Relations between the US and China have witnessed further tensions under former President Donald Trump (2016-2020), who did with China what no other US president had done before. This time, the challenge was not the Chinese isolation that long prevailed during Mao Tse Tung, but rather its openness to the world and its subsequent admission into the World Trade Organization. In both cases, China was under the label of third world countries with all the privileges and preferential transactions granted through international agreements, resulting in an unbelievable surplus in favor of Beijing in international trade.
Since 2003, China has achieved a $500 Billion surplus in its trade balance with the US. What was then described as the “new cold war” between China and the US was essentially Trump's policy aiming at placing Beijing and all relevant deals with it within the global economic system in the interest of the US and other countries of the world. In December 2019, Trump reached the first equitable agreement with China. Meanwhile, he succeeded in attracting U.S. investments in China once again or at least making its next expansion within and not outside the US.
More importantly, during the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, China had expanded widely in monopolizing the core supply chains of industries in the world. The US president did not give China a chance to be a superpower as was commonly spread, but was rather taming Chinese economic behavior which came at the expense of many countries of the world. According to the fact that the GDP of both countries converges increasingly, based on the purchasing power of the US dollar, Chinese output currently surpasses its US counterpart. Given current growth rates, China is on track to greater superiority, particularly after breaking through the fields of the Fourth Industrial Technological Revolution.
The pattern of bilateral interactions indicates the rivalry between the two countries, and the shift from competition to trade and strategic war in the South China Sea, as well as the political war reflected in the sanctions against Chinese allies such as North Korea and Iran. And while competition seems to revolve around trade, it is also a strategy of control and influence in the world. In light of the global pandemic, China and the US have exchanged accusations regarding responsibility for the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that has afflicted humanity.
In short, three scenarios can be tackled about the relations between the US and China during 2022, which can be outlined as follows:
The first scenario (Further escalations)
While the rivalry between the US and Russia reemerged in the second decade of the 21st century, another rivalry was taking place between Washington and Beijing. The first competition is strategic at its core, with its stage in Europe and the Middle East, while the second one seems to be economical and revolves around trade, but is also strategic revolving around control and global influence. Competition takes place between three forces: the US, which in theory remains the top economic and military power in the world, and Russia, which, despite its modest economic capabilities, has more than 9,000 nuclear warheads sufficient to destroy the globe several times, and is known for its technological superiority in weapons and space. The third major power is China, which not only possesses tremendous economic supremacy, but also the most promising power in terms of growth rates and modern technologies. For the first time in human history, China is able to compete with the US in some aspects of technological development.
The focus of the US, under current President Joe Biden, shifted from the Middle East to Asia to counter China's rising power in intense geopolitical competition. Biden is also attempting to balance the Asian balance of power by orchestrating the policies of major powers in the region, bringing India into alliance with the US, and building Australia's capacity in power elements.
Developments have taken place in the Indo-Pacific region, in what seems to be a new alliance involving the US, the UK and Australia. The Coalition, or what seems to be one, was based on a disengagement agreement between Australia and France for building submarines, to replace them with other nuclear-powered submarines by the US. This step led to two conclusions:
1. This alliance necessarily implied some kind of a threat to China, being a new shift in international relations, where Beijing has become a new pole against Washington. The move also appeared to be an extension of the measures taken by President Biden's administration, which began with his talk at the G7 Economic Forum, and went on to include all bilateral and multilateral meetings, whether economic or security-related. This step meant that President Biden's statements about leading the world again revolve around confronting China after the COVID-19 crisis resulted in a significant rise of China in many fields globally, whether through the Belt and Road Initiative, or at the regional level in the South China Sea, where Beijing has established a number of industrial islands, which have created a major problem in determining the extent of the Chinese territorial sea or the exclusive Chinese economic zone. Equally important is China's growing interest in Afghanistan following the US exit. Chinese diplomacy has become active in establishing a coalition between neighboring countries including Russia, Pakistan and Iran with China to deal with the turbulent conditions in Afghanistan.
2. The Alliance in the Indo-Pacific region is another formulation of the four nations of the QUAD, which includes the US, Japan, Australia and India, and which comes as a clear warning message to China. This is in addition to the Anglo Saxonian “Five Eyes” alliance, which includes intelligence services in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK and New Zealand. All these combinations of strategic relations lead, at least in part, to a new state of international tension between the US and Chinese giants. This tension is of security and strategic nature that imposes tough choices to be made by countries of the world regarding Beijing and Washington. However, these conditions do not resemble the situation that was between the US and the Soviet Union in the Cold War era.
What exacerbates the situation is the accumulation of tensions between Washington and Beijing, partly regarding the responsibility for the COVID-19 virus, the extent of dominance China enjoys in the field of supply chains, as well as the negative implications of Chinese flexibility in international relations, including establishing close relations with Iran, which is in a serious pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The rapid developments that took place in the wake of the initial US-Chinese confrontations came first with the US dealings with France, which expressed its deep anger at the US “stab in the back” by usurping the nuclear submarine deal. There was a telephone call and then a meeting between the two presidents Biden and Macron, where the latter agreed to send back the ambassador who was withdrawn as an expression of anger. Then, both presidents had positive exchanges. Secondly, there was a telephone call between Biden and Xi Jinping, after which both parties announced that Chinese approaches to Taiwan would be in compliance with set agreements. This “telephone diplomacy” opened the doors to a series of a wide range of US-Chinese contacts and meetings, to tackle several common issues. In short, Chinese-US interdependence takes the international situation away from the risk of slipping into what would be detrimental to either countries.
Second scenario (Cold War)
The “new Cold War” situation in Sino-American relations is the prevalent view adopted by the media and political circles. In fact, these relations are totally different from the US-Soviet relations, where the threat was military and ideological. Militarily, the US has become the top power in the world, and although when China would catch up remains to be unknown, currently the situation is nothing like the nuclear deterrence that prevailed in the previous Cold War. Certainly, there is no intellectual or theoretical ideology that China offers to the world about an optimal world order. There is no Lenin, no Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung, and people no longer go out in demonstrations that raise the images of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
In fact, relations between China and the US are not going in the direction of a “classic cold war”, nor are they moving in the direction of what was given the name of “accord” in the first half of the 1970s and which was defined by political scientist and then U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, as “managing conflicting relationships between two countries”. Rather, it is a new type of international relationship that combines “power” and “interdependence”, a relationship that was preached by US political scientist Joseph Nye in the 1970s, where each party to the relationship attempts to increase their strength by enhancing dependence on each other. This new type of international relations requires more consideration and sensitivity in recognizing the advantages enjoyed by each party, so it would sometimes be used as a pressure card against it.
The third scenario (cooperative rivalry)
In this scenario, Joseph Nye coins a new expression, added to his arsenal of expressions, that both China and the US have become inter-linked in a relationship called “cooperative rivalry”, which requires strategies that seek to achieve what is contradictory; competition and cooperation. In both aspects, Nye presents a range of ideas, including the US strengthening its technological advantages through research and development, as well bolstering its military power, by restructuring the military force to accommodate new technologies and enhance historical alliances.
The economic aspects seems to be revolving around the traditional areas of interdependence, whether in the US currency or trade, or even overlap in many forms of technology. Chinese supply chains have also become necessary for availing chances of achieving a significant economic recovery following the containment of the COVID-19 crisis, so as to compensate for the significant decline during the crisis in the US, which Biden seeks to report as having been passed at the health and economic fronts.
Joseph Nye addressed Washington decoupling with China as a kind of “foolishness” of enormous cost, which other countries are not expected to adopt since China has more trade relations with the countries of the world than the US does. Moreover, the two countries have millions of social relations, and it is impossible for them to decouple in aspects of combating epidemics and climate change.
Meanwhile, as it was half a century ago, interdependence with its complexity and subsequent caution, creates new areas for power practices and relations. In this regard, rapprochement with Japan and India may be understood, as it maintains a balance of power in Asia. Generally, power relations based on mutual dependence in economic and transnational fields cannot be ignored. Nye says that if the US attempts to jeopardize these areas, it will suffer. At the global level, combating epidemics and climate change, as well as countering terrorism with its transnational organizations, cannot be addressed by a single country alone, knowing that China is the highest in the field of thermal and carbon emissions. The US and China have pledged to disclose their 2035 emission targets in 2025, agreeing to promote climate action.
In conclusion, based on all of the above, 2022 is likely to witness the institutionalization of “cooperative rivalry” between Washington and Beijing. While cooperation between them will be in global fields (countering global warming and epidemics, preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons), competition will take place in the South China Sea region and, to some extent, in the Middle East with respect to Iran.
