The head of the US State Department has publicly confirmed that Washington is waging a new cold war against China.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a historic speech in which he essentially announced a policy of containment and siege of Beijing, similar to the strategy that Washington pursued against the Soviet Union in the first cold war.
“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system,” he said.
“The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before,” he argued.
Blinken even made implicit military threats against China.
“President Biden has instructed the Department of Defense to hold China as its pacing challenge, to ensure that our military stays ahead”, he said.
In order to wage this new cold war, the US State Department announced the creation of a “China House”, focused specifically on isolating Beijing.
Blinken made these remarks in a May 26 talk titled “The Administration’s Approach to the People’s Republic of China,” delivered at George Washington University, a major DC-based college that has a revolving door with the US government.
The speech was co-sponsored by the powerful think tank the Asia Society. Blinken praised the organization for “forging closer ties with the countries and people of Asia to try to enhance peace, prosperity, freedom, equality, sustainability.”
The Asia Society was founded by billionaire oligarch John D. Rockefeller III, a key political operative with deep ties to US intelligence agencies, who worked closely with the US government and para-state organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations to wage the first cold war on the Soviet Union.
Blinken’s speech was very similar to one given in July 2020 by Donald Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in which he condemned China as “the primary challenge today in the free world” and openly called to “change” the government in Beijing.
China challenges US-led ‘ruled based order’
The central thrust of Blinken’s speech was that, after World War Two, the United States created the global political and economic architecture that governs the world today, and this has allowed Washington to dominate the planet.
China, however, now poses a unique challenge to that unipolar US hegemony, he lamented, calling Beijing “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order”.
“After the Second World War,” Blinken said, “we and our partners [built] the rules-based order.”
He described this liberal capitalist “rules-based order” as one in which “people, ideas, goods, and capital move freely.”
In the nearly 7,000-word speech, Blinken reiterated this talking point constantly, using the phrase “rules-based international order,” “rules-based order,” or “international order” nine times.
“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” he declared.
With arrogant American exceptionalist rhetoric, Blinken described the United States as “magical,” and depicted China as a threat to the “magical” US system and its liberal capitalist order.
“We have profound differences with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Government”, he stressed, adding that the US goal is “to outcompete China in key areas.”
US corporate-led neoliberal capitalist model clashes with China’s state-led socialist model
Blinken’s speech reflected the deep neoliberal ideology of the US government, and showed how its capitalist economic system fundamentally clashes with China’s socialist model.
The US secretary of state accused Beijing of supposedly unfairly competing in the “rules-based order” because its government intervenes in the economy and implements socialist policies.
“Unlike U.S. companies and other market-oriented firms, Chinese companies don’t need to make a profit – they just get another injection of state-owned bank credit when funds are running low,” he complained.
Blinken harshly condemned China’s socialist policies, while calling for more neoliberal policies to be implemented.
“We will push back on market-distorting policies and practices, like subsidies and market access barriers, which China’s government has used for years to gain competitive advantage,” he declared.
The top US diplomat claimed that state intervention in the economy is unfair, calling instead for “competition” on a “level playing field” – ie, one in which corporations dictate policy, not governments.
“We’ll compete with China to defend our interests and build our vision for the future,” Blinken asserted.
He put a particular emphasis on the technological sector. Blinken accused China of “unfair technology and economic practices,” by which he largely meant state intervention to foster their growth.
The secretary of state complained that US corporations are heavily regulated in China, and that Beijing puts many restrictions on them.
“For too long, Chinese companies have enjoyed far greater access to our markets than our companies have in China”, Blinken grumbled.
He lamented that “The New York Times and Twitter are prohibited for the Chinese people,” that “American companies operating in China have been subject to systematic forced technology transfer,” and that “Beijing strictly limits the number of foreign movies allowed in the Chinese market.”
Blinken boasts of building US-led anti-China alliances
In his speech, Blinken boasted that the United States is building and strengthening a group of “allies and partners” in order to challenge China.
He mentioned the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, with Japan, Australia, and India; as well as AUKUS, the US military alliance with the United Kingdom and Australia.
Blinken likewise bragged of expanding NATO’s imperial sphere of influence into Asia, stating, “we’re building bridges among our Indo-Pacific and European partners, including by inviting Asian allies to the NATO summit in Madrid next month [in June].”
He was specifically referring to Japan and South Korea, which already participated in a meeting in NATO headquarters in April.
NATO expanding into Asia-Pacific to militarily encircle China as well as Russia
Blinken complains of growing China-Russia alliance
“We are not looking for conflict or a new Cold War”, Blinken claimed in the speech. But at the same time, he contradicted this reassurance with his calls for containing and besieging China.
The US secretary of state also targeted Russia. And he warned about the growing alliance between Beijing and Moscow.
“President Xi and President Putin declared that the friendship between their countries was – and I quote – ‘without limits,'” he cautioned.
Blinken warned that the Eurasian powers are carrying out joint military exercises.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a clear and present threat,” he declared.
“The foundations of the international order are under serious and sustained challenge” by both China and Russia, Blinken claimed.
US secretary of state accuses China of ‘genocide and crimes against humanity,’ without any evidence
A significant part of Blinken’s speech was dedicated to accusing China of outlandish misdeeds.
Without presenting a shred of evidence, he claimed China is committing “genocide and crimes against humanity” in its Muslim-majority province Xinjiang.
This is despite the fact that the State Department’s own lawyers concluded there is insufficient evidence for these hyperbolic allegations.
Blinken also implicitly reiterated US support for separatist movements in Tibet and Hong Kong, stating, “We stand together on Tibet, where the authorities continue to wage a brutal campaign against Tibetans and their culture, language, and religious traditions, and in Hong Kong, where the Chinese Communist Party has imposed harsh anti-democratic measures under the guise of national security.”
In a deeply hypocritical diatribe, Blinken claimed China had “perfected mass surveillance,” while making no mention of NSA mass spying.
Blinken accused Beijing of “harming workers and companies in the United States,” without acknowledging the rampant abuse of workers by Amazon, Uber, Walmart, and other US corporations.
The top US diplomat even went so far as to attack China for “standing with governments that brazenly violate” sovereignty and territorial integrity, while completely ignoring US support for Israeli colonialism against Palestinians, the Saudi and Emirati war on Yemen, or the invasion and occupation of Syria by NATO member Turkey, let alone the US wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Somalia.
Hinting at the debunked myth of “debt-trap diplomacy,” Blinken fearmongered about economic agreements that countries have made with China, stating, “We’ve heard firsthand about buyer’s remorse that these deals can leave behind”.
“Under President Xi, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad,” he claimed.
Mike Pompeo’s similar anti-China speech in 2020
Antony Blinken’s speech had striking similarities with one given by his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in July 2020.
Both secretaries of state complained that China threatens US global hegemony, and argued that the China of today is fundamentally different from the China in 1972, when President Nixon took a historic visit to the country to normalize relations.
In his speech, titled “Communist China and the Free World’s Future,” Pompeo essentially argued that Nixon’s historic visit was a mistake.
Washington thought that, by opening up, it could change China’s political and economic system. But ultimately it was not able to do so, both US secretaries of state lamented.
“We can’t treat this incarnation of China as a normal country,” Pompeo insisted. “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change.”
Trump’s secretary of state accused Beijing of challenging the “rules-based order,” the same concept that Blinken has endlessly repeated.
“If we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build,” Pompeo warned.
Blasting “China’s virulent strain of communism,” he declared that “Communists almost always lie.” (This was quite ironic, given Pompeo himself quipped in April 2019, “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.)
“We have to keep in mind that the CCP regime is a Marxist-Leninist regime,” Pompeo said. “General Secretary Xi Jinping is a true believer in a bankrupt totalitarian ideology.”
He portrayed China as a monstrous squid, stating, “Every nation will have to come to its own understanding of how to protect its own sovereignty, how to protect its own economic prosperity, and how to protect its ideals from the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Pompeo’s remarks were more combative, but cutting through the rhetoric and looking at the ideas expressed, Blinken’s speech was very similar.
Like Blinken, Pompeo’s complaints were ultimately rooted in China’s socialist model. Many Chinese companies “don’t answer to independent boards, and many of them are state-sponsored and so have no need to pursue profits,” he complained.
Blaming China for the global Covid-19 pandemic, Pompeo called China “the primary challenge today in the free world.”
“Securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time,” the top US diplomat insisted.
Both speeches serve as confirmation that the United States is waging a new cold war on China, and that this aggressive strategy has bipartisan support in Washington, among both Republicans and Democrats.
