Asserting that Beijing has been picking up fights right now virtually on every front of its interest, a top American diplomat on Monday said the United States’s strategy to counter it is to push back against China in every domain.
“Our strategy is to push back against China in virtually every domain. We’re doing it in the security area. We’re doing it in terms of outsized demands to claim sovereign territory, whether it’s in the Galwan Valley of India on the India-Chinese border, or in the South Pacific,” Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said during third India-US Leadership Summit.
The summit was organised by US India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF).
The Trump Administration is also doing it economically, he said.
“The President has led the charge against the predatory practices from the Chinese economy and the Phase One trade deal is just a first step in that (direction), to be followed by many others in the years ahead to equalise and balance the US-China economic relationship,” he said, during a conversation with Richard Verma, former US Ambassador to India.
Underpinning all of that is a demand for basic reciprocity, he said.
“For a very long time, there had been a desire to extend to China special privileges and benefits, and even the benefit of the doubt among them, to bring China into a more modern and prosperous future,” he noted.
“Twenty years ago when that initiative was launched in earnest with China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, the bet by most policymakers was that eventually, the weight of the institutions that China was joining would slowly redirect the Chinese political system and Chinese interests to a point where China would become much more invested in a rules-based order...,” Biegun said.
He added that these rule based-orders would at least moderate the tendencies of the Chinese government to make it a better partner for many around the world, even if they do not make China a true democracy.