The United States warned on Tuesday that it would target Chinese companies or people involved in any effort to send Russia lethal aid for the war in Ukraine, underscoring a deepening confrontation with the rival superpower.
In the most specific public warning on the matter to Beijing so far, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed that arming Moscow’s forces would cause serious problems for China around the world.
“China cannot have it both ways when it comes to Russian aggression in Ukraine. You cannot put forward peace proposals on one side while actually fanning the flames of the fire that Russia started with the other side,” Blinken said in Kazakhstan.
US officials have spent the last 10 days warning they have information that China is considering sending lethal aid to Russia, sending Beijing into a rage and underscoring how already strained diplomatic relations are being rocked by near-daily crises – from a recent controversy over a spy balloon to a dispute over the origins of Covid-19.
On Monday night (27), the White House gave federal agencies a 30-day deadline to remove TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, from federal devices. Later on Tuesday, a new House select committee will hold its first hearing on the growing US-China rivalry.
In his clearest comments on how the US would respond if China decided to help its ally Russia, Blinken spoke of sanctions for Chinese companies that could make Beijing pay an economic price.
“We warned China very clearly about the implications and consequences of providing this support,” referring to his own meeting with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in Munich this month, and President Joe Biden’s talks with President Xi Jinping in Indonesia. , in November 2022.
“We will not hesitate, for example, to target Chinese companies or individuals who are in violation of our sanctions, or otherwise involved in supporting the Russian war effort,” he said.
New clashes – along with rising tensions between US and Chinese forces in Asia and growing stalemates over Taiwan – are dramatizing a long-standing and once theoretical superpower rivalry that is suddenly an everyday reality.
This increasingly conflicted relationship affects many areas of American life – from the economy to public health. It ranges from the challenges facing the US military, which is in the midst of major geopolitical shocks such as in Ukraine, to the risks posed by Chinese-designed apps on the electronic devices that everyone carries everywhere.
It is fueling the dangerous possibility that the US and China are locked in a potentially disastrous slide into conflict, and it poses serious challenges to a polarized US political system that struggles to have a rational debate on these issues without falling into a partisan game of who can be tougher with China. This superiority only deepens a self-perpetuating cycle of escalation between the two sides.
It is into this politicized atmosphere that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is debuting a new bipartisan committee on competition with China on Tuesday night, just as Washington-Beijing tensions have rarely been worse.
The committee’s work will be based on the premise that, after years of trying to peacefully integrate China into the global system as a competitor rather than an enemy, the US is shifting to a tougher stance in the belief that a new generation of Chinese leaders is trying to dismantle the global order and US international law.
Republican Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the new committee, told Manu Raju of the CNN that Tuesday’s hearing would not specifically focus on the latest drama – after the Department of Energy assessed with little confidence that the Covid-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory leak in China.
He said the finding, which is a minority view among US intelligence agencies, could be considered at a future hearing, but that he wanted to show Americans that the threat from China “was not just a problem from afar, that it is right here”.
“We want to understand what we got wrong about the Chinese Communist Party and what we need to understand about it going forward in order to get our policy right,” said the Republican.
On Sunday on CBS News, Gallagher warned: “We may call this a strategic competition, but it’s not a tennis match. This is the kind of world we want to live in,” he said.
The committee may be one of the few areas where a divided Congress — and potentially the White House — can find common ground. The Biden administration has reinforced the already tough stance on China that former President Donald Trump took during his presidency.
Biden, for example, last year signed a new law that will allow the government to spend $200 billion in a bid to claim leadership of the semiconductor chip industry – a critical sector that could decide the economic race between the US and China.
Controversy over the origin of Covid-19 sparks a new war of words
The new controversy over the origins of Covid-19 is an isolated study of many of the forces affecting US-China relations, including US distrust of the Chinese Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping’s desire to preserve his prestige.
The US demands for information about the origins of the pandemic show how China is refusing to play by global rules – in this case, allowing for follow-up virological investigations. All this just exacerbates the intense reaction in Washington and, in turn, undermines US policy failures.
There is no consensus within the US government on the origins of the pandemic. Intelligence agencies remain divided on whether it started with animal-to-human transmission in a Wuhan market or originated in a viral leak from a Chinese laboratory.
“There is a bottom line here, which is that neither laboratory leakage nor overflow – i.e. animal origin – can be ruled out. We don’t have definitive information,” said Tom Frieden, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It didn’t take long for Republicans to claim political victory in the wake of the Wall Street Journal’s report of new intelligence leading the Department of Energy to believe a lab leak was to blame.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted: “Leak from China lab proves right no matter. What matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so that this does not happen again.”
Such definitive statements, based on an assessment, fail to recognize that the US intelligence community is still divided on the issue.
Some Republicans have long sought to prove that the virus was a conspiracy by China to unleash worldwide contagion, and many appear to be seeking an explanation for the pandemic that might mask Trump’s negligence in dealing with it.
But even if the virus emerged from a lab, that doesn’t mean it was necessarily man-made or that the rest of the world was deliberately exposed.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted angrily to the resurgence of the lab leak theory in Washington, warning that Americans should “stop inciting discussions about lab leaks, stop smearing China, and stop politicizing the question of the origin of the lab leak.” virus”.
In many ways, it doesn’t matter whether poor laboratory safety in China or animal transmission caused the pandemic that has killed nearly seven million people worldwide, according to World Health Organization figures, and more than a million in the US. .
Both possible transmission routes pose a threat to humanity and need to be addressed, which is why China’s lack of transparency on the matter is potentially dangerous. The pandemic remains a major embarrassment for China, souring its national mythology of a powerful rising power.
But in Washington this week, the issue has once again become an excuse for Republicans to attack government scientists and health experts and distort a narrative about Covid-19 that still has huge gaps.
The challenge for the new select committee, which is especially investigating economic and technological competition with China, will be to break this cycle of politicization to provide a useful examination of US-China relations that can result in effective policy recommendations in the future.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
