China’s rise is the foremost concern that has pervaded American policymakers over fear of being overtaken by an Asian country. Washington’s paranoia under the US President Joe Biden clambered up with his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tagging the world’s second largest economy as ‘the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century’.
The Biden administration’s China policy is laden with confusion as it idealistically seeks to cooperate, compete and confront Beijing simultaneously. The dicey modus operandi was put in a nutshell by Blinken last year. “Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be.”
So far, the US president’s strategy toward China has varied little from his predecessor, pushing his aides in an awkward position and making them justify his diplomatic gaffes. In a scathing comment last October, Biden vowed to defend Taiwan in the event of a conflict. The White House rushed in to dial back what signaled a shift, from ‘strategic ambiguity’ to ‘strategic clarity’, in America’s longstanding one-China policy.
During Trump’s presidency, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo unequivocally called for regime change in China by inducing Chinese people against their government. Worries hanging around the possibility of an armed conflict forced then US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to phone his Chinese counterpart twice to avert such a tragedy.
