US all-round strategic competition with China has taken shape

The United States launched its all-round strategic competition with China in December 2017, when the Donald Trump administration released its National Security Strategy. Since then, the US strategic competition with China has lasted for more than six years, with the Joe Biden administration palming the baton offered by its predecessor.

In retrospect, former US President Trump, an anti-establishment politician, launched the strategic competition with China in a "wild" way. President Biden, a typical pro-establishment politician, has been upgrading and rationalizing the US' competitive strategies against China since taking office in 2021.

In October 2022, the Biden administration unveiled its first formal National Security Strategy, saying that "the People's Republic of China is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it … In the competition with the PRC, as in other arenas, it is clear that the next 10 years will be the decisive decade".

It is also clear that the US strategy for all-round competition with China, centered on strategic competition and based on long-term competition, has basically taken shape. In a nutshell, it is a four-pronged approach.

To start with, the US is attempting to gradually and selectively decouple from China in economic and trade areas.

The trade war initiated by the Trump administration was the start of the US' all-round strategic competition with China, with the administration developing that into the concept of "decoupling".

However, over 40 years of reform and opening-up have made the Chinese economy deeply integrated with the outside world, including the US. All countries will rise or fall together with it. A sudden decoupling from China will be too much to bear for the US and its allies, which has been made clear by what has happened since the US launched its trade war against China and during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the US thinks that it has to decouple from China to contain its rise. Thus, after taking office, US President Biden replaced decoupling with "de-risking", which is nothing but a euphemism for selective, gradual decoupling.

The Biden administration has not made any adjustments to the Trump administration's elevated tariffs on imports from China. De-risking has two aspects. The first is the "small yard, high fence" approach in the hi-tech sector, which attempts to isolate China from the US-led West, so as to maintain the US' technology leadership. Second, in economic exchanges and trade, the US is attempting to move some important and critical industry chains out of China through near-shoring and friendshoring in order to reduce its reliance on China. The ultimate goal is to build industry chains excluding China and create two connected but mostly parallel market systems.

Second, in geopolitics, the US is repeating what it did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War period.

Despite claims from President Biden and officials from his administration that the US will not fight a Cold War with China, many US moves resemble what it did against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

For instance, the US is strengthening its bilateral alliance system, enhancing the role of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue that groups the US with Japan, India and Australia, elevating the role of the AUKUS trilateral security partnership of the US, the United Kingdom and Australia, and promoting NATO's eastward expansion. All these US moves are aimed at suppressing China by magnifying the role of its system of allies and partners.

The US is also strengthening its presence and deployment along the "first island chain", particularly around the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. It aims to create a center stage battlefield for strategic competition with China, particularly by means of the Taiwan question. This is the ultimate reason for the US to inject more and more strategic resources in the Taiwan area in recent years.

In terms of influence over neutral forces, the US, joining hands with its allies and partners, has made frequent moves to smear and sabotage Belt and Road cooperation. Recently, the US has been cozying up to the European Union and India, in an attempt to alienate China from the Global South. All these US moves are aimed at competing with China for greater influence over neutral forces.

Third, the US is reactivating the US-style "militarist system" domestically. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the US did not have a powerful national security system to cope with major-country competition, by virtue of the country's diversified social interests, decentralized yet balanced state power, and advantageous geographical location. After the end of World War II, the US passed the National Security Act of 1947 to mandate a major reorganization of the national security system, due to it becoming the world's top superpower and its Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. The act created many institutions including the Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. The common anti-communism stance of the Republican and Democratic parties strengthened government-Congress and government-society coordination, thus forming a national security interest chain and creating the military-industrial complex.

Domestically, the US calls such a system a "National Security State", a de facto US-style "militarist system". The system played a crucial role in the US-Soviet Union Cold War, but faded away in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The system was partly reactivated after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, most importantly by passing the US Patriot Act. After the outbreak of the financial crisis, some US strategists proposed the so-called "whole-of-government" approach, by referring to experiences in mobilizing government and social resources during Cold War with the Soviet Union and summarizing US experiences in its war on terrorism. This approach aims to mobilize all resources and unify all forces to compete with China on all fronts.

Fourth, the US is going all out to promote the so-called ideology-based and values-based diplomacy. In ideology-related topics, the US has been emphasizing the politics of national identity, magnifying the impacts of differences in political systems and selling the idea that the West can never get along with China. By doing so, the US aims to mobilize all resources to form an anti-China consensus domestically and to draw more countries into an anti-China camp globally.

The above-mentioned four areas are the major components of the US' all-round strategic competition with China. In recent years, China-US relations have suffered great difficulties. The root cause is that some people in the US cling to the Cold-War and zero-sum game mentality, and are obsessed with viewing China as the US' foremost competitor and most consequential geopolitical challenge. This seriously-distorted perception of China will inevitably lead to wrong policies, wrong actions and wrong results.

The author is director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and senior research fellow of the National Institute for Global Strategy at the CASS. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.