willing to accept the way out offered by the Chinese. Couldn’t the Trump administration have seen this coming?”
Jason Rezaian, Washington Post
“Even though it has been in the works since 2016, before Trump was elected, the timing of this potential agreement is conspicuous. It’s a reminder of how unlikely it was that Trump could cajole Tehran to sit down for new negotiations after scrapping U.S. commitments to the nuclear deal, a diplomatic agreement that was years in the making and involved the efforts of major powers, including China. Now, with their economy in tatters, the Iranians are seeking a lifeline from Beijing. And Chinese officials, given their own tussle with Washington, seem willing to take the risk.”
Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post
