China took great umbrage at Joe Biden mentioning it seven times in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, saying Beijing is “opposed to defining the entire China-U.S. relationship in terms of competition,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing Wednesday.
“It is not the practice of a responsible country to smear a country or restrict the country’s legitimate development rights under the excuse of competition, even at the expense of disrupting the global industrial and supply chain,” Mao said.
Just who is it that’s restricting China’s “legitimate development rights”? I’m sure what China might define as a “legitimate development right,” but Vietnam, the Philippines, and other neighbors would probably have a different interpretation of “legitimate.”
China wants the U.S. to “promote the return of bilateral relations to a track of sound and stable development,” she said.
Relations between the U.S. and China haven’t been on a “track of sound and stable development,” since the 1990s.
As for Biden, he puffed out his chest and told China how strong the U.S. was getting under his presidency.
“I will make no apologies that we are investing to make America strong. Investing in American innovation, in industries that will define the future, and that China’s government is intent on dominating,” he said.
Biden said his administration is “committed to work with China where it can advance American interests and benefit the world.”
However, he also warned that “if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country,” a pointed reference to the shooting down on Saturday of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had traversed the continental United States.
We may look back and see the last week as a defining moment in our relations with China. Certainly, the rhetoric has changed. It’s become more energetic and more confrontational as the two sides move toward some kind of conflict.
Is war with China inevitable? Unless the U.S. wants to retreat in the South China Sea and most of East Asia, it certainly looks that way. China has become the bully in East Asia and it has thumbed its nose at the U.S. and the Western world — especially when it comes to finding the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that has caused a catastrophic pandemic, killing millions.
China’s ambitions are global. While China agrees to “compete” with the U.S., it is preparing for war. We must never lose sight of that and make our own preparations for a showdown that neither side wants but may be unavoidable.
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