Opinion | In the South China Sea, Biden is outdoing Trump in bluff and bluster

Name: Biden calls China the ‘most serious competitor’ to the US, in his first foreign policy address
Uploaded: 2021-03-28T17:00:11.000Z
Duration: 3 min 5 s
Description: Biden calls China the ‘most serious competitor’ to the US, in his first foreign policy address

The Alaska meeting makes it clear the US will continue to try to blunt China’s rise and cement US hegemony in Asia

In the South China Sea, its continuing strategy of demanding China abide by its interpretation of UNCLOS while refusing to ratify it can only fail

Reading Time:4 minutes

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Mark J. Valencia

Published: 1:00am, 29 Mar 2021Updated: 8:38am, 29 Mar 2021

Many had hoped that under President Joe Biden, the United States would moderate its goals and behaviour vis-à-vis China, especially in the seas near China. That hope had some basis because Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan – now Biden’s Indo-Pacific coordinator and national security adviser – had advocated a “competitive coexistence” with China.

But Biden’s China policy is turning out to be a continuation of the Trump adminstration’s, possibly trumping it in its hypocrisy, condescension, confrontation and militarism.

Indeed, a main takeaway from the March 18-19 Alaska meeting between top US and China foreign policy officials was that the fundamental US goal in Asia is continued hegemony. This means the US will continue to try to dilute and blunt China’s rise, combining multinational resources and sharing the political burden of doing so. With the use of carrots and sticks, it will try to persuade nations to join a grand anti-China alliance, while keeping China at bay with its military.

It is not at all certain that this strategy will succeed. Indeed, US allies and partners may not participate in meaningful ways and the US may be overextended militarily. But this is the gamble the US takes in running roughshod over China’s interests in the region, rather than integrating them into the international order.

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Biden calls China the ‘most serious competitor’ to the US, in his first foreign policy address

Apparently, the US now believes that their fundamental differences cannot be bridged and that China has crossed a Rubicon in its intent to alter the global order the US helped to build and from which it preferentially benefits. It is likely to now regard conflict as inevitable and be wary of giving China “more time to develop technological and military capabilities before a diplomatic breakdown”, as some analysts have warned.

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