Fighting talk: it's Washington vs Beijing after US VP Mike Pence's China speech
Historians might wish to compare Pence's 45-minute policy statement with such historic episodes as George Kennan's 8,000-word telegram in 1946, Winston Churchill's "iron curtain" speech of 1946, and Harry Truman's "Truman Doctrine" address to Congress in 1947, all of which underpinned the West's cold war policy of containment toward the communist bloc led by the then-Soviet Union.
The new US diplomatic strategy toward China is the accumulation of two years of tense exchanges and failed talks, resulting in a tit-for-tat tariff war between the administrations of strongman leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
It is the result of a debate in recent years about Washington's decades-long policy toward China since Nixon - and since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1979 - among US congressmen, diplomats and academics. Like senator Joseph McCarthy's "Who lost China?" inquiry in the aftermath of Mao's communist seizure of China in 1949, an article in Foreign Affairs magazine titled "The China Reckoning" co-authored by Barack Obama's top China diplomat Kurt Campbell recently caused reverberations not only in Washington, but also across major Western capitals. In its March issue, London's The Economist ran a similarly impactful cover story titled "How the West got China wrong".
US politicians seem to have reached a consensus that Washington and the West's China policy since Nixon has failed.
In his speech, Pence said "previous administrations' hope that freedom in China would expand ... has all gone unfulfilled" because "Beijing has instead chosen the path of authoritarianism, mercantilism and aggression". His remarks reflect a strong bipartisan consensus on the need to get tough on China. For instance, recent anti-China bills, whether about trade, defence, Taiwan or Xinjiang, have all received overwhelming bipartisan support in both the Senate and House of Representatives.
US President Donald Trump has taken a strong line against Beijing. Photo: EPA.
The policy change reflects Washington's evolution from mere disappointment with Beijing to a total loss of faith in China transforming into a global power that respects universal values and norms accepted by developed economies and free democracies in the West. Reflecting this disillusionment, Pence's speech contains the toughest remarks about Beijing and sharpest, most comprehensive indictment of Chinese behaviour by any American leader in recent memory.
The speech marked a fundamental change in US policy since Nixon of "engagement" with China to a strategy of "disengagement" or "containment", as championed by anti-communist hawks such as Churchill, Truman, McCarthy and Kennan decades ago.
Pence's speech represents the most comprehensive and well-articulated narrative of the Trump administration on US-China relations. It should not just be a short-term tactic aimed at the upcoming midterm and 2020 presidential elections, as much of China's state media have claimed, but a major policy document that turns a new page in history. It is consistent with several recent Trump administration policy documents, which define China as a main rival that seeks to undermine the US economy and its interests and values.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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