By Yan Yu
The White House recently released its National Security Strategy 2022. The report, allegedly delayed by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, sees China as "the most serious long-term challenge to the international order" and vows that America must win the competition with China, revealing to the full the world’s only superpower’s deep-rooted Cold War mentality and growing strategic anxiety.
A quick look at the new report shows that the Biden administration is no wiser than its predecessor regarding its perception and understanding of the so-called strategic competition with China. Rather, it has more undisguisedly targeted China, labeling it as the top rival.
Reuters quoted former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel as saying that competition with China is pervading every chapter and that the current strategy has shifted to an overwhelming emphasis on that subject.
Some analysts said the new National Security Strategy report has shown Biden administration’s consistent China policies in a more “systematic” light: the government will increase investment at home to become more economically and technologically competitive and rely more on America’s alliance network to contain China.
Biden has spared no effort in hyping the major-country competition since he came into office. He has attacked and smeared China in the ideological domain, restricted China’s development in science and technology, used financial tools to suppress Chinese enterprises, and moved faster to form the anti-China clique…All these moves are fundamentally aimed at competing with China in all areas and curbing its development on all fronts, so as to maintain America’s global hegemony. Such an aggressive stance is driven by Washington’s hegemonistic mindset of power politics and exposes its strong anxieties about China.
Will a strong China really threaten the US and the world, as some American politicians claim? The answer is a firm no. Facts have proven that ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it has never started a single war or conflict, or encroached upon one inch of aforeign land. On the contrary, China, upholding the concept of peaceful development, has actively preserved global strategic stability and steadfastly maintained international order, being a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, a defender of the international order, a provider of public goods, and a mediator on hot-spot issues. Its concrete actions have been a powerful ballast for world peace, and its new development has provided new opportunities for the world.
Speaking of the new National Security Strategy, Daniel Russel said the report’s ambitious goal to form the most extensive alliance of nations to respond to global challenges would hardly come through without China’s cooperation. Yet certain American politicians, indulging themselves in the China paranoia, have been imagining the so-called China threat and hyping the China challenge, only to drive bilateral relations further in the competitive direction.
It’s interesting that while the new report defines China as the biggest geopolitical challenge, it affirms the possibility of peaceful coexistence and hopes for the US to win the strategic competition with China in peaceful ways. However, in Washington’s dictionary, peaceful coexistence is just a cover-up term for its incessant moves at decoupling, halt of supply, and increased tariff, for its increasingly intensified military containment of China, and for its constant instigation of confrontation between other countries and regions against China.
China and the US both stand to benefit from cooperation and lose from confrontation. If the US really wants to stay competitive in the world, it should break away from the long outdated Cold War mentality, meet China halfway on the principle of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, and steer bilateral relationship back to the track of healthy and steady development. That’s the right way to go, one that is conducive to the US itself, to all stakeholders, and to the world at large.
Editor's note: Originally published on haiwainet.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
