by MEDEA BENJAMIN & NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES
Tensions between the United States and China are rising as the U.S. election nears, with tit-for-tat consulate closures, new U.S. sanctions, and no less than three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups prowling the seas around China. But it is the United States that has initiated each new escalation in U.S.-China relations. China’s responses have been careful and proportionate, with Chinese officials such as Foreign Minister Wang Yi publicly asking the United States to step back from its brinkmanship to find common ground for diplomacy.
Most of the U.S. complaints about China are longstanding, from the treatment of the Uighur minority and disputes over islands and maritime borders in the South China Sea to accusations of unfair trade practices and crackdowns on protests in Hong Kong. But the answer to the “Why now?” question seems obvious: the approaching U.S. election.
Danny Russel, who was Obama’s top East Asia expert in the National Security Council and then at the State Department, told the BBC that the new tensions with China are partly an effort to divert attention from Trump’s bungled response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his tanking poll numbers, and that this “has a wag the dog feel to it.”
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has been going toe-to-toe with Trump and Secretary Mike Pompeo in a potentially dangerous “tough on China” contest, which could prove difficult for the winner to walk back after the election.
Elections aside, there are two underlying forces at play in the current escalation of tensions, one economic and the other military. China’s economic miracle has lifted hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty, and, until recently, Western corporations were glad to make the most of its huge pool of cheap labor, weak workplace and environmental protections, and growing consumer market. Western leaders welcomed China into their club of wealthy, powerful countries with little fuss about human and civil rights or China’s domestic politics.
So, what has changed? U.S. high-tech companies like Apple, which were once only too glad to outsource American jobs and train Chinese contractors and engineers to manufacture their products, are finally confronting the reality that they have not just outsourced jobs, but also skills and technology. Chinese companies and highly skilled workers are now leading some of the world’s latest technological advances.
The global rollout of 5G cellular technology has become a flashpoint, not because the increase and higher frequency of EMF radiation it involves may be dangerous to human health, which is a real concern, but because Chinese firms like Huawei and ZTE have developed and patented much of the critical infrastructure involved, leaving Silicon Valley in the unfamiliar position of having to play catch-up.
Also, if Huawei and ZTE instead of AT&T and Verizon build the U.S. 5G infrastructure, the U.S. government will no longer be able to require “back doors” that the NSA can use to spy on us all. So, it is stoking fears that China could insert its own back doors in Chinese equipment to spy on us instead. Left out of the discussion is the real solution: repeal the Patriot Act and make sure that all the technology we use in our daily lives is secure from the prying eyes of both the U.S. and foreign governments.
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