Opinion | Warmongering US will have to accept a new world order with China, Russia and the EU alongside

If one had any lingering doubts about how bad the Sino-US relationship could get, the diplomatic collision in Anchorage, Alaska, in March should have dispelled them.

When State Councillor Yang Jiechi refuted allegations that China posed a threat to a rules-based international order and that US concerns over China’s misconduct in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang ought to be heeded for better bilateral relations, he said “the US is not qualified to say it wants to speak to China from a position of strength … The Chinese people won’t put up with it”.

His words gained instant popularity at home in China amid accusations in the mainstream Western media that China was becoming more intransigent and pugnacious. Indeed, Beijing has chosen to stare back at America’s icy glare.

After the recklessly anti-Chinese Trump administration, Beijing had looked forward to a reboot in bilateral relations with the Biden administration. It was bitterly disappointed when it saw US President Joe Biden and his team not changing much from their predecessor’s course and instead orchestrating a series of international moves aimed at stiff-arming Beijing in the run-up to the Anchorage meeting.

US perceptions about the seriousness of challenges posed by a rising China are palpable. However, as Richard Haass, a distinguished American diplomat and head of the influential Council on Foreign Relations think tank since 2003, said in his March 23 Foreign Affairs article “The New Concert of Powers”, “the desirable but impossible” cannot be pursued as “the workable and the attainable”.

The Trump administration exerted extreme pressure on China while dreading going to war. One wonders what its successor is aiming to achieve with an approach not fundamentally dissimilar, given Biden’s conviction that America and China are in “extreme competition” but need not be in conflict.