Zhou Xiaoming

Opinion | In calling it a great power contest, the US is whitewashing its aggression towards China

The US-China conflict is a struggle between an aggressor and a resisting party. Casting it as a geopolitical contest suggests both parties share equal responsibility

Worse, to justify its unprovoked aggression, Washington has gone to great lengths to paint China as the attacking party and itself as the victim

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Zhou Xiaoming

Published: 1:00am, 5 Sep 2023Updated: 1:55am, 5 Sep 2023

Tensions between China and the United States are widely described in the West as a great power competition or geopolitical contest between the world’s largest economies. But this suggests they share equal responsibility for their fraught ties when they play distinctively different roles.

Contrary to the US accusation that Beijing is responsible for the lack of communication, for instance, Washington is the real culprit. Both governments once had more than 100 bilateral mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation that covered areas from health, education and climate change to trade and the military.

Over the years, these set-ups addressed many concerns and contributed significantly to the development of ties – until many were effectively ditched by the Trump administration.

The Biden administration apparently saw no need to fully resurrect the mechanisms, because they had failed to get the United States what it wanted. It tries to put in place what it considers would work in its favour, and force these things down China’s throat.

When that fails, Washington attempts to shift responsibility for the communication breakdown. For instance, it blames China for declining US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin’s request for a meeting with China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu at a security forum in Singapore in June.

But Washington had shut the door on that meeting in the first place by slapping sanctions on Li for his role in China’s military purchases from Russia in 2018. Despite China’s push to have the sanctions removed, the Biden administration maintained that it should not prevent Li from meeting his American counterpart.