Today, after seeing Hu Xijin's "China and the United States Today Are Not Enemies", I want to say a few more words.
The U.S.-China relationship is one of the most important bilateral relations in the world today. It is precisely for this reason that how to correctly understand Sino-US relations is of great importance to the development of China and the world at large.
We interpret China-US relations mainly on the basis of the positioning of China-US relations by China and the United States in policy documents and public statements on China-US relations. And not according to certain events or a certain idea or likes and dislikes of an individual.
Looking at the United States first, we know that the Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 passed by the U.S. Congress has six parts, of which the fifth part (Division E) is the "China Challenge Act of 2021". The bill explicitly defines the U.S.-China relationship as a strategic competition, saying that China is the number one competitor of the United States. The provisions on China in the bill can be summarized into three categories: first, to compete with China in the field of cutting-edge science and technology to ensure that the United States is a global leader in the field of semiconductors; The second is to impose economic sanctions and export controls on China and industrial entities in the economic field to ensure that the United States is the third to intervene in the fields of sovereignty and human rights, especially in the fields of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, and to unite with US allies to jointly respond to China's challenges.
That is to say, for the American political elite, "anti-China" is not only "politically correct", but also a legal and regulatory law that the United States must abide by. Not being anti-China not only means that it is politically incorrect, but also that it may be illegal. Despite this, the United States** has not explicitly declared that China is an enemy of the United States, and it is only the personal views of some politicians that say that China is an enemy of the United States.
On the other hand, in China today, we cannot find a single political document or legal document that defines the United States as a competitor of China, let alone "anti-American" content and "enemy" expression. Our leaders have repeatedly corrected the United States for defining Sino-US relations as purely a competitive relationship, emphasizing more on cooperative relations. To this end, the three principles of China-US relations are proposed: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation. If the relations between the two countries are divided into three categories: hostile relations, competitor relations, and cooperative and complementary relations, then here in China, the main thing is about cooperation, and even if there are some competitive factors in cooperation, it is hoped that it will be a kind of healthy competition. In the United States, China is the most challenging number one competitor of the United States, and there is no one. Although there is a lot of talk about competition, the United States does not refuse to cooperate, but sets a premise for cooperation: it is beneficial to the United States. The United States obviously does not like the word "win-win", it wants the United States to win unilaterally. Even so, the United States has not publicly defined Sino-US relations as hostile. In this sense, I agree with Hu Xijin's view that China and the United States today are not enemies.
In other words, today's China is not anti-American, only anti-American. Isn't it a bit winding?
There is a difference between the United States and the United States, we say that the United States is actually the person of the big capital interest group in the United States, he does not fully represent the American people, and even as we have seen California, Texas and other states behave, the United States federal ** does not even represent the American states**. Therefore, it makes sense that we do not oppose the United States and do not regard the United States as an enemy. If we are anti-US with all our hearts, it is tantamount to forcing the forces that can be united to the side of the anti-China forces in the United States, which is not in line with the spirit of our "united front."
An interesting international relationship has emerged: the United States is anti-China in order to maintain its hegemony, and China is not anti-American, but only opposes the United States ** anti-China and hegemony.
Why does the United States pursue an anti-China policy? This is something that many Chinese do not understand. In fact, the United States has made it very clear why it is anti-China: China threatens the United States! China has repeatedly explained that China does not threaten the United States: China has not deployed military forces near the United States, Chinese ships or planes have not approached the United States to detect the United States, China has not engaged in any alliances against the United States, nor has it taken the initiative to initiate sanctions against American companies, and China has never made irresponsible remarks about independent states in the United States. With such a large Pacific Ocean, how does China threaten the United States?
The United States does not believe in China's explanations. The reason why communication between China and the United States is extremely difficult is that their respective national strategic goals are different and their ways of looking at the world are also different. China has made a fortune with one mind and made the lives of the common people prosperous. The United States is bent on becoming the king and hegemon, so that the whole world will become a slave of the United States. China regards it as its core interest to enable developing countries, including itself, to become independent and self-reliant, and to enable their people to live a better life. The United States regards the pursuit of global hegemony as its core interest. The United States firmly believes that developing countries are living a good life and threatens the global hegemony of the United States. This is the lowest logic of the "China threat theory", that is, in this sense, China threatens the United States.
For China to achieve its strategic goals, it needs an international environment that is in harmony with these strategic goals: mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation. In order for the United States to achieve its strategic goals, it must subordinate itself to US interests in everything and must pursue America first in everything. Much of the post-war US-led so-called international order serves US interests, and China must change some of these unfair rules if it wants to achieve its strategic goals. The United States believes that China wants to change the international rules led by the United States, so China threatens the United States.
It is a fact that China has to try to change the elements of international rules that are conducive to the hegemony of the United States, but China does not want to overturn the overall international rules after World War II, but uses these rules to oppose the United States to oppose anti-China and hegemony.
The purpose of the United States in opposing China is to remove the stumbling blocks that stand in the way of US hegemony. However, the United States' hegemony is not in the interests of the people of the world. Because of this, it is only natural for China to oppose the United States and oppose US hegemony.
If we understand these truths, we will understand China's current approach. China does not regard any country as an enemy, including the United States. But no foreign country will be allowed to bully the Chinese people, nor will any country be allowed to pursue regional and global hegemony, including the United States.
The United States will not give up its strategic goals, and China will not give up its strategic goals. So China and the United States have to fight, and both sides are fighting to achieve their own strategic goals. China does not oppose the United States, but it must fight against the anti-China forces in the United States - oppose the policies and actions of the United States to contain and suppress China's development, and make every effort to prevent the United States' global hegemony from becoming a reality. But the U.S.-China relationship is still not hostile. We must understand that after a hostile relationship is formed, our strategic space will be smaller, and this will not be conducive to our struggle against the anti-China forces in the United States.
Struggle is a matter of strategy. Hu Xijin described China's strategy as "playing tai chi", which is vivid but too charismatic. "Playing Tai Chi" is a bit of a "shady trick", but it dissipates China's righteousness in opposing the United States, opposing China's anti-China and opposing US hegemony. China is openly opposed, as long as the United States is anti-China and dominates China, as long as the United States gives up anti-China and hegemony, China's opposition will disappear. The Chinese people are peace-loving people and are most friendly to the American people.
To understand the peculiarities of this Sino-US relationship is to understand China's position in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: China has always stood on the side of peace and justice. This is not empty talk! China is not a party to these conflicts and can handle international relations related to them in a detached manner.
Why does the United States want to decouple from China and break the chain? That's because China's long-standing strategy of deep integration with the U.S. economy has worked, and it's a strategy that counts as it goes. The plan of the United States is to put its low-end, low-value-added, and high-pollution manufacturing industry in China, and want the Chinese to always be American workers. China has taken advantage of this plan of the United States, so that the United States has a deep dependence on China - if the United States wants to sanction China, it may backfire on itself, and the so-called loss of both. China's accession to the WTO has deeply integrated itself into the economic system of the United States and even the entire West, and made the WTO rules more favorable to developing countries.
Biden recognizes that this is the reason why Trump launched the ** war with little success, so he wants to simply decouple and break the chain. When China criticized its decoupling and chain breaking is anti-globalization conservatism, Biden plagiarized von der Leyen's "de-risking" as a fig leaf, did it decouple? At least not today. China-U.S. ** is a year-on-year decrease of 12%, but the total import and export volume between China and the United States from January to November 2023 is still as high as 6070$1,442.4 billion. Among them, China's exports to the United States were 4,5775,620.2 billion US dollars, China's imports to the United States are 1492$5,822.3 billion.
In order to suppress China, Biden has even exerted his strength, but he still has such a high amount, and he wants to decouple unless the United States also takes off a layer of skin. The Biden administration had no choice, so it adjusted the all-round decoupling to the key decoupling, which is very similar to the Chiang Kai-shek regime's all-out offensive during the Liberation War to adjust the all-out offensive to the key offensive. What about the focus on decoupling? In the field of high-tech, first of all, in the field of semiconductors. But Biden underestimated China's "wage earner", and believed that it would not take much time for China to make a breakthrough in the field of chips, and then the United States would be completely unlicensed in the economic field.
The Chinese people are unwilling to listen to the words of the United States ** and concentrate on being a wage earner, and China continues to exert efforts in the high-tech field, which is Biden's biggest headache. To put it bluntly, there is only one thing that the United States has to do with China, and that is the Taiwan issue. Because of this, we see that the United States is busy with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but still deploys its main military forces around China, five aircraft carrier battle groups!
Recently, the dynamics of the Russia-Ukraine conflict have changed significantly. Europe's attitude is also very subtle, on the one hand, it claims to be firm in its policy of aiding Ukraine, and on the other hand, it is unwilling to push the extremely anti-Russian von der Leyen to the position of NATO Secretary General, which is to leave a back hand for the restoration of relations with Russia after the end of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict! Europe is not in line with the United States in its treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Red Sea crisis, and when the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we saw that the allies of the United States did not follow the United States in voting against it. At the Munich Security Conference, it seems that the Europeans understood the meaning of Wang Yi's speech. This shows that China's long-term policy toward Europe is effective. Foreign Minister Wang Yi made it clear that China supports the EU's strategic autonomy and hopes that the EU can get rid of the captive of US values, and the voice of decoupling from China in the EU is also decreasing.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict broke out suddenly, and the United States was stunned, and the Houthis joined the United States again. Russia may have played no small role in this. Russia and the United States will think of the United States to also get bogged down in the quagmire of war, and look at the two conflicts as a combination of Russia and the United States to a draw.
If Biden fails to achieve certain strategic goals in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he is likely to target China. In the recent incident in which Taiwan's Coast Guard overturned a Chinese fishing boat, killing two Chinese fishermen, the United States did not condemn the evil deeds of the Taiwan authorities, but reminded the Taiwan authorities to pay attention to the movements of Chinese mainland, and Gallaher and other US congressmen visited Taiwan to clearly express their support for the Taiwan authorities. In other words, we must be vigilant against the United States turning the Sino-US "competitive" relationship into a hostile relationship when its skills are at its wit's end, which is our bottom line and red line.
Again, the United States is facing **, Trump is an eternal black swan. His idea of dealing with China has already been revealed, that is, to unite with Russia to contain China. The first thing he announced when he came to power was likely to be to end the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and he didn't care about selling Ukraine. He will turn all his forces at China.
My final conclusion is that China opposes the United States and its anti-China and hegemony but not anti-American, so today's Sino-US relations are not hostile. The United States is anti-China and will not turn back from its hegemony, so there is a possibility that Sino-US relations will turn into hostile relations. In this regard, we must not take it lightly, and we must be vigilant against the deception of the United States and some of our scholars.