Build new global alliances to limit China’s ‘illicit practices’, US senators urged

Unilateral US action against China on trade will not be enough to change the Asian country’s ongoing violation of international norms and institutions, two leading China security experts warned US senators on Wednesday.

As trade officials in Washington pursue a resolution to a months-long trade war with China that the United States has waged alone, the experts said the US should focus on building new international alliances to pressure China to roll back numerous alleged improper practices including theft of intellectual property, cyberespionage, development deals that put host countries in debt, and military aggression in the South China Sea.

“An ‘America first’ strategy is a very Chinese strategy,” said Oriana Mastro, a political military affairs strategist at the US Air Force Reserve, at a hearing convened by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to examine a “new approach for an era of US-China competition”.

“One country doing it alone doesn’t have a great impact, because China can substitute its trade by going somewhere else.

“There’s no amount of threatening that we can do that would cause [Beijing] to make changes to human rights, or to the economy domestically if they think it will undermine their power.