Trump's parting gift to Biden is an intensified hybrid war with China

The US' proposed $740.5 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2021, which will fund the country's military activities across the next year, includes a lot of anti-Chinese clauses that make observers worry that tensions between the two won't recede anytime soon.

Although outgoing US President Trump threatened to veto the bill because it doesn't repeal Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, there's practically no chance that any of its other provisions will change even if a compromise is reached on that issue. This makes it worthwhile to analyze the significance of this act's hybrid war plans against China.

The House Armed Services Committee released a summary of the 4,517-page document which enumerates the "new tools to deter China." These can be divided into military, counter-intelligence, informational, economic, technological and political categories.

Highlights include creating the "Pacific Deterrence Initiative" (PDI) modeled on its recently established European predecessor; thwarting alleged Chinese industrial, research and other espionage attempts; pushing back against China's so-called "debt diplomacy"; restructuring the US' global supply chains; pressuring partners not to use Chinese 5G systems; and meddling in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In the order that they were previously mentioned, a few insightful observations can be made about the NDAA 2021's most prominent anti-Chinese policies.

Starting with the PDI, this proposal aims to intensify the US' containment policies in the broad region that it nowadays refers to as the "Indo-Pacific."

It'll thus seek to optimize spending and improve the military's positioning, as well as coordinate everything with America's regional allies. This strongly implies that attempts will be made to ensure that the so-called "Quad" between itself, Australia, India and Japan remains a prominent fixture of regional geopolitics.

The counterintelligence aspect of the NDAA is extremely alarming because it hints at the normalization of the US' recent spy mania which first started with Russia four years ago but is progressively being directed against China in the present day.

The Trump administration made a big deal about China's alleged activities in this respect, yet it failed to furnish any convincing evidence to back up its claims.

What's most worrying about this incipient trend is that Americans' civil liberties might be further eroded if the US' spy agencies consider flouting constitutional privacy and other safeguards in their wild hunt for suspected Chinese spies.

As for the topic of "debt diplomacy", this has long been debunked by Chinese and other scholars who proved that no such financial coercion is being practiced by the People's Republic. All the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) deals are entered into at the voluntary will of both parties with a view towards win-win outcomes.

Some of them have even been renegotiated after a few of China's partners unexpectedly experienced financial difficulties for unrelated reasons.

All that the US wants to do is to reduce the attractiveness of China's low-interest and long-term loans so that it can then economically exploit those same states that are tricked into rejecting them.

Restructuring the US' global supply chains has been a mainstay of Trump's trade war against China, and including such provisions in the NDAA 2021 is intended to ensure that Biden stays the course. In other words, Trump is definitely trying to box Biden into continuing the economic warfare campaign that he plans to inherit in less than two month.

The president-elect previously indicated that he won't immediately repeal the prior tariffs nor impose any new ones until he has a chance to comprehensively review everything together with the US' allies, but now it might be more difficult for him to change Trump's policies even if he wants to.

The 5G element of next year's proposed military budget is extremely pernicious since it suggests that the US will withhold the deployment of new weapons systems or forces to host countries that haven't taken steps to reduce the supposed threat to American bases from Chinese technology in this sphere.

Basically, those countries that are dependent upon (or rather, have been misled into believing that they need) the US' military presence will have to choose between retaining their alliance with America or using low-cost but very high-quality Chinese technology. This zero-sum game intends to force them into sacrificing their interests for the US.

Regarding the US' planned meddling in Hong Kong and Taiwan, this relates to retaining the sanctions prohibiting the export of certain defense products to that special administrative region's police forces and expanding the Pentagon's military relationship with Taiwan, respectively.

They're both extremely hostile moves because they directly impact China's core domestic interests. It'll practically be impossible for Biden to repair Chinese-American relations so long as he's forced by law to abide by these policies, meaning that expectations in this respect would have to be pushed back until 2022 at the earliest.

All of these planned policies represent Trump's parting gift to Biden, which is an intensified hybrid war with China. Although he'll soon be leaving the White House, the presidential incumbent doesn't want his geopolitical legacy of what many nowadays describe as the new cold war to go with him.

It's for this reason that he and his allies, including those across the aisle who sympathize with his policies, want to box Biden into continuing his anti-Chinese containment policies.

All of this is a pity because not only will they fail with their plans, but they'll also end up wasting tens of billions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere helping Americans.

Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst.