Politicians' remarks no 'goodwill gesture'

US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the Chips and Science Act was "not designed to hurt China". But are his remarks, along with other similar ones made by several United States officials, credible?

Earlier, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said all members of Biden's administration have been "very clear" that decoupling from the Chinese economy is "not a goal or achievable". US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also denied that the US was seeking to decouple the US economy from China's economy.

Those remarks might seem friendly, but they can hardly be interpreted as a "goodwill gesture" by the US toward China. In fact, the comments are just part of Washington's long-held Janus-faced China policy: Applying a mixed approach of containment, competition and cooperation to best serve its self-interests and hubris to dominate the world.

This is not the first time those senior US officials made deceitful remarks. During a visit to France in 2021, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said "our purpose is not to contain China" or "try to hold China back".

So what can we make of the gap between those words and the actual policies pursued by Washington?

On several pressing issues, the US indeed needs China's cooperation, such as solving the 2008 global financial crisis and fighting climate change. No country can fix those problems alone.

Meanwhile, successive US administrations in recent decades have viewed China as a strategic competitor and a challenge to its global supremacy.

Therefore, Washington has chosen to demand communication and cooperation from China on the one hand, while attempting to contain China's development on the other through various means under the pretext of safeguarding national security and the so-called rules-based international order.

Washington repeatedly claims that it will not seek a new "Cold War" with Beijing, yet it has been hyping up the so-called Democracy versus Autocracy narrative. It claims that it wants to advance a vision for an open, inclusive international system. However, it is bent on building up a series of exclusive blocs such as the Quad and AUKUS alliances to encircle China.

While it also claims that the Chips and Science Act was not designed to hurt China, an awardee under the law "may not engage in any significant transaction ... involving the material expansion of semiconductor manufacturing capacity" in China or any other foreign country of concern over the following 10-year period. In the meantime, Washington is forcing some of its key allies to squeeze chip supplies to China.

Such examples of US hypocrisy are not in short supply. Recently, the US continues to peddle lies on a Chinese civilian balloon and COVID-19 origins tracing. It also insisted on arranging a so-called US stopover for the leader of China's Taiwan region. Those actions have only reinforced an impression that Washington has no real intention to alter its wrong-headed China policy or improve bilateral ties.

"Both the US and China have important roles to play in global diplomacy and strategic dialogue," said Cavince Adhere, a Kenya-based international relations scholar. "Increased communication and cooperation on issues such as climate change, global health and nuclear nonproliferation could benefit both countries and the world."

US actions such as engaging in trade, technology and economic suppression of China have done little to stabilize relations, despite some attempts by Washington to appear more amicable, he said.

Dubious handling

The China-US relationship is widely acknowledged as the world's most important bilateral relations. Such a dubious handling of the relationship by Washington will not only backfire and eventually hurt its own interests, but also prevent the international community from solving common problems.

The US federal government's debt hit its ceiling of $31.4 trillion in January. The Federal Reserve has continuously raised interest rates to curb inflation. Several US banks have collapsed, raising the fear of a banking crisis, and the financial turmoil has intensified the risk of a recession.

Experts said that under such circumstances in an integrated world, properly managing the China-US relationship will help the US stabilize its economic and financial situation.

Nourhan el-Sheikh, international relations professor at Cairo University, said China, as the world's second-biggest economy and an important driver of global trade, is also a major holder of US treasuries.

In order to build healthy relations between the two countries, Washington must give up its Janus-faced China policy and cooperate with China in a sincere manner, and US politicians must not say one thing while doing another.

Meanwhile, Washington's China policy that combines containment and cooperation has global consequences. The US' talk about cooperation while seeking confrontation has greatly disrupted the world order and confused other countries, further damaging its own reputation.

Zhang Yifei, associate researcher with the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US policy of suppressing China has rocked global industrial chains and harmed the interests of many countries.

Stephen Walt, international relations professor at Harvard University, wrote in an article for Foreign Policy that most countries "do not want to see great power competition get out of hand, because they believe a Sino-American clash would have negative consequences for them".

Xinhua