asiapacificresearch--2020-07-07--The Coronavirus Seal: Victoria’s Borders Close

The state of Victoria is being sealed off from the rest of Australia .
On Tuesday , at 11.59pm , the border with New South Wales will be shut with publicised resoluteness .
It is happening at the insistence of politicians across the country with a panicked urge .
On the way are reminders about the miracle that was federation in 1901 .
That a Commonwealth was ever formed from the Britannic nuts and bolts of an invasive penal settlement was remarkable , given the otherwise innate hostilities , not to mention competitiveness , the states had shown to each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a touch over a century ago , when the borders were sealed in a response to the ravages of pneumonic influenza , inaccurately named Spanish flu .
The venture is going to be heavily policed .
Human personnel , drones and surveillance equipment will be deployed .
55 ground crossings including four major highways , 33 bridges , two waterways , various numbers of train stations and airports will be subjects of interest .
Even with this , there is scepticism .
Viruses will find their carriers and unwitting accomplices , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews , will be “ enforced on the New South Wales side , so as not to be a drain on resources that are very focused on fighting the virus right now across our state.
” Residents in border towns must apply for permits for movement between the states .
As the ABC describes it , “ Only permit holders , emergency services workers , freight drivers and returning travellers will be able to cross into New South Wales from Victoria.
” The penalties for breaching such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fines or six months in jail .
Businesses on the border face ruin and considerable opacity in terms of regulations .
While that is happening , 3,000 residents in Flemington and North Melbourne continue their quarantine in the public housing towers that have been designated as COVID-19 hotspots .
Promises of assistance made by Andrews have yet to materialise in any meaningful way .
Mental health practitioners and social workers seem few and far between .
The government food supplies remain spectral .
That said , FareShare , despite being a charity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prompting of the Department of Health and Human Services , Sunday roasts , vegetarian casseroles and family pies , supplemented by 3,500 quiches and 1,600 sausage rolls .
The charity has set up , according to The Advocate , “ an emergency cool room packed with thousands of nutritious , cooked meals ” in North Melbourne , though it is hard to see how these “ cater to a range of cultural and dietary preferences ” .
The feeling that “ prison food ” is being supplied to “ inmates ” is unmistakable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short supply .
As Nine News reported with much fanfare , “ A daughter and her elderly mother trapped in Melbourne ’ s public housing lockdown have broken down in tears , detailing how they have only been given four sausage rolls to eat in more than 48 hours.
” But no matter : this has provided charities such as FareShare with a few good publicity snaps .
The show of false remedies must go on .
While this is taking place , the premier remains convinced that food and toys are making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing is distinctly not in short supply .
The police , some 500 of them , are out in force on all nine estates .
These armed officers have been shown to be as ill-informed as the residents .
Communal spaces continue being used ; movement through the buildings is permitted .
The prospects of mass infection through the tenements seems likely .
Even the healthy stand condemned .
Residents are mouldering in desperation .
Papers with the pleas of “ Treat us as Humans : Not Caged Animals ” have been pasted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traditionally prejudiced against public housing residents , have been given a good airing .
To that have come good dollops of racial presumption .
It all looks fitting for such critics : the darkies , the ill , the derelict , being fenced by police , monitored less for their safety than the greater good of society .
The diseased , as with epidemics in history , will be walled up .
One of Australia ’ s most conspicuous reactionaries , One Nation leader and Senator Pauline Hanson , spoke approvingly of such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the race card and its impurities , she suggested that the residents in the nine towers were “ drug addicts ” and “ alcoholics ” , which was not helped by the fact that they could not speak English .
Even this was a bit much for the good people of Channel Nine ’ s Today Show .
“ The Today Show has advised Pauline Hanson , ” came a statement from Nine ’ s Director of News and Current Affairs Darren Wick , “ that she will no longer be appearing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Perhaps hypocrisy is less palatable in the morning .
The spectacles unfolding in North Melbourne , Flemington and parts of the city convey an ugliness that has become normalised in certain countries .
Public health is not merely a matter for doctors and health practitioners but truncheons .
Another sentiment is also detectable : a certain delight at Victoria being made whipping boy and pariah of the states .
All this shows the power a virus can wield .
To coronavirus go the spoils .
Note to readers : please click the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this article to your email lists .
Crosspost on your blog site , internet forums .
etc .
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College , Cambridge .
He lectures at RMIT University , Melbourne .
He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research .
Email : [ email protected ] Featured image : Police guard access to housing commission apartments under lockdown in Melbourne | AP

The state of Victoria is being sealed off from the rest of Australia. On Tuesday, at 11.59pm, the border with New South Wales will be shut with publicised resoluteness. It is happening at the insistence of politicians across the country with a panicked urge. On the way are reminders about the miracle that was federation in 1901. That a Commonwealth was ever formed from the Britannic nuts and bolts of an invasive penal settlement was remarkable, given the otherwise innate hostilities, not to mention competitiveness, the states had shown to each other.
The last time this happened was a touch over a century ago, when the borders were sealed in a response to the ravages of pneumonic influenza, inaccurately named Spanish flu. The venture is going to be heavily policed. Human personnel, drones and surveillance equipment will be deployed. 55 ground crossings including four major highways, 33 bridges, two waterways, various numbers of train stations and airports will be subjects of interest. Even with this, there is scepticism. Viruses will find their carriers and unwitting accomplices, however impressive the policing effort.
The closure, according to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, will be “enforced on the New South Wales side, so as not to be a drain on resources that are very focused on fighting the virus right now across our state.” Residents in border towns must apply for permits for movement between the states. As the ABC describes it, “Only permit holders, emergency services workers, freight drivers and returning travellers will be able to cross into New South Wales from Victoria.” The penalties for breaching such rules are severe: $11,000 in fines or six months in jail. Businesses on the border face ruin and considerable opacity in terms of regulations.
While that is happening, 3,000 residents in Flemington and North Melbourne continue their quarantine in the public housing towers that have been designated as COVID-19 hotspots. Promises of assistance made by Andrews have yet to materialise in any meaningful way. Mental health practitioners and social workers seem few and far between. The government food supplies remain spectral. That said, FareShare, despite being a charity, claims to have provided, at the prompting of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sunday roasts, vegetarian casseroles and family pies, supplemented by 3,500 quiches and 1,600 sausage rolls. The charity has set up, according to The Advocate, “an emergency cool room packed with thousands of nutritious, cooked meals” in North Melbourne, though it is hard to see how these “cater to a range of cultural and dietary preferences”.
The feeling that “prison food” is being supplied to “inmates” is unmistakable, though even that has been in short supply. As Nine News reported with much fanfare, “A daughter and her elderly mother trapped in Melbourne’s public housing lockdown have broken down in tears, detailing how they have only been given four sausage rolls to eat in more than 48 hours.” But no matter: this has provided charities such as FareShare with a few good publicity snaps. The show of false remedies must go on.
While this is taking place, the premier remains convinced that food and toys are making their way to the residents.
“This is a massive task and the message to everybody in the towers… (is)those staff – thousands of them – are doing the very, very best they can and they will continue to do everything they can to support those who are impacted by this lockdown.”
One thing is distinctly not in short supply. The police, some 500 of them, are out in force on all nine estates. These armed officers have been shown to be as ill-informed as the residents. Communal spaces continue being used; movement through the buildings is permitted. The prospects of mass infection through the tenements seems likely. Even the healthy stand condemned.
Residents are mouldering in desperation. Papers with the pleas of “Treat us as Humans: Not Caged Animals” have been pasted against windows. Malevolent attitudes, many traditionally prejudiced against public housing residents, have been given a good airing. To that have come good dollops of racial presumption. It all looks fitting for such critics: the darkies, the ill, the derelict, being fenced by police, monitored less for their safety than the greater good of society. The diseased, as with epidemics in history, will be walled up.
One of Australia’s most conspicuous reactionaries, One Nation leader and Senator Pauline Hanson, spoke approvingly of such measures. Never one to shy away from the race card and its impurities, she suggested that the residents in the nine towers were “drug addicts” and “alcoholics”, which was not helped by the fact that they could not speak English. Even this was a bit much for the good people of Channel Nine’s Today Show. “The Today Show has advised Pauline Hanson,” came a statement from Nine’s Director of News and Current Affairs Darren Wick, “that she will no longer be appearing on our programme as a regular contributor.” Perhaps hypocrisy is less palatable in the morning.
The spectacles unfolding in North Melbourne, Flemington and parts of the city convey an ugliness that has become normalised in certain countries. Public health is not merely a matter for doctors and health practitioners but truncheons. Another sentiment is also detectable: a certain delight at Victoria being made whipping boy and pariah of the states. All this shows the power a virus can wield. To coronavirus go the spoils.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Featured image: Police guard access to housing commission apartments under lockdown in Melbourne | AP


asiapacificresearch--2020-07-13--Covid-19, Hunger and Starvation in India. Globalist Takeover of India’s Public Health Policy

Some might ask why India is in complete lockstep with global lockdown despite the very low COVID19-related mortality figures for 1.3 billion people .
Following this introduction is a two-hour interview with investigative journalist Kapil Bajaj .
It focuses on the Public Health Foundation of India and how the Gates Foundation-pharma cabal bought influence , embedded itself within government machinery and is determining India ’ s lockdown and public health policy .
According to Bajaj , it has effectively privatised and taken over the state ’ s public health agenda .
In India , tens of millions are in danger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has caused massive population displacement , probably the biggest since independence as millions of migrant workers returned to their villages , and has devastated livelihoods , especially among the poorest sections of society .
Even with the inflated COVID-related global death figures we see , those figures could be massively outstripped by the impacts of lockdown .
A study published in the Lancet in May predicted that globally possibly an additional 6,000 children could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months as the response to COVID-19 continues to weaken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Based on the worst of three scenarios in 118 low- and middle-income countries , the analysis estimates that an additional 1.2 million under-five deaths could occur in just six months due to reductions in routine health service coverage levels and an increase in child wasting .
These potential child deaths will be in addition to the 2.5 million children who already die before their 5th birthday every six months in the 118 countries included in the study .
Some 56,700 more maternal deaths could also occur in just six months .
The study @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , there would be a 9.8 per cent increase in under-five child deaths , or an estimated 1,400 a day , and an 8.3 per cent increase in maternal deaths .
In the worst-case scenario , where health interventions are reduced by around 45 per cent , there could be as much as a 44.7 per cent increase in under-five child deaths and a 38.6 per cent increase in maternal deaths per month .
If routine health care is disrupted and access to food is decreased , the increase in child and maternal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ listed as one of the 10 countries that could potentially have the largest number of additional child deaths .
With this in mind , Pratyush Singh ( researcher specialising in social medicine and community health ) writes on The Wire website : “ India has the largest number of TB deaths in the world with more than 1200 people dying every day .
As more TB patients find it difficult to get tested or access medicine this figure is almost certainly increasing… The list of diseases killing and disabling people is very long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ignores them , more and more are dying .
The possibility of how the coronavirus phenomenon is killing more people than the infection itself is worth considering.
” He says that more than 200,000 new patients of end-stage renal disease are added every year , which incrementally adds to more than 30 million dialysis episodes per year .
It is worth considering that a dialysis centre is least 50 kilometres away for almost 60 per cent of Indians .
Singh says that as most kidney patients in India depend on haemodialysis that might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week , their travails during the lockdown are apparent .
In India , severe diarrhoea is responsible for the deaths of one in four neonatal children in India .
Again , Singh notes that timely hospitalised care is the only safety net for an undernourished infant .
Singh provides a damning indictment ( “ delinquent neglect ” ) of India ’ s ( increasingly privatised ) healthcare system which prior to lockdown was for many already difficult to access and woefully neglected in terms of public spending .
He notes that India has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world , which means that more than 3,000 families lose their children under the age of five every day : Now that pressure is building to fully open up economies , Bill Gates , the WHO and strategically co-opted figures are shouting about the coming of the ‘ second wave ’ .
Have no doubt , they will try to keep this pot boiling .
Click link to the video interview with Kapil Bajaj ’ s entitled Globalist Takeover of India ’ s Public Health System Note to readers : please click the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this article to your email lists .
Crosspost on your blog site , internet forums .
etc .

Some might ask why India is in complete lockstep with global lockdown despite the very low COVID19-related mortality figures for 1.3 billion people. Following this introduction is a two-hour interview with investigative journalist Kapil Bajaj. It focuses on the Public Health Foundation of India and how the Gates Foundation-pharma cabal bought influence, embedded itself within government machinery and is determining India’s lockdown and public health policy. According to Bajaj, it has effectively privatised and taken over the state’s public health agenda.
In India, tens of millions are in danger of acute hunger and starvation. Lockdown has caused massive population displacement, probably the biggest since independence as millions of migrant workers returned to their villages, and has devastated livelihoods, especially among the poorest sections of society.
Even with the inflated COVID-related global death figures we see, those figures could be massively outstripped by the impacts of lockdown.
A study published in the Lancet in May predicted that globally possibly an additional 6,000 children could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months as the response to COVID-19 continues to weaken health systems and disrupt routine services. Based on the worst of three scenarios in 118 low- and middle-income countries, the analysis estimates that an additional 1.2 million under-five deaths could occur in just six months due to reductions in routine health service coverage levels and an increase in child wasting.
These potential child deaths will be in addition to the 2.5 million children who already die before their 5th birthday every six months in the 118 countries included in the study. Some 56,700 more maternal deaths could also occur in just six months.
The study warns that in the least severe scenario, there would be a 9.8 per cent increase in under-five child deaths, or an estimated 1,400 a day, and an 8.3 per cent increase in maternal deaths. In the worst-case scenario, where health interventions are reduced by around 45 per cent, there could be as much as a 44.7 per cent increase in under-five child deaths and a 38.6 per cent increase in maternal deaths per month. If routine health care is disrupted and access to food is decreased, the increase in child and maternal deaths will be devastating.
India is listed as one of the 10 countries that could potentially have the largest number of additional child deaths. With this in mind, Pratyush Singh (researcher specialising in social medicine and community health) writes on The Wire website:
“India has the largest number of TB deaths in the world with more than 1200 people dying every day. As more TB patients find it difficult to get tested or access medicine this figure is almost certainly increasing… The list of diseases killing and disabling people is very long in India and every day that it ignores them, more and more are dying. The possibility of how the coronavirus phenomenon is killing more people than the infection itself is worth considering.”
He says that more than 200,000 new patients of end-stage renal disease are added every year, which incrementally adds to more than 30 million dialysis episodes per year. It is worth considering that a dialysis centre is least 50 kilometres away for almost 60 per cent of Indians. Singh says that as most kidney patients in India depend on haemodialysis that might require as many as five sessions per week, their travails during the lockdown are apparent.
In India, severe diarrhoea is responsible for the deaths of one in four neonatal children in India. Again, Singh notes that timely hospitalised care is the only safety net for an undernourished infant.
Singh provides a damning indictment (“delinquent neglect”) of India’s (increasingly privatised) healthcare system which prior to lockdown was for many already difficult to access and woefully neglected in terms of public spending. He notes that India has the highest under-five mortality rate in the world, which means that more than 3,000 families lose their children under the age of five every day:
“Close to 30,000 mothers die due to pregnancy-related issues in 2017 as per UNICEF data and Indian government estimates show that only 21% of expecting mothers receive complete antenatal care.”
Singh concludes:
“More children will die of starvation and lack of healthcare than from the coronavirus infection. Please remember that the first Comprehensive National Nutritional Survey (2016-18) in the country reported that less than 7% of the country’s children under the age of two receive the global minimum acceptable diet.”
Now that pressure is building to fully open up economies, Bill Gates, the WHO and strategically co-opted figures are shouting about the coming of the ‘second wave’. Have no doubt, they will try to keep this pot boiling.
…
Click link to the video interview with Kapil Bajaj’s entitled Globalist Takeover of India’s Public Health System
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Featured image is from Pixabay


asiapacificresearch--2020-08-03--COVID-19 and the Reification of the US-China “Cold War”

The implications of the pandemic for US-China relations are relevant for global peace and prosperity , well beyond the Asia-Pacific .
Rather than joining forces against the pandemic , COVID-19 is among the factors that have widened the rift between the United States and China , bringing bilateral relations to their lowest level since Nixon and Kissinger ’ s overtures in 1971 .
In fact , US-China zero-sum interactions across the geopolitical , economic , technological and political domains have spiralled towards a dangerous race to the bottom .
While it is too early to declare a US-China “ Cold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections .
The fight against COVID-19 and its aftermath poses one of the most pressing challenges confronting the international community since the end of the Cold War .
At the same time , the coronavirus crisis coincides with momentous changes in world politics and seems to accelerate the decline of the so-called liberal international order , a misnomer for an era loosely defined by multilateral diplomacy , an open world economy and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ military preponderance and a US-China entente that extended from geopolitics to economics , trade , technology and finance .
Yet , China ’ s new-found assertiveness , global political involution , the fecklessness of international organizations , the growing allure of dirigisme , and the advent of a more isolationist , if not outright disruptive and protectionist United States posture , have dealt repeated blows − both exogenous and endogenous – to international stability .
The pandemic has accelerated these political and economic trends .
For instance , international organizations , such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the United Nations , have been powerless in the face of COVID-19 because they ’ ve been playing second-fiddle to great power politics .
China ’ s misreporting to and influence over the WHO contributed to an initial underestimation of the health risks and infectiousness associated with the novel coronavirus .
Still , Washington ’ s populist decision to withdraw its funding and membership from the WHO – adding to growing frustrations of its European and Pacific allies – only exacerbated the problem of multilateral coordination during a pandemic .
The emergency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over economic and social affairs – arguably also for good reasons – and has lent legitimacy to a recrudescence of nationalist and protectionist instincts , effectively empowering many of the world ’ s strongmen .
Still , the ripple effects of a potential post-pandemic depression are hard to discern .
As popular discontent mounts , populist strongmen and democratic leaders alike may exhaust the charisma acquired through COVID-19 crisis-responses , ushering the way to two broad scenarios .
A pessimistic outlook suggests further political decay and deepening geopolitical tensions as national interests more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ divert attention from socio-economic grievances .
Alternatively , contemporary history has demonstrated that genuine political evolution , new social compacts , redistributive political economies and multilateral systems of governance may acquire a new shine following a major crisis ( Both scenarios assessed by Fukuyama 2020 ) .
This essay focuses on the geopolitical impact of the pandemic in the Asia-Pacific with an accent on US-China dynamics .
I argue in favour of the first , pessimistic scenario because COVID-19 is cementing Sino-American strategic rivalry and crystallizing Washington ’ s maximalist pushback against Beijing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the region .
High-stake geopolitical manoeuvrings between the US and China are impacting economic , political and security dynamics globally .
More importantly , the ongoing political warfare between the two – one that has been exacerbated by the pandemic – is cementing US-China enmity and reifying the new “ Cold War ” .
Understanding the drivers of US-China strategic competition will help third parties better navigate the stormier geopolitical seas ahead .
As the discussion below will demonstrate , US allies are well-advised to prepare for the challenges posed by a rising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a concomitant need to manage and ameliorate the risks associated with a disruptive , and declining , hegemonic power – the United States of America .
Given space limitations , this essay places special emphasis on the US pushback ; the author recognizes China ’ s composite assertiveness , if not aggressiveness , that has fed into US behaviour ( Small et alia 2020 ) , but the radical pushback is arguably feeding the monster it has tried to tame .
US-China Power Politics During the Pandemic : Minds , Money and Might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2017 National Security Strategy ( NSS ) and 2018 National Defense Strategy , the Trump administration has embarked on a steady crescendo of initiatives , both domestic and international in scope , aimed at curbing China ’ s influence .
Following the demise of voices of moderation , such as former director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn , security and economic hawks within the Trump administration have steered the American ship of state towards a maximalist pushback against Chinese assertiveness .
For instance , the National Security Council has worked in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department , the Department of Justice ( DOJ ) and other relevant government agencies to craft a “ whole-of-government ” response that mobilized US leverage – from trade embargoes and military power to strategic communications and counterintelligence ( Sutter 2019 ) – to contain China ’ s rise .
The foreign policy pendulum had shifted substantially from the Obama presidency – an administration that was keener on transnational threats and diplomatic inducements over big-stick diplomacy – to usher in Trump ’ s highly transactional diplomacy , and contempt for global challenges – such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and international organizations .
Thus , the US muscled up for an age of “ great power competition ” to pursue peace through strength and aimed at rectifying supposed security and economic imbalances with friends and foes alike , through an “ America First ” agenda .
Specific to the China challenge , the recent overhaul of the United States ’ foreign and security policy is premised on a Manichean diagnosis of the nature of its main strategic competitor .
Fieldwork in Washington DC in 2019 and 2020 suggested that key national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) and its influence are essentially malign .
Under Xi Jinping ’ s leadership , the CCP engaged in cultural and ( through forced sterilization ) effective genocide in Xinjiang , heavy-handed political repression as in Hong Kong , and a dystopic use of new technologies for surveillance purposes .
While much of this assessment rings true , the US government translated the CCP ’ s pursuit of regime security and its regional assertiveness into a conspiratorial assessment of China ’ s global intentions , capabilities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barboza 2020 , Spalding 2019 , McMaster 2020 ) .
US decisionmakers believe that the CCP seeks to export its autocratic system of governance , ensnares developing countries into neo-colonial “ debt trap ” diplomacy under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative , infiltrates liberal democracies to meddle into their domestic politics , and leverages “ whole-of-society ” intelligence efforts to steal its competitors ’ technological , military and economic secrets ( White House 2020 ) .
In short , key US policymakers equated China with the Soviet Union and Xi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a capitalist , democratic United States was fundamentally incompatible and couldn ’ t co-exist with a Marxist-Leninist regime , that poses a long-term existential threat ( Pompeo 2020 , O ’ Brien 2020 ) .
Alas , the COVID-19 black swan has accelerated the international and domestic push factors towards a downward spiral in US-China relations .
To be sure , the US-China Cold War trope already contained the seeds of a self-fulfilling prophecy ( Wolf 2019 ) , but the administration ’ s Cold Warriors did not have a free hand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer were more interested in reaching a trade deal with Chinese counterparts rather than pursuing negotiations into an endless economic race to the bottom .
More importantly , they were empowered by a US President , who prioritized his own re-election and , as long as the US economy roared and Trump could have spun the US-China phase-one trade deal as a “ victory ” , he was conspicuously uninterested in criticizing China ’ s gross human rights violations .
In fact , the US president was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s autocratic powers and methods ( Bolton 2020 ) .
Finally , while the US legislative branch pointed at a bipartisan consensus aimed at curbing Chinese influence the spirit remained largely reactive not least because US public opinion prioritized Islamic terrorism and Russia as international threats .
On the contrary , the pandemic has empowered the US administration ’ s radical hawks , convinced Trump of the merits of demonizing China as key to a second term , thus abandoning his earlier restraint to make up for a failing economy and falling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a degree of reactive aggressiveness on China ’ s part and fed into spiralling US-China security dilemmas during an election year .
The pandemic has widened the international rift between the two great powers and accelerated the trend towards international instability .
In the author ’ s view , the pandemic fed into mutual mistrust , deepening geopolitical tensions and mounting insecurity that were independent of each state ’ s strategic intent .
The logic has been distinctively zero-sum .
In fact , the US government explicitly aimed to prove that Beijing was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pompeo 2020 ) , while policymakers on both sides understood defensive or internally motivated initiatives as offensive ones .
As a result , the US and China moved along a mix of reactive and assertive postures that betrayed a series of dangerous security dilemmas governing bilateral relations and the two governments have not shied from tapping all dimensions of power during the pandemic : military , economic and communication power .
In fact , the Trump administration recalibrated its maximalist pushback on all of these dimensions in light of the security and economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ unrestricted warfare ” ( Barboza 2020 , Spalding 2019 ) .
The pandemic presents a good window on the escalation of US-China power politics in the three-dimensional chessboard .
The mutually reinforcing dangerous spirals in propaganda , techno-economic competition and military rivalry underpins the author ’ s pessimistic outlook .
First and foremost , the US and China have been embroiled in an all-out communication war during the pandemic , replete with propaganda and disinformation .
Domestic factors have been particularly salient in facilitating the vicious circle of US-China retaliatory tit-for-tat during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s and Xi ’ s preoccupation with the preservation of their own political legitimacy in the face of a major crisis as the driver of the US-China clash ( Christensen 2020 ) .
Thus , China and the United States ’ blame game on the origins of the pandemic , according to which government laboratories of either country were implicated in the creation of the virus , was aimed at diminishing the responsibilities of their own leaders .
As the US economy entered into a recession , Trump and the Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drums to : 1 ) demonize China for causing the pandemic and the economic crash , and 2 ) indict Joe Biden for being soft on China , for instance , because he did not support the administration ’ s early China travel ban and because he was traditionally in favour of a policy of engagement towards Beijing .
These accusations would reach their nadir through heavy-handed ad campaigns , according to which Biden was complicit with China , a country responsible for “ stealing our jobs ” and “ killing our people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government-backed narratives of victimhood at the hands of a malevolent China have led public opinion to prioritize the China threat , and cornered Biden and the Democratic Party into an equally resolute stance against Beijing .
International factors in the zero-sum logic of power politics have also been at play .
The US government ’ s preoccupation with building a “ coalition of the willing ” to investigate the origins of the virus , and its denial of WHO analyses of its origins and progression , certainly aimed at facile scapegoating to account @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stemmed from the ideological belief that the CCP was responsible , even if unwittingly , for the creation and spread of the virus ( Rogin 2020 ) .
The Trump administration aimed at cornering the CCP for its negligence in allowing the virus to spread in order to score points in the US-China global battle for “ hearts-and-minds ” that has gathered momentum over the past few years .
Along with an overhaul of the State Department that prioritized the China challenge , and the rallying of the CIA , Homeland Security and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traditional public diplomacy programs to refurbish and substantially empower the Global Engagement Center ( GEC ) – an interagency office aimed at coordinating , integrating , and synchronizing government-wide communications initiatives directed at foreign audiences with an original focus on ISIS and , eventually , Russian disinformation .
Under the Trump administration , GEC would engage in data-driven and audience-focused strategic communications that countered especially China ’ s narratives , propaganda , and public diplomacy-writ large .
By 2020 GEC ’ s base budget had ballooned to $ 138 million dollars from $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Department of State 2020 ) .
The zero-sum quality to US-China public diplomacy initiatives triggered action/reaction dynamics , no matter the intended audiences and effectiveness of such messaging .
For instance , GEC had prioritized China ’ s “ medical aid diplomacy ” in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis , especially its heavy-use of state-sponsored disinformation and coordinated inauthentic behaviour on social media ( Gabrielle 2020 ) .
GEC has grossly overestimated China ’ s efforts to subvert the US , hinting at an improbable coordination between Russia and China in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ magnitude of China ’ s disinformation network on social media ( CNN 2020 ) .
Alas , the US government apparently understood China ’ s propaganda efforts solely in terms of an offensive strategy that weaponized its public diplomacy to mimic Russian disinformation malpractice .
According to this logic , China would spin its medical diplomacy and assistance for political advantage , thereby discrediting European and US governments ’ actions , magnifying social tensions and driving a wedge between targeted states and their traditional allies .
In fact , China ’ s “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engagement was essentially domestic-focused .
The propaganda and retaliatory measures threatened against countries that criticized Beijing ’ s handling of the crisis , such as Australia , successfully alienated China ’ s counterparts .
Similar to the Wolf Warrior movie franchise , China ’ s heavy-handed diplomacy and more active use of government-backed disinformation campaigns on Western social media were successful with the intended audiences : Chinese citizens – who vicariously participated in the Twitter battles through echoes in their own state-sanctioned media – Chinese expats and overseas Chinese .
Authoritative China-watchers recognize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of deep insecurity over regime stability – in fact , real unemployment had already sky-rocketed ahead of the COVID-19 crisis ( Interview 2019 ) – and preliminary evidence suggests that China ’ s overseas information operations were aimed at mobilizing and cementing a united front already by late 2019 ( Etō 2020 ) .
The US government ’ s all-out communication offensive on the virus origins , on China ’ s mishandling of the coronavirus , and high-profile calls for political change ( Pottinger 2020 ; Pompeo 2020 ) certainly hit a raw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communities , which have fuller access to information through Western media and social media platforms , are an important pressure group on regime stability in the mainland .
Above all , US efforts to demonize China across a wide range of issues from Covid to economic exploitation and technological espionage directed against the US were above all meant for domestic audiences to raise awareness of the long-term “ existential threat ” posed by China , in the words of Attorney General William Barr .
The US counter-intelligence pushback under the banner of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ picked up momentum with high-profile indictments targeting Chinese espionage activities in the US climaxing during the pandemic .
In July FBI director William Wray reported more than 2000 active counterintelligence investigations tied to China , and a new China-related counterintelligence investigation opened by the FBI every 10 hours ( Wray 2020 ) .
Growing oversight and limitations on the activities of US-based Chinese diplomats and state-sanctioned media outlets , visa caps and bans on Chinese reporters , advanced STEM researchers and Chinese nationals with previous ties to the military apparatus , and threats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of thousands of foreign , especially Chinese , students in US high schools and universities were a prelude to the July 2020 closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston .
These activities illustrate the US government ’ s maximalist agenda .
The Chinese tit-for-tat response was closure of the US consulate in Chengdu , with little comparable fanfare and popular mobilization .
The Chinese government walked a fine line between communicating resolve , while not escalating the situation .
Ahead of the pandemic , US officials suggested that prosecutors were going to come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China-related espionage matters ( CSIS 2020 ) , but the surprising escalation of events testified to the hawks ’ growing shadow within the US administration .
And in February 2020 , for instance , the DOJ indicted Huawei on charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ( RICO ) that it stole intellectual property rights from six US companies ; this unusual indictment , usually reserved for criminal organizations , is part of an effort to prevent Huawei from using the US financial system , including US dollars-based transactions , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Britain which has succumbed to US pressures to cancel Huawei operations in that country .
The above initiatives were closely linked with US economic competition with China , especially Beijing ’ s quest for a technological edge at the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution .
Following the advent of Trump , the US redoubled its efforts at economic statecraft .
That is , the use of economic and tech policy to advance security and diplomatic goals .
China ’ s dirigisme , its distorted market practices and its notorious intellectual property right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countermeasures – including the aforementioned DOJ ’ s China Initiative – to protect the US defense industrial base and its sensitive technologies , also through tighter screening of foreign direct investments , and export controls .
This initiative prioritized foundational technologies , that could provide a military and economic edge to US firms .
After all , the deployment of new technologies , such as Artificial Intelligence , quantum computing , robotics and advanced information and communication components presented dual-use risks .
These were especially evident under China ’ s “ military-civil fusion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Washington also embarked on a more offensive set of measures to slow down China ’ s transformation into a global powerhouse able to compete with the US .
Import tariffs , blanket bans and threats against the rollout of Chinese 5G networks at home and abroad , and the imposition of export controls on US technology to major competitors , such as Huawei , would have led to a US-China technological and economic decoupling , with major ruptures to global supply chains .
By the time China and the US had agreed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deal , overall tariffs on Chinese imports into the US market had sky-rocketed to 19.3 % .
China also agreed to buy $ 200 billion-worth of US exports to freeze the trade war and deter Trump from more restrictive executive orders against its national champions , but the pandemic broke the US-China economic truce .
As the coronavirus hit China , implementation of the US-China trade deal became unlikely ; and as the coronavirus hit the United States and the global economy , the prospects of a Trump ’ s re-election dimmed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the China hawks ’ maximalist agenda to engage in markedly more destructive economic statecraft .
In May 2020 Trump renewed an earlier executive order concerned with embargoing exports of US technology and components to Chinese powerhouses , including Huawei .
More importantly , he agreed – following earlier vacillations – to block US semiconductors and foreign chips with US tech component from reaching Huawei .
The US government did explore inducements and alternatives to China ’ s 5G dominance ; at different points , government officials suggested buying up or providing export credits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s largest competitors on 5G components , or providing export credits to cloud-based alternatives hailing from Japan .
But the government was now clearly acting in ways to slow Huawei down , through heavy-handed US high-tech embargoes and restricting market access ( FitzGerald et al 2020 ) .
Finally , OECD countries ’ — indeed much of the world — heavy reliance on China for the supply of medical products and active ingredients of most generic drugs has translated into cool-headed calls to ( partly ) readjust their economies ’ supply chains .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ aimed at slowing down China ’ s catch-up , also included negative inducements for US and multinational enterprises to more fully decouple from China ’ s market and tech-providers .
Essentially , these countermeasures heighten the risk of doing business with China ’ s multinational enterprise , and will drive away customers from suboptimal Chinese products , especially in high income economies .
The US government certainly demonized the risks associated with Chinese technology , from 5G components to social media platforms , to convince allies and third countries from shunning these products @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic –also due to Beijing ’ s own heavy-handed tactics and self-serving behaviour – facilitated this process and became hostage to political grandstanding .
After all , European public opinion polls registered a marked worsening of perceptions towards China ( Oertel 2020 ) .
Finally , what direct US pressure on allied governments couldn ’ t achieve , was effectively reached through US tech embargoes .
The UK ’ s surprising backtracking and ban on Huawei owes much to heavy-handed pressure from Washington .
( Helm 2020 ) .
The military and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s China pushback deserve an essay of its own .
But suffice to say that under Trump the US government increased the number of freedom of navigation operations ( FONOPs ) , while more actively enlisting the participation of likeminded partners in the deterrence mix towards China .
In recent years the US government deployed its military and Coast Guard vessels and has mulled introducing tactical nuclear weapons in Northeast Asia .
The scrapping of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement in 2019 also points to a US-China missile race .
The pandemic has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increased tempos of military exercises in waters surrounding China , from the Indian Ocean to the South and East China Seas .
This military signalling was a response to China ’ s growing assertiveness in its neighbourhood during the pandemic , as evidenced by the India-China standoff and its mounting pressure in and around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands .
This signalling culminated in two recent major exercises led by US aircraft carrier battlegroups with , respectively , the Indian navy off the Andaman Coast and with Australia and Japan in the Philippines Sea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take a sterner stance on China ’ s illegal maritime claims in the South China Sea has also been a notable development during the pandemic .
But US salami-slicing tactics across the Taiwan Straits , while certainly reacting to earlier Chinese encroachment and maximalism , seriously risk propelling the world ’ s two largest economies into a hot confrontation .
This essay has made clear that the power political offensive waged by the United States has a distinctively zero-sum nature that encompasses the information and economic domains .
But , to date @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change in Chinese behaviour , not least because the end goal of the government ’ s “ strategic approach ” is unclear and its modus operandi is wholly premised on negative inducements .
In fact , Washington ’ s propaganda , economic coercion and strategic narratives that suggest support for regime change may be understood as political warfare .
Arguably , the US government ’ s own brand of “ unrestricted warfare ” may get under the skin of the Chinese leadership and open rifts between the CCP and wider society , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the author ’ s view , however , Xi Jinping is benefitting from anti-US nationalism and a rally round the flag effect that , in return , feeds US intransigence .
The pandemic is one factor that has exacerbated the maximalist diagnosis of China ’ s malign intentions ( and growing capabilities ) feeding into an exaggerated pushback that , in turn , kindles the insecurity of the counterpart .
The downward spiral in US-China economic , strategic and propaganda interaction risks crystallizing enmity , as public opinion in both countries becomes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Pompeo made a speech at the Nixon Presidential Library that marks the official end of US engagement of China .
The Manichean tones and the stark choices between Freedom and Tyranny betray a resemblance with one of the speeches that marked the beginning of the Cold War , the Truman Doctrine .
Still , most US allies will not buy into Pompeo ’ s most radical prescriptions and the pandemic has demonstrated just as much , as evidenced by the EU and major European players ’ careful stance ( Pugliese 2020 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Soviet Union nor is Xi Joseph Stalin .
Moreover , US multinational enterprises and the rest of the world will likely continue doing business with China .
As Pompeo observes , Nixon ’ s feared that the United States might create a “ Frankenstein ” ( monster ) by opening the world to the CCP ( Pompeo 2020 ) .
The very opposite logic – a Manichean China policy premised entirely on sticks and with no carrots to allow the counterpart to de-escalate – may actually be closer to the truth .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ deepen in the public opinion of both states , a potential Biden presidency or Democratic-led Congress will become warier of undoing some of the anti-China legacy of the Trump administration .
While it is too early to declare a US-China “ Cold War ” , China ’ s assertiveness and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections .
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Giulio Pugliese is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow and Departmental Lecturer at Oxford University ’ s Oxford School of Global and Area Studies ( OSGA ) .
He is affiliated with St. Antony ’ s College .
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1 For evidence , please refer to Beijing Biden , a website and ad campaign pushed by the richest pro-Trump Super PAC , co-founded by Vice-President Mike Pence ’ s Former Chief of Staff .
All images in this article are from APJJF

Abstract
The implications of the pandemic for US-China relations are relevant for global peace and prosperity, well beyond the Asia-Pacific. Rather than joining forces against the pandemic, COVID-19 is among the factors that have widened the rift between the United States and China, bringing bilateral relations to their lowest level since Nixon and Kissinger’s overtures in 1971. In fact, US-China zero-sum interactions across the geopolitical, economic, technological and political domains have spiralled towards a dangerous race to the bottom. While it is too early to declare a US-China “Cold War”, China’s assertiveness and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections.
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The fight against COVID-19 and its aftermath poses one of the most pressing challenges confronting the international community since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, the coronavirus crisis coincides with momentous changes in world politics and seems to accelerate the decline of the so-called liberal international order, a misnomer for an era loosely defined by multilateral diplomacy, an open world economy and a degree of international stability buttressed by US military preponderance and a US-China entente that extended from geopolitics to economics, trade, technology and finance. Yet, China’s new-found assertiveness, global political involution, the fecklessness of international organizations, the growing allure of dirigisme, and the advent of a more isolationist, if not outright disruptive and protectionist United States posture, have dealt repeated blows − both exogenous and endogenous – to international stability.
The pandemic has accelerated these political and economic trends. For instance, international organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations, have been powerless in the face of COVID-19 because they’ve been playing second-fiddle to great power politics. China’s misreporting to and influence over the WHO contributed to an initial underestimation of the health risks and infectiousness associated with the novel coronavirus. Still, Washington’s populist decision to withdraw its funding and membership from the WHO – adding to growing frustrations of its European and Pacific allies – only exacerbated the problem of multilateral coordination during a pandemic. The emergency has allowed states to further centralize control over economic and social affairs – arguably also for good reasons – and has lent legitimacy to a recrudescence of nationalist and protectionist instincts, effectively empowering many of the world’s strongmen. Still, the ripple effects of a potential post-pandemic depression are hard to discern. As popular discontent mounts, populist strongmen and democratic leaders alike may exhaust the charisma acquired through COVID-19 crisis-responses, ushering the way to two broad scenarios. A pessimistic outlook suggests further political decay and deepening geopolitical tensions as national interests more easily clash, and leadership seeks to divert attention from socio-economic grievances. Alternatively, contemporary history has demonstrated that genuine political evolution, new social compacts, redistributive political economies and multilateral systems of governance may acquire a new shine following a major crisis (Both scenarios assessed by Fukuyama 2020).
This essay focuses on the geopolitical impact of the pandemic in the Asia-Pacific with an accent on US-China dynamics. I argue in favour of the first, pessimistic scenario because COVID-19 is cementing Sino-American strategic rivalry and crystallizing Washington’s maximalist pushback against Beijing, with implications that go well beyond the region. High-stake geopolitical manoeuvrings between the US and China are impacting economic, political and security dynamics globally. More importantly, the ongoing political warfare between the two – one that has been exacerbated by the pandemic – is cementing US-China enmity and reifying the new “Cold War”. Understanding the drivers of US-China strategic competition will help third parties better navigate the stormier geopolitical seas ahead. As the discussion below will demonstrate, US allies are well-advised to prepare for the challenges posed by a rising and aggressive China, but there is a concomitant need to manage and ameliorate the risks associated with a disruptive, and declining, hegemonic power – the United States of America. Given space limitations, this essay places special emphasis on the US pushback; the author recognizes China’s composite assertiveness, if not aggressiveness, that has fed into US behaviour (Small et alia 2020), but the radical pushback is arguably feeding the monster it has tried to tame.
US-China Power Politics During the Pandemic: Minds, Money and Might
Ever since the unveiling of the December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Trump administration has embarked on a steady crescendo of initiatives, both domestic and international in scope, aimed at curbing China’s influence. Following the demise of voices of moderation, such as former director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, security and economic hawks within the Trump administration have steered the American ship of state towards a maximalist pushback against Chinese assertiveness. For instance, the National Security Council has worked in tandem with Mike Pompeo’s State Department, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other relevant government agencies to craft a “whole-of-government” response that mobilized US leverage – from trade embargoes and military power to strategic communications and counterintelligence (Sutter 2019) – to contain China’s rise. The foreign policy pendulum had shifted substantially from the Obama presidency – an administration that was keener on transnational threats and diplomatic inducements over big-stick diplomacy – to usher in Trump’s highly transactional diplomacy, and contempt for global challenges – such as climate change –, multilateral cooperation, and international organizations. Thus, the US muscled up for an age of “great power competition” to pursue peace through strength and aimed at rectifying supposed security and economic imbalances with friends and foes alike, through an “America First” agenda.
Specific to the China challenge, the recent overhaul of the United States’ foreign and security policy is premised on a Manichean diagnosis of the nature of its main strategic competitor. Fieldwork in Washington DC in 2019 and 2020 suggested that key national security decisionmakers acted on the belief that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its influence are essentially malign. Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, the CCP engaged in cultural and (through forced sterilization) effective genocide in Xinjiang, heavy-handed political repression as in Hong Kong, and a dystopic use of new technologies for surveillance purposes. While much of this assessment rings true, the US government translated the CCP’s pursuit of regime security and its regional assertiveness into a conspiratorial assessment of China’s global intentions, capabilities, and modus operandi (Johnston 2019, Barboza 2020, Spalding 2019, McMaster 2020). US decisionmakers believe that the CCP seeks to export its autocratic system of governance, ensnares developing countries into neo-colonial “debt trap” diplomacy under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative, infiltrates liberal democracies to meddle into their domestic politics, and leverages “whole-of-society” intelligence efforts to steal its competitors’ technological, military and economic secrets (White House 2020). In short, key US policymakers equated China with the Soviet Union and Xi Jinping with Joseph Stalin, to conclude that a capitalist, democratic United States was fundamentally incompatible and couldn’t co-exist with a Marxist-Leninist regime, that poses a long-term existential threat (Pompeo 2020, O’ Brien 2020).
Alas, the COVID-19 black swan has accelerated the international and domestic push factors towards a downward spiral in US-China relations. To be sure, the US-China Cold War trope already contained the seeds of a self-fulfilling prophecy (Wolf 2019), but the administration’s Cold Warriors did not have a free hand. For instance, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer were more interested in reaching a trade deal with Chinese counterparts rather than pursuing negotiations into an endless economic race to the bottom. More importantly, they were empowered by a US President, who prioritized his own re-election and, as long as the US economy roared and Trump could have spun the US-China phase-one trade deal as a “victory”, he was conspicuously uninterested in criticizing China’s gross human rights violations. In fact, the US president was enthralled by and envious of Xi Jinping’s autocratic powers and methods (Bolton 2020). Finally, while the US legislative branch pointed at a bipartisan consensus aimed at curbing Chinese influence the spirit remained largely reactive not least because US public opinion prioritized Islamic terrorism and Russia as international threats. On the contrary, the pandemic has empowered the US administration’s radical hawks, convinced Trump of the merits of demonizing China as key to a second term, thus abandoning his earlier restraint to make up for a failing economy and falling popularity. In turn, this informed a degree of reactive aggressiveness on China’s part and fed into spiralling US-China security dilemmas during an election year.
The pandemic has widened the international rift between the two great powers and accelerated the trend towards international instability. In the author’s view, the pandemic fed into mutual mistrust, deepening geopolitical tensions and mounting insecurity that were independent of each state’s strategic intent. The logic has been distinctively zero-sum. In fact, the US government explicitly aimed to prove that Beijing was more dependent on America than vice-versa (Pompeo 2020), while policymakers on both sides understood defensive or internally motivated initiatives as offensive ones. As a result, the US and China moved along a mix of reactive and assertive postures that betrayed a series of dangerous security dilemmas governing bilateral relations and the two governments have not shied from tapping all dimensions of power during the pandemic: military, economic and communication power. In fact, the Trump administration recalibrated its maximalist pushback on all of these dimensions in light of the security and economic hawks’ fixation with China’s “unrestricted warfare” (Barboza 2020, Spalding 2019). The pandemic presents a good window on the escalation of US-China power politics in the three-dimensional chessboard. The mutually reinforcing dangerous spirals in propaganda, techno-economic competition and military rivalry underpins the author’s pessimistic outlook.
Minds: An All-Out Information War
First and foremost, the US and China have been embroiled in an all-out communication war during the pandemic, replete with propaganda and disinformation. Domestic factors have been particularly salient in facilitating the vicious circle of US-China retaliatory tit-for-tat during the pandemic. Thomas Christensen has identified Trump’s and Xi’s preoccupation with the preservation of their own political legitimacy in the face of a major crisis as the driver of the US-China clash (Christensen 2020). Thus, China and the United States’ blame game on the origins of the pandemic, according to which government laboratories of either country were implicated in the creation of the virus, was aimed at diminishing the responsibilities of their own leaders. As the US economy entered into a recession, Trump and the Republican Party beat the “China/Wuhan virus” drums to: 1) demonize China for causing the pandemic and the economic crash, and 2) indict Joe Biden for being soft on China, for instance, because he did not support the administration’s early China travel ban and because he was traditionally in favour of a policy of engagement towards Beijing. These accusations would reach their nadir through heavy-handed ad campaigns, according to which Biden was complicit with China, a country responsible for “stealing our jobs” and “killing our people”.1 In the process, the government-backed narratives of victimhood at the hands of a malevolent China have led public opinion to prioritize the China threat, and cornered Biden and the Democratic Party into an equally resolute stance against Beijing.
International factors in the zero-sum logic of power politics have also been at play. The US government’s preoccupation with building a “coalition of the willing” to investigate the origins of the virus, and its denial of WHO analyses of its origins and progression, certainly aimed at facile scapegoating to account for its home-bred failures, but also stemmed from the ideological belief that the CCP was responsible, even if unwittingly, for the creation and spread of the virus (Rogin 2020). The Trump administration aimed at cornering the CCP for its negligence in allowing the virus to spread in order to score points in the US-China global battle for “hearts-and-minds” that has gathered momentum over the past few years. Along with an overhaul of the State Department that prioritized the China challenge, and the rallying of the CIA, Homeland Security and other branches, the Trump administration defunded traditional public diplomacy programs to refurbish and substantially empower the Global Engagement Center (GEC) – an interagency office aimed at coordinating, integrating, and synchronizing government-wide communications initiatives directed at foreign audiences with an original focus on ISIS and, eventually, Russian disinformation. Under the Trump administration, GEC would engage in data-driven and audience-focused strategic communications that countered especially China’s narratives, propaganda, and public diplomacy-writ large. By 2020 GEC’s base budget had ballooned to $ 138 million dollars from $ 20.2 million dollars in fiscal year 2016 (Department of State 2020). The zero-sum quality to US-China public diplomacy initiatives triggered action/reaction dynamics, no matter the intended audiences and effectiveness of such messaging. For instance, GEC had prioritized China’s “medical aid diplomacy” in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, especially its heavy-use of state-sponsored disinformation and coordinated inauthentic behaviour on social media (Gabrielle 2020).
GEC has grossly overestimated China’s efforts to subvert the US, hinting at an improbable coordination between Russia and China in the global propaganda wars and exaggerating the magnitude of China’s disinformation network on social media (CNN 2020). Alas, the US government apparently understood China’s propaganda efforts solely in terms of an offensive strategy that weaponized its public diplomacy to mimic Russian disinformation malpractice. According to this logic, China would spin its medical diplomacy and assistance for political advantage, thereby discrediting European and US governments’ actions, magnifying social tensions and driving a wedge between targeted states and their traditional allies.
In fact, China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomacy and manipulative social media engagement was essentially domestic-focused. The propaganda and retaliatory measures threatened against countries that criticized Beijing’s handling of the crisis, such as Australia, successfully alienated China’s counterparts. Similar to the Wolf Warrior movie franchise, China’s heavy-handed diplomacy and more active use of government-backed disinformation campaigns on Western social media were successful with the intended audiences: Chinese citizens – who vicariously participated in the Twitter battles through echoes in their own state-sanctioned media – Chinese expats and overseas Chinese. Authoritative China-watchers recognize that Beijing acted out of a feeling of deep insecurity over regime stability – in fact, real unemployment had already sky-rocketed ahead of the COVID-19 crisis (Interview 2019) – and preliminary evidence suggests that China’s overseas information operations were aimed at mobilizing and cementing a united front already by late 2019 (Etō 2020). The US government’s all-out communication offensive on the virus origins, on China’s mishandling of the coronavirus, and high-profile calls for political change (Pottinger 2020; Pompeo 2020) certainly hit a raw nerve in Zhongnanhai, because overseas Chinese communities, which have fuller access to information through Western media and social media platforms, are an important pressure group on regime stability in the mainland.
Above all, US efforts to demonize China across a wide range of issues from Covid to economic exploitation and technological espionage directed against the US were above all meant for domestic audiences to raise awareness of the long-term “existential threat” posed by China, in the words of Attorney General William Barr. The US counter-intelligence pushback under the banner of the DOJ’s “China Initiative” picked up momentum with high-profile indictments targeting Chinese espionage activities in the US climaxing during the pandemic. In July FBI director William Wray reported more than 2000 active counterintelligence investigations tied to China, and a new China-related counterintelligence investigation opened by the FBI every 10 hours (Wray 2020). Growing oversight and limitations on the activities of US-based Chinese diplomats and state-sanctioned media outlets, visa caps and bans on Chinese reporters, advanced STEM researchers and Chinese nationals with previous ties to the military apparatus, and threats of a visa freeze against the hundreds of thousands of foreign, especially Chinese, students in US high schools and universities were a prelude to the July 2020 closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston. These activities illustrate the US government’s maximalist agenda. The Chinese tit-for-tat response was closure of the US consulate in Chengdu, with little comparable fanfare and popular mobilization. The Chinese government walked a fine line between communicating resolve, while not escalating the situation.
Ahead of the pandemic, US officials suggested that prosecutors were going to come up with a flurry of indictments on China-related espionage matters (CSIS 2020), but the surprising escalation of events testified to the hawks’ growing shadow within the US administration. And in February 2020, for instance, the DOJ indicted Huawei on charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) that it stole intellectual property rights from six US companies; this unusual indictment, usually reserved for criminal organizations, is part of an effort to prevent Huawei from using the US financial system, including US dollars-based transactions, and discrediting it with other countries such as Britain which has succumbed to US pressures to cancel Huawei operations in that country.
Money: Techno-Economic Decoupling Accelerates
The above initiatives were closely linked with US economic competition with China, especially Beijing’s quest for a technological edge at the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution. Following the advent of Trump, the US redoubled its efforts at economic statecraft. That is, the use of economic and tech policy to advance security and diplomatic goals. China’s dirigisme, its distorted market practices and its notorious intellectual property right infringements have prompted a series of defensive countermeasures – including the aforementioned DOJ’s China Initiative – to protect the US defense industrial base and its sensitive technologies, also through tighter screening of foreign direct investments, and export controls. This initiative prioritized foundational technologies, that could provide a military and economic edge to US firms. After all, the deployment of new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, robotics and advanced information and communication components presented dual-use risks. These were especially evident under China’s “military-civil fusion” path to technological innovation.
Yet, Washington also embarked on a more offensive set of measures to slow down China’s transformation into a global powerhouse able to compete with the US. Import tariffs, blanket bans and threats against the rollout of Chinese 5G networks at home and abroad, and the imposition of export controls on US technology to major competitors, such as Huawei, would have led to a US-China technological and economic decoupling, with major ruptures to global supply chains. By the time China and the US had agreed on a “phase one” trade deal, overall tariffs on Chinese imports into the US market had sky-rocketed to 19.3%. China also agreed to buy $ 200 billion-worth of US exports to freeze the trade war and deter Trump from more restrictive executive orders against its national champions, but the pandemic broke the US-China economic truce. As the coronavirus hit China, implementation of the US-China trade deal became unlikely; and as the coronavirus hit the United States and the global economy, the prospects of a Trump’s re-election dimmed.
For these reasons, Trump jumped embraced the China hawks’ maximalist agenda to engage in markedly more destructive economic statecraft. In May 2020 Trump renewed an earlier executive order concerned with embargoing exports of US technology and components to Chinese powerhouses, including Huawei. More importantly, he agreed – following earlier vacillations – to block US semiconductors and foreign chips with US tech component from reaching Huawei. The US government did explore inducements and alternatives to China’s 5G dominance; at different points, government officials suggested buying up or providing export credits to Nokia and Ericsson, Huawei’s largest competitors on 5G components, or providing export credits to cloud-based alternatives hailing from Japan. But the government was now clearly acting in ways to slow Huawei down, through heavy-handed US high-tech embargoes and restricting market access (FitzGerald et al 2020).
Finally, OECD countries’ — indeed much of the world — heavy reliance on China for the supply of medical products and active ingredients of most generic drugs has translated into cool-headed calls to (partly) readjust their economies’ supply chains. Yet US tariffs and its technological offensive aimed at slowing down China’s catch-up, also included negative inducements for US and multinational enterprises to more fully decouple from China’s market and tech-providers. Essentially, these countermeasures heighten the risk of doing business with China’s multinational enterprise, and will drive away customers from suboptimal Chinese products, especially in high income economies. The US government certainly demonized the risks associated with Chinese technology, from 5G components to social media platforms, to convince allies and third countries from shunning these products. The bad press China received during the pandemic –also due to Beijing’s own heavy-handed tactics and self-serving behaviour – facilitated this process and became hostage to political grandstanding. After all, European public opinion polls registered a marked worsening of perceptions towards China (Oertel 2020). Finally, what direct US pressure on allied governments couldn’t achieve, was effectively reached through US tech embargoes. The UK’s surprising backtracking and ban on Huawei owes much to heavy-handed pressure from Washington. (Helm 2020).
Conclusion
The military and harder-security component of the Trump administration’s China pushback deserve an essay of its own. But suffice to say that under Trump the US government increased the number of freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs), while more actively enlisting the participation of likeminded partners in the deterrence mix towards China. In recent years the US government deployed its military and Coast Guard vessels and has mulled introducing tactical nuclear weapons in Northeast Asia. The scrapping of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement in 2019 also points to a US-China missile race. The pandemic has accelerated these dynamics as evidenced by the increased tempos of military exercises in waters surrounding China, from the Indian Ocean to the South and East China Seas. This military signalling was a response to China’s growing assertiveness in its neighbourhood during the pandemic, as evidenced by the India-China standoff and its mounting pressure in and around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. This signalling culminated in two recent major exercises led by US aircraft carrier battlegroups with, respectively, the Indian navy off the Andaman Coast and with Australia and Japan in the Philippines Sea. The US government’s decision to take a sterner stance on China’s illegal maritime claims in the South China Sea has also been a notable development during the pandemic. But US salami-slicing tactics across the Taiwan Straits, while certainly reacting to earlier Chinese encroachment and maximalism, seriously risk propelling the world’s two largest economies into a hot confrontation.
This essay has made clear that the power political offensive waged by the United States has a distinctively zero-sum nature that encompasses the information and economic domains. But, to date, these initiatives have hardly exacted meaningful change in Chinese behaviour, not least because the end goal of the government’s “strategic approach” is unclear and its modus operandi is wholly premised on negative inducements. In fact, Washington’s propaganda, economic coercion and strategic narratives that suggest support for regime change may be understood as political warfare. Arguably, the US government’s own brand of “unrestricted warfare” may get under the skin of the Chinese leadership and open rifts between the CCP and wider society, or open rifts within the CCP elite. In the author’s view, however, Xi Jinping is benefitting from anti-US nationalism and a rally round the flag effect that, in return, feeds US intransigence. The pandemic is one factor that has exacerbated the maximalist diagnosis of China’s malign intentions (and growing capabilities) feeding into an exaggerated pushback that, in turn, kindles the insecurity of the counterpart. The downward spiral in US-China economic, strategic and propaganda interaction risks crystallizing enmity, as public opinion in both countries becomes convinced by the facile demonization.
Recently, Pompeo made a speech at the Nixon Presidential Library that marks the official end of US engagement of China. The Manichean tones and the stark choices between Freedom and Tyranny betray a resemblance with one of the speeches that marked the beginning of the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine. Still, most US allies will not buy into Pompeo’s most radical prescriptions and the pandemic has demonstrated just as much, as evidenced by the EU and major European players’ careful stance (Pugliese 2020), not least because China is not the Soviet Union nor is Xi Joseph Stalin. Moreover, US multinational enterprises and the rest of the world will likely continue doing business with China.
As Pompeo observes, Nixon’s feared that the United States might create a “Frankenstein” (monster) by opening the world to the CCP (Pompeo 2020). The very opposite logic – a Manichean China policy premised entirely on sticks and with no carrots to allow the counterpart to de-escalate – may actually be closer to the truth. As mutual antagonism, mistrust and suspicion deepen in the public opinion of both states, a potential Biden presidency or Democratic-led Congress will become warier of undoing some of the anti-China legacy of the Trump administration. While it is too early to declare a US-China “Cold War”, China’s assertiveness and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections.
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Giulio Pugliese is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow and Departmental Lecturer at Oxford University’s Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA). He is affiliated with St. Antony’s College.
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Note
1 For evidence, please refer to Beijing Biden, a website and ad campaign pushed by the richest pro-Trump Super PAC, co-founded by Vice-President Mike Pence’s Former Chief of Staff.
All images in this article are from APJJF