As I see itUS-China cold war was predicted years ago. Now the Chinese public can see it

Name: Are Xi Jinping’s China and Donald Trump’s US destined for armed conflict?
Uploaded: 2020-12-29T09:30:08.000Z
Duration: 4 min 12 s
Description: Are Xi Jinping’s China and Donald Trump’s US destined for armed conflict?

Majority view a new cold war as likely or already under way, a poll suggests, as the prediction of US scholar John Mearsheimer threatens to come true

But some experts argue that diplomacy can still play a role and that China should tone down its antagonistic rhetoric

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There has been an increase in military activity in the disputed South China Sea, one of the focal points of US-China tensions. Photo: AP

Shi Jiangtao

Published: 5:30pm, 29 Dec 2020Updated: 10:54pm, 29 Dec 2020

When realist strategist John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago claimed 15 years ago that conflict between China and the United States was inevitable, few people seem to have taken the idea seriously. To be fair, it was considered retrospectively a honeymoon period for bilateral ties, with the then US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick calling China a “responsible stakeholder”.

But after an excruciating year characterised by dislocation caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a dramatic deterioration in US-China relations, a new cold war is no longer an elusive concept.

A public survey released last week by the state-controlled Global Times newspaper suggests that the Chinese people recognise the coming of a US-China cold war at a time when their government emphatically rejects the notion. According to the nationalist tabloid, 56 per cent of nearly 2,000 respondents across 16 Chinese cities said a new cold war was likely or unavoidable, while another 12 per cent said it had already begun.

The poll also had some interesting findings on rising nationalist sentiment in China, coinciding with Beijing’s whipping up of anti-American propaganda over the past year in a departure from an unwritten rule to avoid ideological rifts since the normalisation of the 1970s.

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Are Xi Jinping’s China and Donald Trump’s US destined for armed conflict?

Over 70 per cent of respondents said China was in an increasingly advantageous position in the confrontation with the US, while more than 85 per cent said Beijing should “resist firmly” or “complain and object explicitly” to American hegemony.

Public surveys under authoritarian regimes such as China’s have long been questioned because fear of retribution caused widespread self-censorship, especially on politically sensitive topics, but the latest poll has largely corroborated a hardening of negative mutual perceptions between the two powers.