Sino File | When US hawks call China’s Communist Party a threat to world peace, it’s no longer just rhetoric

Given that China-bashing has dominated all US presidential campaigns since the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, it’s no surprise that China hawks are in abundance in Washington these days.

The Donald Trump presidency has only highlighted this trend. After all, he won the election on a platform promoted by authors like Peter Navarro, who wrote Death by China: Confronting the Dragon, and Michael Pillsbury, who penned The Hundred-year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. It would be naive to think the rhetoric ahead of next year’s election would be any different.

On October 30, Pompeo began a series of speeches titled “The China Challenge”, covering what he sees as conflicts between the US and China on issues ranging from ideologies and values, and economics to human rights and defence. That came just a week after a speech by Pence that accused Beijing of everything from unfair trade practices to rampant human rights abuses to expansionist foreign policies.

What seems strange is that these speeches come amid an anticipated US-China detente, with negotiators from both countries finalising a partial trade deal to be signed by Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping this month, after an 18-month-long tit-for-tat tariff war.