So much for US-China detente.
A little over two weeks after Joe Biden hosted Xi Jinping in California to tamp down tensions, defense chiefs from the US and its UK and Australian allies met just along the coast and agreed to deploy artificial intelligence to better track Chinese submarines.
Friday’s exchange of the Aukus security grouping was one of a series of recent events that show competition between the world’s two biggest economies is as fierce as ever.
China’s military slammed Washington today for sending a warship into part of the South China Sea as part of regular freedom-of-navigation operations, an act it said violated its sovereignty.
And in Beijing, Xi hosted Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a staunch ally of Russia in its war on Ukraine who is subject to US and European sanctions — and called for closer economic ties.
Strains persist in the industry and technology spheres, too.
The Biden administration has just released rules designed to block electric-vehicle manufacturers from sourcing battery materials from China.
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo meanwhile made the case for more funding “if we’re serious” about denying China access to cutting-edge technology. Her message to heads of chip companies losing revenue because of US export controls? “Such is life.”
That prompted a broadside from the foreign ministry in Beijing, which said the US should “stop seeing China as a hypothetical enemy” and work to “deliver on the common understandings” reached in California.
No one seriously expected a reset from the Biden-Xi summit. Both sides said the best outcome would be means of managing the competition, not ending it.
Recent developments are a test of how each side can do that.
The risk is the downward dynamic takes on a momentum of its own, all the more so in a US election year. — Alan Crawford