A política externa dos EUA em luta contra moinhos de vento - Fu Ying (South China Morning Post)

 South China Morning Post, Hong Kong – 26.8.2021

America’s China policy is based on an imaginary enemy

The US Congress is now on the front line of formulating China containment policies, but its efforts are misguided. The recent Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 is typical in containing policy suggestions that are based on wrong or outdated information about China

Fu Ying

 

More legislative documents concerning China have passed through Capitol Hill offices in recent months than ever before, mostly suggesting countering or restrictive policies on China and the Chinese people.

On June 9, the US Senate passed the Innovation and Competition Act of 2021. A combination of several China-related bills – including the Endless Frontier Act, the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, and the Meeting the China Challenge Act of 2021 – the Innovation and Competition Act covers a wide swathe of issues and demonstrates a bipartisan consensus for the US to engage in long-term strategic competition with China.

Capitol Hill is now on the front line of formulating US containment strategy against China. But its credibility is in serious doubt, as its policy suggestions in the act are drawn from conclusions based on misinformation and personal imagination.

There is nothing wrong with the act’s purpose, which is to stimulate American rejuvenation, as any country may choose to motivate itself through external competition. However, it’s irresponsible or even dangerous to make China an imaginary enemy, even a science and technology bogeyman, which will only rouse antagonism between the two peoples.

Here are some of the flaws in the act. Sections 3002 and 3401 claim that China lacks intellectual property (IP) protection. Yet China has made rapid improvement over the past decade in IP protection for the sake of innovation.

One notable legislative move, among many, is the Foreign Investment Law of 2020 that safeguards the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investment against IP infringement. The law also prohibits using administrative means to force the transfer of technology.

Further, several IP-related laws are being amended, with punitive compensation for wrongdoing raised fivefold. Major cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have established special IP courts and, in 2020, there were 3,176 technology-related IP cases reported, with 2,787 of them concluded.

The American Chamber of Commerce in China, in the 2021 edition of its white paperon China’s business environment, also acknowledged China’s improvement on IP protection. Capitol Hill needs to be reminded that its so-called new findings are outdated.

Section 3252 holds that the Chinese government intends to strengthen its control by collecting citizens’ private data via technology companies. This claim cannot be supported by reality in China, either.

China’s civil codeand e-commerce law both prohibit the over-collection of individual data and require the relevant authorities to take the necessary measures to protect the security of the data and information provided by e-commerce businesses.

Chinese men use their smartphones on the streets of Beijing on August 22. China’s legislature has recently passed the Personal Information Protection Law, placing legal restrictions on how personal data can be collected, used and managed after it comes into effect on November 1. Photo: AP

Section 3252 further claims that China is exporting a governance model based on a data monitoring system. On the political front, it has been China’s consistent policy not to impose its ideology and political system on other countries, just as it would not accept having one imposed on it. The US can learn from China and stop interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and imposing its own model and values.

Sections 3002 and 3401 of the act accuse the Chinese government of encouraging and empowering the theft of critical technologies and trade secrets from foreign enterprises. However, cyberattacks are prohibited in China.

Chinal launched the Global Initiative on Data Security last September calling on nations to oppose surveillance, cyberattacks and information theft against other countries. China itself has been a victim of hacking attacks.

According to the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Centre of China, a total of 5.31 million attacks against Chinese hosts from 52,000 foreign programs was recorded in the first half of 2020. As indicated, among the foreign malware capture, the number of foreign distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and back doors implanted into Chinese websites, the US was actually the most common source.

Data and internet security is a global challenge and both China and the US are fighting cybercrime. The two countries should exchange information and work together to crack down on these crimes instead of making enemies of each other, which will only exacerbate the problem.

Why China is tightening control over cybersecurity

On China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Sections 3235 (a) and 3401 (11) of the act claim it “expands the power projection capabilities for the People’s Liberation Army” and threatens the security of the US and its strategic partners. They also claim the initiative excludes US and European participation.

This view counters the reality. The belt and road features infrastructure projects with no military component whatsoever. For every infrastructure project, security matters are the responsibility of the sovereign states concerned.

China has only one foreign military base, in Djibouti, the role of which is to supply the Chinese navy on UN missions in the Gulf of Aden and Somalia waters.

The belt and road incorporates some 140 countries and over 30 international organisations. Some US companies have also joined to provide equipment, management experience and financial services. Though the US-led Build Back Better World initiative is seen as a rival to the Belt and Road Initiative by some media, if set in motion, the two could complement rather than undermine each other.

Generally, the act is riddled with unreliable and unverified information regarding China which cannot serve as a sound policy foundation. As the new Chinese ambassador to the US Qin Gang told the press, China hopes for a “rational, stable, manageable and constructive” relationship with the US.

To achieve such an objective, the two countries first need to take a cool-headed and realistic measure of each other and avoid being misguided by unreliable stories and information. On China’s part, it should make a greater effort to communicate with the world, including with American society, to reduce misunderstanding.

It’s also important that China and the US act as examples and cooperate to address global challenges, including those mentioned in the act, to benefit the people of both countries and the world.

If we are to compete, it is necessary to steer the competition in a fair and positive direction. As noted by China’s President Xi Jinping, US-China competition should be more like a race on the track and less like a fight in the wrestling arena.

 

Fu Ying is the chair of the Centre for International Security and Strategy (CISS) at Tsinghua University and former vice-foreign minister of China

A cruzada profana entre EUA e China - Jeffrey D. Sachs

Aqui abaixo o texto em português que eu o li no original, e até transcrevi neste meu blog: https://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com/2020/08/jeffrey-sachs-sobre-o-hegemonismo.html 

Pareceu-me correto no essencial, e “recomendei aos chineses” que procurassem um George Kennan chinês para formular uma doutrina da Contenção da China contra os EUA, que são a potência agressora neste caso.

Eis o que escrevi no Facebook, em duas postagens sobre a mesma questão: 

A China precisa ter uma enorme “paciência estratégica” em face de um gigante que exibe o comportamento de uma criança mimada e briguenta, e tem toda razão em recusar a entrar nesse jogo irracional de uma “nova Guerra Fria” — que não possui nenhum fundamento real, a não ser a paranoia “normal” dos generais do Pentágono, seguidos inacreditavelmente pelos novos paranoicos “anormais” da academia —, mas ela precisa também desenvolver uma doutrina da “contenção”, ou seja, conduzir de forma racional e moderada suas relações com o gigante atrapalhado, até que este volte à razão e se converta num simples primus inter pares, não no pretenso dono do mundo que ele insiste em ser ainda hoje.

Ademais dos conhecidos problemas que afligem grandes e velhos impérios arrogantes — over-extension, over-strecht, over-expenditures, over-zealous, over-control, profligacy, irrealism, hubris, exaggerate ambition, cupidity, militarism, etc. — os EUA já chegaram ao ponto da miopia, talvez até da cegueira, quanto à sua capacidade real de serem aceitos como líderes naturais de um determinado grupo de países (digamos, as democracias de mercado), por sua própria introversão econômica, sua alienação política e o abandono daqueles princípios e valores liberais e humanitários que os faziam serem admirados pelos demais países. Trump agregou àqueles velhos problemas o seu desprezo pelos demais, sua arrogância fatal e sobretudo sua ignorância abissal.

---------------------------
Paulo R. de Almeida

A cruzada profana entre EUA e China

Agora a nova cruzada tem como alvo o PC chinês

Por Jeffrey D. Sachs

Valor Econômico, 06/08/2020 

Muitos cristãos evangélicos brancos nos Estados Unidos há muito acreditam que o país tem a missão, dada por Deus, de salvar o mundo. Sob influência dessa mentalidade cruzadista, a política externa americana frequentemente passou da diplomacia à guerra. Agora, corre o risco de fazer isso de novo.

Em julho, o secretário de Estado dos EUA, Mike Pompeo, lançou mais uma cruzada evangélica, desta vez contra a China. Seu discurso foi extremista, simplista e perigoso - e poderia muito bem colocar os EUA em rota de conflito com a China.

De acordo com Pompeo, o presidente da China, Xi Jinping, e o Partido Comunista (PC) da China nutrem um “desejo de décadas por hegemonia mundial”. É irônico. Apenas um país, os EUA, têm uma estratégia de defesa na qual se propõe a ser a “potência militar preeminente no mundo”, com “equilíbrios de forças regionais favoráveis no Indo-Pacífico, na Europa, no Oriente Médio e no Hemisfério Ocidental”. A posição oficial chinesa, em contraste, declara que a “China nunca seguirá o caminho usual das grandes potências de buscar a hegemonia” e que “à medida que a globalização econômica, a sociedade da informação e a diversificação cultural se desenvolvem em um mundo cada vez mais multipolar, a paz, o desenvolvimento e a cooperação a benefício de todos continuam sendo as tendências irreversíveis dos tempos”.

Vêm à mente a própria advertência de Jesus: “Hipócrita! Tira primeiro a trave do teu olho; e então verás bem para tirar o argueiro do olho do teu irmão.” (Mateus 7:5). Os gastos militares dos EUA somaram US$ 723 bilhões em 2019, quase o triplo dos US$ 261 bilhões gastos pela China.

Os EUA, além disso, têm cerca de 800 bases militares no exterior, enquanto a China tem apenas 1 (uma pequena base naval no Djibuti). Os EUA têm bases militares próximas à China, que não tem nenhuma perto dos EUA. Os EUA têm 5,8 mil ogivas nucleares; a China, cerca de 320. Os EUA têm 11 navios porta-aviões; a China tem 1.  Os EUA lançaram muitas guerras no exterior nos últimos 40 anos; a China, nenhuma (embora tenha sido criticada por conflitos fronteiriços).

O mundo deu relativamente pouca atenção ao discurso de Pompeo, que não apresentou evidências para sustentar sua declaração sobre a ambição hegemônica da China. A rejeição chinesa à hegemonia dos EUA não significa que a China por si só busque uma hegemonia. Na verdade, fora dos EUA, há pouca convicção de que a China queira o domínio global. Os objetivos nacionais da China explicitamente declarados são ser “uma sociedade moderadamente próspera” até 2021 (o centenário do PC chinês) e um “país plenamente desenvolvido” até 2049 (o centenário da República Popular).

Textos, fotos, artes e vídeos do Valor estão protegidos pela legislação brasileira sobre direito autoral. Não reproduza o conteúdo do jornal em qualquer meio de comunicação, eletrônico ou impresso, sem autorização do Valor (falecom@valor.com.br). Essas regras têm como objetivo proteger o investimento que o Valor faz na qualidade de seu jornalismo.

Presumindo que Trump perca as eleições presidenciais de novembro, o discurso de Pompeo provavelmente não receberá mais atenção. Os democratas certamente criticarão a China, mas sem os exageros insolentes de Pompeo. Se Trump vencer, porém, o discurso de Pompeo poderia ser o prenúncio do caos. O evangelismo de Pompeo é real e os brancos evangélicos são a base atual do Partido Republicano.

Como relembrei em meu recente livro “A New Foreign Policy” os colonos protestantes ingleses acreditavam que estavam fundando um Novo Israel na nova terra prometida, com as bênçãos divinas de Deus. Em 1845, John O’Sullivan cunhou o termo “Destino Manifesto” para justificar e comemorar a anexação violenta [do Oeste] da América do Norte pelos EUA. “Tudo isso será nossa história futura”, escreveu em 1839, "para estabelecer na Terra a dignidade moral e a salvação do homem - a verdade imutável e a benevolência de Deus". “Para essa missão abençoada para as nações do mundo, que estão alheias à revigorante luz da verdade, a América foi escolhida [...]”.

Com base nesses pontos de vista exaltados sobre sua própria benevolência, os EUA se envolveram na escravização em massa até a guerra civil e em um apartheid em massa depois disso; massacraram os índios americanos ao longo do século XIX e os subjugaram depois disso; e, quando terminaram de expandir a fronteira no Oeste, estenderam o Destino Manifesto para o exterior. Posteriormente, com o início da Guerra Fria, o fervor anticomunista levou os EUA a lutar guerras desastrosas no Sudeste Asiático (Vietnã, Laos e Camboja), nos anos 60 e 70, e guerras brutais na América Central, nos 80.

Depois dos ataques terroristas de 11 de Setembro de 2001, o ardor evangélico foi direcionado contra o “islamismo radical” ou o “fascismo islâmico”, com quatro “guerras de escolha” dos EUA (no Afeganistão, Iraque, Síria e Líbia), que até hoje continuam sendo, todas, fracassos. De uma hora para outra, a suposta ameaça existencial do islamismo radical parece ter sido esquecida, e a nova cruzada tem como alvo o PC chinês.

O próprio Pompeo é um literalista bíblico que acredita no fim dos tempos e que a batalha apocalíptica entre o bem e o mal é iminente. Pompeo descreveu suas crenças em discurso em 2015, quando era parlamentar pelo Kansas: os EUA são uma nação judaico-cristã, a maior na história, cuja tarefa é lutar as batalhas de Deus até o arrebatamento, quando os seguidores de Cristo já mortos ou vivos, como Pompeo, serão levados ao céu no Juízo Final.

Os evangélicos brancos representam apenas cerca de 17% da população adulta dos EUA, mas 26% dos eleitores. Eles votam avassaladoramente nos republicanos (estima-se que 81%, em 2016), o que os torna o bloco eleitoral mais importante do partido. Isso lhes dá poderosa influência nas políticas republicanas e, em particular, na política externa quando os republicanos controlam a Casa Branca e o Senado (com seus poderes para ratificar tratados). Entre os congressistas republicanos, 99% são cristãos e, entre eles, cerca de 70% são protestantes, incluindo uma proporção desconhecida, mas significativa, de evangélicos.

Naturalmente, os democratas também têm políticos que proclamam o excepcionalismo americano e lançam guerras cruzadistas (por exemplo, as intervenções do presidente Barack Obama na Síria e na Líbia). No geral, contudo, o Partido Democrata é menos devotado a reivindicações da hegemonia americana do que a base evangélica do Partido Republicano.

A retórica exaltada anti-China de Pompeo poderia tornar-se ainda mais apocalíptica nas próximas semanas, nem que seja apenas para inflamar a base republicana antes das eleições. Se Trump for derrotado, como parece provável, o risco de um confronto entre EUA e China diminuirá. S

e ele permanecer no poder, entretanto, seja por meio de uma vitória eleitoral genuína, de fraude eleitoral ou mesmo de um go

=========

Jeffrey D. Sachs é professor de Desenvolvimento Sustentável e de Gestão e Políticas da Saúde da Columbia University. É diretor do Centro de Desenvolvimento Sustentável da Columbia University e da Rede de Soluções de Desenvolvimento Sustentável da ONU. 

Um falcão da Guerra Fria quer que os EUA conduzam uma Guerra Fria contra a China: John Pomfret (WP)

A acusação é a de que a própria China já iniciou uma Guerra Fria contra os EUA.
Acho que os chineses não têm essa intenção: eles apenas intentam levar uma guerra fria econômica, que aliás eles já ganharam.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

It’s not all on Trump: China favors confrontation with the U.S.

John Pomfret

The Washington Post, December 19, 2019

Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Dec. 13. (Noel Celis/Afp Via Getty Images)

As the United States and China limp to a truce in the trade war, two very different story lines have played out on opposite sides of the Pacific. In the United States, a series of high-profile American figures — a columnist, a former treasury secretary, a former World Bank president and an expert on foreign relations — have weighed in with laments about the course of America’s ties to China and have criticized the Trump administration for its handling of Beijing.

If current American policies continue, these men warn, China and the United States will descend into a new Cold War that could be more dangerous and far more costly than the old one. All of these writers call for a return to the policies of engagement with China, which have been pursued since 1972, when President Richard M. Nixon first journeyed to Beijing.

In China, however, no such parallel concern has been expressed publicly. There has been no criticism of Xi Jinping for running his country’s relations with the United States into a ditch. Instead, since Nov. 20, there has been a striking upsurge in condemnation of the United States on a level not seen since 1999, when a U.S. missile mistakenly destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese reporters.

For the past several weeks, the main state-run nightly news program, watched by hundreds of millions, has been devoted to disparaging Americans and their government. The United States has been blamed for fomenting the six-month-long demonstrations in Hong Kong and for meddling in China’s internal affairs over criticism of the treatment of the Uighurs.

Carl Minzner, an expert on U.S.-China relations at Fordham University, has watched the newscast every day since Nov. 20 and notes that each night the United States has been attacked not once or twice but in multiple news segments — 13 on Dec. 4 alone, followed by eight the next night. Then on Dec. 13, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, blasted the United States for “almost paranoid” behavior that has seriously damaged “the hard-won foundation of mutual trust between China and the United States.”

Given these jeremiads, reading the pronouncements by the American figures —columnist Thomas Friedman, former treasury secretary Henry Paulson, former World Bank president Robert Zoellick and foreign affairs expert Fareed Zakaria — it’s difficult to grasp what exactly they would have the United States do. It takes two to fight a Cold War; it also takes two to stop one.

So far, China doesn’t seem ready to put down its gloves.

To be sure, some of the criticisms of the Trump administration by these four writers are spot on. To properly deal with China, the Trump administration can’t continue to alienate America’s allies, including South Korea, Japan and Europe. Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership also denied America an important lever to push back against China’s trade practices. But embracing these smarter policies won’t actually improve relations with China or head off a new Cold War, unless China is also ready to compromise. And so far, there’s no evidence of that.

For me, the critical issue is that none of these writers seems to have truly grasped how much China has changed for the worse under Xi, despite the easy availability of insightful books on the subject, such as Elizabeth Economy’s “The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State." China began to veer from its market-oriented economic reforms and understated foreign policy in 2008, when the global financial crisis made the United States appear weak. Xi’s rise to Communist Party boss in 2012 added a dose of accelerant.

These experts also soft-pedal another issue that is key to understanding the negative trajectory in U.S.-China relations: decoupling. “Decoupling” is a buzzword used to describe the process by which the United States and China have begun to separate their intensively intertwined economies. All of the authors decry decoupling as a strategic error, but they also assume that if the Trump administration decides to forego decoupling, then China will follow suit.

This ignores China’s role in the issue.

China effectively announced its intention to decouple from its dependence on U.S. technology in 2015 — well before Trump’s election. That was the year when Beijing rolled out its Made in China 2025 program, which aims to replace foreign-made high technology with Chinese products.

China has also “decoupled” from international agreements. It has ignored a major treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, by claiming all of the South China Sea as its territory and ignored the verdict of an international tribunal that ruled against China’s claim. It has also declared invalid the Sino-British Joint Declaration, an international understanding made over the future of Hong Kong. And since 2014, when a newspaper in Liaoning province published an article urging students to expose liberal professors, it has intellectually decoupled from the West in a campaign that has led to book burning.

This is a far different country than the China that entered the World Trade Organization in 2001.

In a way, many experts have become unconscious victims of the Chinese Communist system of thought control — where the victim is always at fault. Under this logic, responsibility for the current state of affairs has to be lain at the feet of the United States because the Communist Party never makes a mistake. Our four American commentators seem to have internalized that message. So, they declare, the United States needs to do more. China? Not so much.

Josh Rogin: Trump is getting played by China on trade

Hugh Hewitt: Trump has done the world a favor by highlighting China’s communist regime

Namrata Goswami: Trump is focused on the China trade war when he should be concerned about space

David Ignatius: The U.S.-China trade war is cooling off. But the tech war is heating up.

The Post’s View: President Trump, prove to China that you’ll stand up for democracy and human rights

A nova Guerra Fria Economica: EUA (ou Trump) contra a China - Eswar Prasad (Brookings Institution)

Which country is better equipped to win a US-China trade war?

Eswar Prasad

Brookings Institution, Monday, August 12, 2019

The United States and China are clearly on a collision course. Chinese companies abscond with intellectual property, and President Trump introduces tariffs on Chinese goods; President Xi Jinping responds with his own levies, so Trump adds more. China allows the value of its currency to fall, and the United States brands it a currency manipulator. We are now on the verge of all-out economic warfare.

These are the world’s two largest economies, and the collapse of trade between them would hardly bring either one to a grinding halt. But the combatants are not evenly matched. China might seem in a better position to cope with a trade war, since it is a heavily managed economy and the government squashes political resistance. Yet its every maneuver carries enormous risks. Meanwhile, Trump, who manages a durable and flexible economy, is not exactly seeking victory for the American way of doing business. His approach, in some ways right out of Beijing’s playbook, would make our economy quite a bit more like China’s.

The breakdown in trade between the two countries is already causing pain in both economies, as soybean farmers in the Midwest and Chinese textile exporters in Guangzhou can attest. The battle will intensify if rising tensions close off investment flows and dampen the movement of tourists and students between two countries. But the U.S. economy is about 50 percent larger than China’s, and is less dependent on trade, so its prospects look better. And China exports more to the United States than it imports from the United States (a fact that clearly riles up Trump and was a key instigator for the trade war). So the near-term pain will be greater for China.

But Beijing does have some advantages. One is the structure of its (mostly) command economy, which is dominated by state enterprises. The majority of banks in China are also state-owned, making it easy for the government to generate a surge of cheap credit—and the subsequent investment that boosts growth. The second advantage is the structure of China’s political system, in which dissent is easier to shut down and bad news about the trade war can be filtered out.

Still, even a state-dominated economy with many economic weapons has to be cautious about which ones it uses; some of them could backfire badly.

One of China’s greatest weapons in a trade war is its ability to disrupt the work of American companies that want to sell into China’s enormous and fast-growing markets or that use China as part of their global supply chains. But other foreign companies and investors could also begin to see China as an unpredictable and volatile business environment, unconstrained by the rule of law. This would hurt China’s plans for modernizing its economy with the help of foreign investments and foreign technological and managerial expertise.

China could also further cheapen the value of its currency, the renminbi, to offset U.S. tariffs. Here, too, the government faces constraints. Fear of a major devaluation could cause foreign investors to pull their money out of China, and domestic investors might follow. This happened in 2014-15, when a modest government-orchestrated devaluation set off panic-driven capital outflows in anticipation of further depreciation.

Moreover, even an autocratic government cannot count on getting carte blanche from its people. Xi is not immune to domestic political pressures and must carefully manage the tricky balance between using nationalist sentiments as a rallying cry and actually delivering good economic performance.

Theoretically, China can stimulate a flagging economy by ordering a burst of investment that boosts gross domestic product growth in the short term. But this would probably generate more bad loans in an already fragile banking system. A protracted trade war would also halt even modest momentum toward market-oriented reforms, a putative objective of the Chinese government. This would hurt the economy’s long-term growth prospects. And China’s plan to shift the focus of its economy from staid and inefficient state enterprises to high-productivity and high-value industries will fall short if it loses access to technology from the United States and other Western nations.

In some ways, Trump seems more constrained than Xi because of America’s democratic political system, its more laissez-faire economy and the limits on his executive power. But he, too, has some elements in his favor as he does battle with China. Trump has the advantage of managing an economy that is enormously flexible and resilient. And getting tough on China resonates not just with his political base but even with Democrats, many of whom have long called for aggressive U.S. action against Chinese trade and currency practices, even if they disagree with Trump on tactics.

Yet in exercising his power, he could end up making America’s economy a bit more like the state-dominated one operated by Beijing—and, in so doing, permanently damage the U.S. free market. To rescue the agricultural sector from the consequences of the trade war, Trump has already dispatched $28 billion in government subsidies. He has also jawboned American companies to move their production bases back to U.S. shores, rather than letting them make their own commercial decisions. Trump has even pressured the Federal Reserve, whose independence is seen as sacrosanct, to lower interest rates and suggested that the Fed should help drive down the value of the dollar. With such moves, he risks undermining the true strengths of the United States: the institutions that make the U.S. dollar and the American financial system so dominant.

What’s worse, Trump suggests that the rule of law is up for negotiation. After imposing sanctions on Chinese technology companies such as ZTE and Huawei for running afoul of U.S. rules, he hinted that those sanctions could be negotiated away as part of a trade deal. He is fighting a Pentagon process that could award a defense contract to Amazon, whose CEO (who owns The Washington Post) has criticized him.

China has made its lack of independent institutions a source of strength in dealing with external economic aggression. In that model, Trump sees something Washington should copy—and seems ready to abandon what makes the United States special. This truly is a trade war with no winners.

Editorial do Washington Post sobre as relações EUA-China

Um editorial de um grande jornal, como o Washington Post, representa algo sério, de significado nacional, ou estratégico.
Não sei se é o caso de "relações EUA-China", ou apenas "Trump-China"", o que tem outra dimensão.
Mas vale ler, pois pode estar transmitindo as posições de gente mais sensata de Washington, como o establishment militar, por exemplo (ainda assim, extremamente paranoico, como compete ao Pentágono).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The grave consequences of a U.S.-China schism

Editorial Board

The Washington Post, June 15 at 12:51 PM

THE UNITED STATES and China are at a hinge point in the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century. What started last year as a trade dispute, one that just last month seemed close to settlement, threatens to escalate into a new Cold War with potentially devastating consequences for both countries — and the world. Now substantially integrated, the two largest economies could unwind from each other; a technological schism could create separate platforms for communications and other high-tech systems. Flows of students and scientists and venture capital could dry up. Cooperation on strategic problems of mutual interest, such as North Korea and climate change, could cease. And countries from Southeast Asia to Latin America could be forced to pick sides.

This is an outcome that both the Trump administration and the Chinese regime of Xi Jinping should be seeking to avoid. Instead, both appear to be pursuing policies that make it more likely. In the case of the Trump administration, the slide toward confrontation is being driven by reckless and sometimes senseless measures ungoverned by a coherent strategy.

To be sure, there is a consensus in Washington that policy toward China needs to change from that of recent decades. Successive U.S. presidents bet that growing trade and investment between the two countries and steady diplomatic engagement could coax the Communist Party regime into becoming a responsible global player that respected the U.S.-backed international order and gradually became more free at home. Mr. Xi’s regime has shattered that hopeful vision.

It is not just that this Chinese ruler has concentrated personal power and shut down all hints of pluralism in the political system. His regime is pioneering a new, high-tech form of totalitarianism, in which human lives will be controlled by omniscient databases and ubiquitous surveillance systems — and it is offering this as a model of governance for the rest of the world. China would foster societies where the Internet is a tool for state power rather than personal freedom. Its technology companies are already marketing the systems that have enabled a vast gulag of concentration camps in the Xinjiang region to authoritarian regimes in Africa.

Mr. Xi is flouting international law and treaties in the South China Sea, where the Chinese military is building a string of bases aimed at establishing Beijing’s hegemony over vital shipping lanes. A Chinese arms buildup appears designed to enable the subjugation of Taiwan and the expulsion of U.S. forces from the Western Pacific. Meanwhile, Beijing is still seeking unfair advantage for Chinese companies by trying to force multilateral firms to hand over their technology in exchange for access to its market. Promises by Mr. Xi to cease the stealing of technology through cyberoperations have been brazenly violated.

The United States has little choice but to push back against these aggressions and Mr. Xi’s disturbing ideological model. But the Trump administration has gone about it in the wrong way. It has largely ignored the most reprehensible and dangerous Chinese behavior, including its genocidal campaign in Xinjiangand takeover of the South China Sea, while launching a tariff war in pursuit of an improvised and shifting mix of economic concessions. President Trump wants to force a reduction in the U.S.-China trade deficit, a pointless goal that reflects his ignorance of basic economics. While some of his advisers seek an end to unfair Chinese treatment of U.S. companies, others appear bent on blocking China’s attempt to develop high-tech industries or destroying the ones it has.

A turning point came last month after Mr. Xi abruptly retreated from a tentative agreement resolving the trade dispute. Mr. Trump reacted not just by moving to expand tariffs on Chinese goods but also by restricting sales by U.S. companies to Huawei, China’s telecommunications champion. There are legitimate concerns about Huawei’s connections to the Chinese government, and a good argument for excluding its products from sensitive communications networks in the United States and its allies — though U.S. agencies have yet to back up their warnings with clear evidence. But Mr. Trump’s measure threatens to destroy the company, or else force it to develop its own versions of chips and operating systems it now obtains from the West. If the ban is fully enacted and China retaliates against U.S. tech companies, as it has threatened to do, the decoupling of the two countries’ tech supply chains, as well as other parts of their economies, could begin in earnest.

That would be a bad outcome for both Americans and Chinese. It would make both countries poorer while sharply raising the odds that they will slide toward a larger conflict. Competition between the United States and China should not become a zero-sum game, as it was with the Soviet Union. Rather, the United States should seek to maintain flows of trade, investment, people and expertise between the two economies, while working patiently to establish fairer and more equitable terms for that interchange. Where it should be uncompromising is in challenging China’s military expansionism and its attempt to create and export technologies of repression. A productive economic relationship would provide leverage and make it more likely that China’s malign regional and global ambitions can be contained.

To pursue those policies, the United States needs its allies. Many nations in Europe and Asia share Washington’s concerns about the Xi regime. Yet Mr. Trump has pursued his trade war with Beijing unilaterally, while threatening to launch new tariff attacks against key partners, such as Japan and Germany. He walked away from what could have been one of the most powerful tools to contain Beijing, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Mr. Trump’s tactics have failed to accomplish even his narrowest economic aims. Now he risks triggering a larger conflict whose dimensions and potential consequences ought to alarm Americans who hope for a peaceful and prosperous 21st century.

Read more:

The Post’s View: China is creating concentration camps in Xinjiang. Here’s how we hold it accountable.

Fareed Zakaria: The blacklisting of Huawei might be China’s Sputnik moment

David Ignatius: Trump loves walls. But he should be careful about a digital barrier with China.

Josh Rogin: China’s infiltration of U.S. capital markets is a national security concern

Tom Cotton and John Cornyn: Keep the Chinese government away from 5G technology