Shi Yinhong, Biden's China Policy

Shi Yinhong, “A Review of the Biden Administration’s Stance on China in terms of Non-Military Strategy”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Shi Yinhong (b. 1951) is a professor of International Relations, Chairman of Academic Committee of the School of International Studies, and Director of the Center on American Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing.  Like most professors in international relations in top universities in China, Shi is fluent in English and has enjoyed numerous stints as Visiting Professor in the United States and Europe.  His Baidu profile includes an impressive list of his publications (which include many translations from English-language sources).

Shi in general writes as a liberal, which is clear from the titles of articles he published on the Guancha website in 2019 (in Chinese)—“I Really Hate it when People say Trump is a Businessman,” and “There are Conflicts between the U.S. and China, but There is no Cause for Alarm”—and from an interview he did on the subject of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy with the Chinese-language New York Times in 2015. 
 
The text translated here on the Biden administration’s China policy might be read as an update of another one I translated last year.  Both are down-and-dirty, just-the-facts-ma’am accounts of the state of the world and how this relates to China.  For a somewhat similar analysis by an American foreign policy expert of current Sino-American relations, one might well read this thoughtful interview with Jude Blanchette in the New Yorker.
 
In reference to Shi’s text from last year, Sinocism’s Bill Bishop noted that in his view, Shi does not have “much influence with the decision-makers in the Xi administration,” and I have no reason to disagree with Bill.  “What worries me,” Bishop continues, is that Shi is “seeing those decision-makers inside the Xi administration relishing engaging in the broader struggle with the US, believing that the pandemic has dramatically increased the convergence of relative power between China and the US and that the PRC has much more leverage to push back against the US as it pursues Xi's broader goals.” 
 
The text translated here, which treats the first few months of the Biden administration’s China policy, is even gloomier.  Shi enumerates in great detail the many efforts the Biden administration has taken to rally American allies to assist in efforts to decouple from and contain China through military means (not addressed in this text), trade policy, economic alliances, and ideological pronouncements, etc.  The picture is not at all rosy, as Biden was riding high in the first months of his presidency, and Shi’s piece was originally published in June.  Shi might be a little bit less pessimistic now, as many of Biden’s efforts to spruce up American democracy in its battle with Chinese authoritarianism have been slowed or torpedoed by the Republicans, and the early summer confidence that America and the world were getting control of the coronavirus pandemic has faded a fair bit since.  But anti-China feelings run strong throughout much of the world, and with Trump’s instinctive divisiveness out of the picture, Biden has made a good start at uniting much of the world to push back against and contain China.
 
Shi offers very little commentary or analysis, letting the stark set of circumstances speak for themselves.  Biden’s spirited ideological defenses of democracy evoke a couple of sarcastic jabs from Shi, but he is no Wolf Warrior, and Wolf Warriors would surely see this piece as weak sauce.  To me, the overall tone of Shi’s piece seems even mildly accusatory, and is directed at China’s leaders:  “Biden said he was going to do this, and he did,” Shi seems to be saying.  “Now what?” Or, as Stan used to say to Ollie (or was it Ollie to Stan?) in the old Laurel and Hardy movies, “Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!”  Shi doesn’t even bother to denounce American hegemony, and pointedly mentions not a single Chinese ally. 
 
In his book Breaking out of the Cocoon, Shi Zhan warns Wolf Warriors and Chinese nationalists that when trust between nations disappears, markets collapse.  Shi Yinhong does not say this directly, but it is clearly one of the things he is thinking.

Favorite Quotes
 
“Biden's non-military posture and behavior toward China during the first half of his administration include: first, partially continuing the basic philosophy of the Republican Party and even Trump himself, partially bucking the economic liberal beliefs of the Democratic Party centrists themselves, using the idea of ‘fighting for every American job’ as the general outline of trade policy toward China, and continuing the trade dispute with China, initially launched in 2018, for a longer period of time.  He has also launched a supply chain restructuring campaign aimed primarily at China. Second, compared to its predecessor, the Biden administration has intensified its efforts to decouple high tech from China, and is doing its best to hinder China’s own innovation initiatives, thus adding containment to decoupling. In addition, in order to target specific Chinese companies, the Biden administration has created a fourth major reason to be added to previous national security risks, namely, collaboration with the Chinese military and involvement in strengthening China's military power, which joins the existing reasons: involvement in island-building in the South China Sea, mass detentions in Xinjiang, high-tech surveillance and forced labor. Third, there have been significant new developments in the joint allied efforts to decouple from and contain Chinese high tech. Fourth, President Biden treats the growing contest between the United States and China as a global ideological contest, and sees himself as being on a self-appointed mission to prove that democracy still works in the face of the threat of what he calls authoritarianism (i.e., the ‘Biden Doctrine’), which consists of four main practical foreign policy objectives, to be achieved in the near and medium term, all at China’s expense:  To ensure that the United States and its allies in the developed world play a decisive role in the global fight against the epidemic; to ensure that the United States and their allies act as the sole leaders in the global fight against climate change; to restore their worldwide ideological dominance; to restructure supply chains in order to decisively reduce their vulnerability, to maintain and enhance their high-technology dominance, and to set the future direction of the world's high-tech developments. All of this implies a desire to frustrate and damage China, or, more precisely, a goal not only of competing against China, but defeating China and achieving final victory. Fifth, allied diplomacy with China is a major focus of the Biden administration's approach to foreign affairs, as it seeks to maximize the sympathy, support, and collaboration of its allies in the developed world and the European Union in all major areas of Sino-U.S. confrontation and rivalry.”
 
 “The outline of the Biden administration's China policy is emerging, based on what it has repeatedly declared to be the fundamental nature of the U.S.-China relationship:  that for the United States, China is a near-comprehensive ‘hostile threat’ and competitor in the short, medium, and long term.  The U.S. will hence strive to win the strategic confrontation and competition against China with an almost full range of long-lasting policy systems and practices. China must observe the comprehensive strength and multifaceted potential of the United States under Biden over time and with an open mind. The minimum and immediate basic approach should be for China to act according to its capabilities, to act according to its interests, to weigh the costs of its actions, and to guard against risks, only after which can it chart a long-term future course.”

Links to other texts on the site

Texts treating the subject of China-US relations

Translation
 
The general outline of the Biden administration's China policy is emerging.  It is already quite clear, based on repeated pronouncements concerning the basic nature of the U.S.-China relationship, that China is seen a near-comprehensive "hostile threat" and competitor to the United States in the short, medium, and long term, and that the U.S. is seeking to implement a near-comprehensive, long-term set of policies and corresponding practices that will ensure victory in this strategic confrontation and competition.  We can separate U.S. policy, including its words and its actions, into two broad, interrelated categories: military strategy and non-military strategy.

In terms of the former, the Biden administration has continually escalated its vigilance, threats, containment, and pushback against China. Major strategic developments include armament construction and military planning and deployment aimed at war preparations. The core content is to target China’s advantages in terms of land-based medium- and long-range conventional strategic missiles, known as “anti-ship missiles” or "Guam killers." At the same time, they are attempting to construct and implement a number of basic coping methods as well as multiple auxiliary coping methods. 
 
This article will focus on the second category, which covers major issue areas such as the “Xinjiang” and “Hong Kong issues,” the U.S.-China trade dispute, high-technology "decoupling"[2]  and containment, ideological competition, and efforts to unite American allies against China. I will also examine the Biden administration's cooperation with China, which is intertwined in a complex fashion with competition with China over issues such as world prestige, leadership in global governance, ideological influence, and economic/technological competition. 
 
The Biden administration's strong anti-China posture and actions on the Xinjiang issue and the Hong Kong issue will not be discussed in detail in this article, and I will simply point out that from the time it came to power, the Biden administration has persistently attacked the Chinese government for "crimes against humanity and genocide in Xinjiang," and rallied as many other countries as possible in the developed world to attack, sanction, and isolate China on the Xinjiang issue, while focusing on the alleged problem of "forced labor" there.” The Biden administration's Hong Kong policy, in addition to inheriting the Trump administration's policies, has focused on attacking and imposing sanctions on reforms to Hong Kong's electoral system designed to ensure that patriots rule Hong Kong. 
 
One:  Continuing to Provoke China-Related Trade Disputes and Launching Supply Chain Restructuring 
 
The Biden administration's trade policy with China is in part a continuation of Trump's basic philosophy, which is turn is to some degree a reversal of the centrist wing of the Democratic party’s own belief in economic liberalism.  As Secretary of State Antony Blinken made clear in his first speech on March 3, 2021. "Some of us previously argued for free trade agreements because we believed Americans would broadly share in the economic gains and that those deals would shape the global economy in ways that we wanted…Our approach now will be different. We will fight for every American job and for the rights, protections, and interests of all American workers."[3] U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai put it even more directly when she talked about a “worker-centered” trade policy.[4] 
 
The Biden administration is in no hurry to resolve the trade dispute.  On January 19, 2021, Treasury Secretary nominee Janet Yellen said she would take a hard line on China's "abusive, unfair and illegal [trade] practices.” On January 26, Commerce Secretary nominee Gina Raimondo stated that she plans to be "very aggressive" in opposing China's "unfair" trade practices and will coordinate with U.S. allies in this regard. "Whether it's listed entities, or tariffs, or countervailing duties, I intend to use all of these tools to the fullest extent possible in order to level the playing field for American workers." 
　
On February 25, 2021, Katherine Tai, Biden’s nominee to serve as U.S. Trade Representative, told the Senate Finance Committee that China is an "extremely formidable competitor where the state can conduct the economy almost like an orchestra" and that "tariffs are a very important part of our fair trade correction toolbox.” She will seek to ensure that China fulfills the commitments made in the January 15, 2020, U.S.-China trade agreement. In late March, Tai told the Wall Street Journal that there are no plans to remove high tariffs on China in the near future and that while it is possible to reopen trade talks with China, high tariffs remain a "lever" to extract concessions from China in future negotiations. 
 
On March 31, 2021, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released its "Trade Estimate 2021" report, joining the Obama and Trump administrations in attacking Chinese industrial policy, particularly "Made in China 2025," stating that "even if China fails to fully meet the industrial policy goals set in Made in China 2025, it is still likely to create or exacerbate market distortions in many targeted sectors, creating significant excess capacity…It is also likely to harm U.S. interests over time, as Chinese backed companies will increase their market share at the expense of U.S. companies operating in these sectors.” The report says the U.S. is working with the EU and Japan to construct more effective actions and potential rules to deal with state subsidies that are inconsistent with existing international responsibilities.  
 
The continuation of the U.S.-China trade dispute over a longer period of time is thus to be expected.  In late April of 2021, Katherine Tai twice spoke twice about the first phase of the U.S.-China Economic and Trade Agreement signed on January 15, 2020, and argued that while China had pledged to take new steps to improve protection of U.S. intellectual property rights, "these steps toward reform need to be effectively implemented and in themselves are not sufficient to make the fundamental changes needed to improve IPR protection in China."

The Office of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) released its “2020 Annual U.S. Intellectual Property Report,” which covers 100 U.S. trading partners. Katherine Tai said "China remains the source of most of the counterfeit goods used to combat the coronavirus epidemic" and said the U.S. is "scrutinizing all aspects" of China's performance in implementing the U.S.-China trade agreement and will enforce its provisions.  However, she continued "the high-level U.S.-China consultations required by the agreement to be held every six months have not yet been scheduled." On May 17, Tai, Raimondo, and European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis issued a joint statement saying the U.S. and the EU are partners "in holding accountable countries like China that support policies that distort trade." 
 
There are two somewhat more positive developments in the U.S.-China trade and economic negotiations. One is that, although the U.S. think-tank Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) has calculated, based on statistics from China's General Administration of Customs, that China will complete only 58% of its agreed-on purchases of U.S. goods in 2020 (or $100 billion of the $173.1 billion) under the U.S.-China economic and trade agreement for that year, in late February 2021, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Kathleen Tai jointly confirmed that "even with the severe negative impact of the coronavirus outbreak, China appears to be vigorously pursuing its agreed commitment to purchase large amounts of U.S. agricultural products." Through June, China was still actively buying large amounts of U.S. agricultural products.

Second, the Biden administration insisted on holding a high-level strategic dialogue between the U.S. and China, and while the Anchorage Diplomatic Senior Meeting in no way implied a resumption of the long-suspended regulatory diplomatic senior consultations, high-level communication between the two countries had in fact partially resumed in the economic and trade area, with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He speaking with Katherine Tai on May 27, 2021, and in a video call with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on June 2.  On June 10, Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao spoke with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and all agreed to continue the discussions. 
 
President Biden is seeking billions of dollars in domestic investment from Congressional Republicans, arguing that such investment is necessary to maintain, salvage, or take back economic, trade, and technological advantages from China.  On May 6, 2021, Biden said that Congress needs to adopt his $2.3 trillion proposal for infrastructure investments, including traditional as well as electronic networks and electric vehicles, in order to ensure U.S. dominance on the global stage, because "the Chinese are currently eating our lunch. They're eating our lunch economically. They are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in research and development." The Biden administration has announced a supply chain restructuring campaign aimed primarily at China, closely linked to the onslaught of the coronavirus epidemic and the dramatic improvement in U.S. anti-pandemic efforts, a measure stimulated as well by severe chip supply shortages as the U.S. economic recovery kicks into higher gear.

Based on the 100-day review that President Biden's ordered in February 2021, the goal of which was to explore supply chain issues in four major areas (semiconductors, key minerals and materials such as rare earths, pharmaceuticals, and electric vehicle batteries) the relevant parts of the U.S. executive branch jointly concluded that the United States is in a posture of serious vulnerability, both due a severe shortage of domestic production capacity and over-reliance on Chinese supplies for rare earths, neodymium magnets, and pharmaceuticals, and because of unfair trade practices, including state subsidies and forced transfers of intellectual property, by "some foreign governments" such as China.

In response, the Biden Administration announced on June 8 the creation of two specialized organizations to lead a supply chain restructuring campaign to mitigate serious security risks and economic constraints: (1) a task force led by the Secretaries of Commerce, Transportation and Agriculture to address more recent supply chain challenges and alleviate "bottlenecks;" and (2) a "trade strike force" led by the U.S. Trade Representative to develop mandatory enforcement actions against unfair trade practices to mitigate erosion of critical supply chains. 
 
The Biden administration also announced that it would "expand multilateral diplomatic relations on supply chain vulnerability through the close cooperation of like-minded allies such as the Indo-Pacific Quadruple Alliance and the Group of Seven (G7)." On June 13, 2021, Biden insisted that the final communiqué of the G7 Cornwall Summit should ban "all forms of forced labor, including state-sponsored forced labor of vulnerable groups and minorities" in the process of supply chain restructuring.

On June 29, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) issued a white paper, both proactively and at the insistence of the U.S., emphasizing that Japan should improve its economic security in the face of intensifying competition between the U.S. and China by restructuring its supply chain, cooperating with the U.S. and other countries to protect supply chain security, preventing leakage of sensitive technologies, and promoting R&D and investment in strategically important high technologies such as semiconductors, in order to strengthen domestic production and ensure competitive advantage, taking into account "more than ever before" the labor and environmental pollution conditions in the places where raw materials are sourced, and requiring companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to adopt higher standards on human rights and climate change.
 
Under the Biden administration, the Xinjiang issue and trade repression have become increasingly linked. On June 23, 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it would include five companies that produce solar panels and its core material polysilicon in Xinjiang on the "entity list;" such entities are severely restricted from importing and obtaining investment from the United States.  The main reason given was the use of "forced labor" and other "human rights violations.”

On July 9, 14 more Chinese enterprises were added to the U.S. Department of Commerce's "entity list" for allegedly being involved in "human rights abuses and high-tech surveillance in Xinjiang.” Four days later, the State Department issued a statement warning that "companies and individuals who do not exit supply chains, operations, and/or investments linked to Xinjiang may be at high risk of violating U.S. law," even if their links are "indirect."   This warning may be seen as unprecedentedly broad and foreshadows the future intensification of domestic and foreign sanctions. 
 
In short, in the area of trade with China, the Biden administration has not only continued to increase trade frictions, but also, and to some degree more importantly, has launched a supply chain restructuring campaign aimed primarily at China, seeking to include the rest of the developed world in the campaign. The Xinjiang issue and trade repression are increasingly becoming mutually sustaining, constituting an important new feature of trade policy with China, which is likely to be increasingly damaging to normal trade between China and the United States, as well as between China and many developed countries. 
 
Two:  Full Implementation of High Tech Decoupling and Containment
 
Since Trump's May 15, 2019 executive order cracking down on Huawei, high-tech decoupling from China has been one of the most important components of U.S. policy, and the United States also has worked to convince and pressure other developed countries to do the same. Mainstream forces both inside and outside the U.S. government are willing suffer the huge losses to the U.S. economy this decoupling may incur if this will prevent China from gaining strategic military, economic, and ideological advantages.

This selective decoupling is rapidly intensifying under the strong influence of the coronavirus epidemic, with more and more areas deliberately identified by the U.S. government as critical, thus requiring decoupling. The Biden administration has become even more aggressive in this regard than its predecessor. Moreover, after the Chinese government decided to accelerate and broaden its own high technology innovation in response to this dire situation, the Biden administration also applied pressure on China’s own attempts to innovate, thus adding containment to decoupling.
 
On January 27, 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that "untrusted vendors, including telecommunications equipment manufactured by Huawei, are a threat to the security of the United States and its allies…We will ensure that U.S. telecommunications networks…do not use equipment from untrusted vendors, and we will work with our allies to secure their telecommunications networks and invest in expanding the production of telecommunications equipment from trusted U.S. and allied companies." This is similar to the Trump administration's policy on the issue. 
 
On Feb. 19, President Biden told the Munich Security Forum that "we have to make rules that will govern technological development, that will govern norms of behavior in cyberspace, in artificial intelligence, in biotechnology, so that they are used to enhance people, not to suppress them." Three days later, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi asked the U.S. to stop curbing China's high-tech development at the Lanting Forum. In response, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the same day that the U.S. would continue to its practices, and would take care to seek concerted action with U.S. allies. He said specifically on 5G: "The stakes for access to these networks are as high as they can possibly be. 5G is transformative and will touch every aspect of our lives, including critical infrastructure, and it's certainly something we're discussing closely with our partners and allies." 
 
A U.S. crackdown on China's own innovative technologies is rapidly approaching. On March 12, 2021, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission identified five Chinese companies (Huawei, ZTE, HenerMedia, Hikvision and Zhejiang Dahua) as "threats to U.S. national security," while in 2020, this had Commission named only two companies, Huawei and ZTE.  Accordingly, and in accordance with the Commission's rules at the end of 2020, U.S. companies are prohibited from using a total of $8.3 billion in government funds to purchase equipment from these Chinese companies and are obligated to "phase out and replace" the equipment they already use from these Chinese companies with $1.9 billion in reimbursements from the U.S. Congress.

On March 17, the FCC voted unanimously to cancel the U.S. licenses issued more than a decade ago to China Unicom, China Telecom, and Pacific Networks, saying "the three companies have failed to provide an acceptable accounting of their relationship with the Chinese government, which could pose a national security risk to the United States." Between May and June 2021, the World Bank-led project to lay a nearly $73 million Central Pacific submarine cable for Nauru, Kiribati, and the Federated States of Micronesia rejected a bid from China's Huahai Technologies (HMN) as the Biden administration maintained its predecessor's intervention "on the basis of security threats,” despite the fact that the company's bid was 20 percent lower than those submitted by Finnish Nokia subsidiary Alcatel Diving Network (ASN) and Nippon Electric Company. 
 
Some of the attacks by the Biden administration to Chinese high-tech companies are more severe than those of their predecessors, but what they cite as goals or reasons are the same, that is, to eliminate or reduce US national security risks.  On March 17, 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued subpoenas to several Chinese telecommunications companies, with the goal of "gathering information to determine what actions may be taken to protect the safety of U.S. companies and workers."  It might be argued that the relevant information is protected by China's secrecy laws when requested by the Chinese government, and therefore Chinese companies will not cooperate with the U.S. Department of Commerce in this regard.

Under President Biden's June 9 executive order on protecting sensitive U.S. data against foreign (above all Chinese and Russian) companies, the Commerce Department will issue subpoenas to companies such as Byte Dance and Tencent to collect information on cell phone software such as Tiktok and WeChat; if Commerce Secretary Raimondo determines that a particular cell phone software poses an unacceptable national security risk, she has the authority to order its owners to suggest fixes or object to proposed changes within 30 days, on which basis she will decide to all or ban the software. Reuters, which reported the story, believes the new order "could end up affecting more cell phone software than Trump has banned and would be more tenable in the event of a legal challenge." Moreover, the U.S. government has begun negotiating with allies to take similar measures. 
 
To select and target specific Chinese companies, the Biden administration added a fourth reason to the three previously cited national security risks (involvement in island-building in the South China Sea, "mass detentions in Xinjiang," and high-tech surveillance and "forced labor") namely, collaboration with the Chinese military and involvement in enhancing China's military power. On April 8, 2021, Commerce Secretary Raimondo announced the addition of seven Chinese organizations engaged in supercomputing to the listed entities, an act that severely restricts U.S. companies from doing business with them on the grounds that they are helping the Chinese People's Liberation Army develop its military capabilities (including nuclear and hypersonic weapons capabilities).

On June 3, President Biden issued an executive order extending the previous administration's list of banned entities, increasing the number of Chinese companies to which U.S. investors are prohibited from making securities investments from 31 to 59, including Huawei, China General Nuclear Power Group, China Mobile, and China Optical Group, and stating, "We fully expect that in the coming months…we will add more companies to the restrictions of the new executive order." On July 9, the Commerce Department announced the addition of 22 Chinese companies to the list for allegedly contributing to "genocide and crimes against humanity" in Xinjiang, 14 of which "directly support [China's] military modernization program," including Hangzhou Hualan Microelectronics Co., Ltd., Beijing Dongtu Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Dongtu Junyue Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai Jinzhuo Technology Co., Ltd., Wuhan Ruike Fiber Laser Technology Co., Ltd., and Beijing Haili United Technology Co., Ltd. Company, Beijing Yanjing Electronics Co., Ltd. and Hangzhou Runxin Technology Co., Ltd., etc. 
 
Under President Biden’s rule, U.S. allies have made new and significant progress in jointly implementing high-tech decoupling from and containment of China.  On April 15, 2021, Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who was visiting the United States, and it was decided to strengthen U.S.-Japanese cooperation on critical supply chains to reduce dependence on China, particularly through a $2.5 billion U.S. and $2 billion Japanese bilateral program on "going beyond 5G" and other future cutting-edge communications technology developments (the "competitive and resilient partnership" plan). While it is unclear how the U.S. and Japan will collaborate on this issue, one possible prospect for cooperation is for semiconductor production centers to shift to Southeast Asia and to center around U.S. and Japanese high tech; if so, the adverse geo-economic and geopolitical impact on China would not be trivial. In addition, due to direct and indirect U.S. monopolistic pressure on South Korea to purchase coronavirus vaccines and to engage in chip manufacturing, the South Korean government has decided to join the U.S.-led efforts to reconstruct supply chains to the disadvantage of China.

On May 21, at the U.S.-Korea summit held in Washington, D.C., four major South Korean conglomerates, including Samsung Electronics and Roxy Venus (LG), released investment plans for the U.S. totaling $39.4 billion, with Samsung Electronics investing $17 billion in new projects for wafer foundry plants, LG Energy Solutions and Sunkyo Group (SK) some about $14 billion in innovation, and Hyundai Motor Group investing $7.4 billion in electric vehicle production and charging infrastructure investment. On June 15, the US-EU summit, attended and led by Biden during his first visit to Europe as President, decided to establish a "Trade and Technology Council" (TTC), which is mainly responsible for coordinating the United States and Europe’s targeting of China in the high-tech field, especially through the establishment of a US-Europe high-tech "common market" that guarantees the decoupling of high-tech from China through complementary and mutual assistance, promotes digital transformation, and cooperates in the development and deployment of new technologies “based on our common democratic values including respect for human rights” (in the words of the summit statement) that will lead the development of high-tech standards, protect against theft and cyber attacks, reorganize the semiconductor global supply chain to strengthen the security of supply in the United States and Europe, and develop and produce the next-generation of semiconductors, etc.
 
Despite the Biden administration many actions aiming to decouple from and contain China's high tech industries, it is still criticized and pressured by anti-China forces in Congress. On June 1, 2021, the Congressional Committee on U.S.-China Economic and Security Review released a report criticizing the Department of Commerce for being slow to establish sensitive technology lists under the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, and for failing in its responsibility to effectively protect U.S. national security. Predictably, this will accelerate the pace of the Department of Commerce's efforts. 
 
In summary, the Biden administration has outdone the previous administration, intensifying its efforts to decouple from China and contain Chinese high-tech development.  These containment efforts clearly target China, which has led the Chinese government to adopt a policy of accelerating and broadening China's independent high-technology innovation as much as possible in the face of the U.S. and its allies' decoupling efforts. The combination of decoupling and containment makes the U.S. crackdown on China in the high-technology field all the more comprehensive. This is a very important aspect of basic U.S. policy toward China at present and we can predict that it will continue into the future. 
 
Three:  Ideological Competition with China 
 
Biden has a "self-imposed mission to prove that democracy still works in the face of the threat of authoritarianism," which might called the "Biden Doctrine.”  It is based on the goal of repairing and strengthening the constitutional democratic institutions of the United States and other developed countries, adapting and improving the political culture and effectiveness of governance in these countries, contributing to a significant improvement in their fight against the pandemic and their economic situation, and significantly increasing their capacity to respond to fundamental trends such as technological change, climate change, and the pursuit of equality, ultimately proving that in the 21st century, "democracy works" and "autocracy does not."
 
In a speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace on January 29, 2021, Jake Sullivan, the President's National Security Advisor, argued that in response to China's assertion of the superiority of its own system because of deep divisions and unrest within the United States, America’s repair its own democracy is the primary task at hand (the “first step”) in America’s effective ideological competition with China. 
 
Speaking at the Munich Security Forum on Feb. 19, Biden declared, among other things, that "in so many places, including in Europe and the United States, democratic progress is under assault…Historians are going to examine and write about this moment as an inflection point, as I said.  And I believe—with every ounce of my being—that democracy will and must prevail." Democratic countries throughout the world “have to prove that our model isn’t a relic of our history.”[5]  In his first press conference since taking over the White House on March 25, Biden framed the growing battle between China and the United States as a broader global ideological contest: “This is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies…We’ve got to prove that democracy works."[6]

On April 29, Biden spoke to a CNN reporter that America's survival depends on proving to China that democracy can triumph over "dictatorship,” in a tone reminiscent of Sylvester Stallone in Rocky.[7]  He said that "Chinese leaders are betting that democracy will not ultimately prevail over China's authoritarian model" and that "this is the history they intend to write, and it won’t be about any of us here, but about whether democracy can work in the 21st century." Biden described the challenge for the United States as "the need to prove Chinese leaders wrong about Western democracy.”
 
On June 11, 2021, Biden made his first foreign trip as president.  Against the backdrop of a dramatic improvement in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic and the beginning of a strong economic recovery in some developed Western countries, including the United States and Britain, Biden's “crusading” [8] ideological  passions flared up yet again. He said the immediate purpose of his trip to Cornwall, England, for the G7 summit and to Brussels for the NATO meeting was to demonstrate, together with U.S. allies “the ability of democracies to meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new era.” As noted above, CNN commented that President Biden sees the stakes of his first foreign trip to be “democracy itself,” and that he is "on a self-imposed mission to prove that democracy still works in the face of the threat of authoritarianism," first and foremost within the United States. Thomas Wright, director of the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe, calls this the "Biden Doctrine. 
 
A major supporter of the Biden Doctrine is British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. As host of the G7 Cornwall summit, he and Biden signed and released what they called  a 21st century version of the Atlantic Charter on June 10, 2021, the day before the summit, imitating the Atlantic Charter signed by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941. The core of the new Atlantic Charter is "to work closely with all partners who share our democratic values" and "to resist the efforts of those who seek to undermine our alliances and institutions."  In the original words of the Biden Doctrine, it declares: "We must ensure that democratic regimes—starting with our own—are able to provide solutions to the key challenges of our time." 
 
On June 10, Biden said in Cornwall, England, that the global fight against the epidemic could be entirely politicized, becoming a competition for ideological influence, and he announced that the U.S. government would spend $3.5 billion on 500 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine to be donated to 92 low-income countries and the African Union; the vaccine would begin to be shipped in August, with 200 million doses to be distributed by the end of 2021, and 300 million in the first half of 2022. The following day, at the G7 summit, the seven participating countries and Australia, which had been invited as a "guest country," resolved to donate 1 billion doses of the coronavirus vaccine to developing countries, with the United States contributing half of that amount, largely at the initiative of U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Johnson.  A CBS commentary said that Biden wanted to convey that "democracy remains the most effective form of government when the world's largest democracies work together.” 
 
A key issue at the G7 Cornwall Summit in 2021 was the decision by the seven participating countries and invited "guests" from the European Union to launch the "Build Back Better World" (B3W) infrastructure investment program for developing countries.  The U.S. is leading the effort to mobilize huge amounts of public and private funds (reportedly at least hundreds of billions of dollars) to invest in supporting major infrastructure projects in developing countries as an "alternative" to China's Belt and Road Initiative. According to the final communiqué of the G7 Cornwall Summit, the program championed by the "leading democracies" will be characterized by its commitment to values, high-standards, transparency, and sustainability. Thus, we can readily identify the main purpose of this plan as being ideological competition with China, since international public opinion as gradually recognized that China's One Belt-One road initiative has experienced a "significant and sustained contraction," a contraction that has become all the more pronounced due to the enormous impact of the global pneumonia epidemic. 
 
Subsequently, on July 12, 2021, the EU Foreign Ministers' meeting adopted a set  of principles for infrastructure development called "Connecting Europe throughout the World." German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas argued that "We see China using economic and financial means to grow its political influence everywhere in the world. It is useless to complain about this, we must provide alternatives…The key is that that the EU…must coordinate very closely with the U.S." 
 
From Biden's words and actions during his eight-day visit to Europe, it can be argued that the immediate and medium-term foreign policy practice objectives of the Biden Doctrine are: to build an overwhelmingly decisive role for the United States and its allies among the developed countries in the global fight against the pandemic, to ensure that the United States and this alliance alone lead the global response to climate change, to restore their worldwide ideological influence and thus restructure supply chains to decisively reduce their vulnerability, maintain and enhance their high-technology advantage, and set the future direction of the world's high-tech development. All of this implies a desire to frustrate and damage China, or more precisely, a goal of not only triumphing over China, but winning a final victory. 
 
Four:  China-Related Allied Diplomacy Aimed at Blocking and Isolating China 
 
China-related allied diplomacy is a major, if not the primary, focus of the Biden administration's approach to foreign affairs. It seeks to maximize the sympathy, response, support, and collaboration of allies in the developed world and the European Union in all major areas of Sino-American confrontation and rivalry. 
 
On January 27, 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had his first phone call with German Foreign Minister Maas. On the subject of a bilateral investment agreement concluded between the EU and China at the end of December 2020, Maas said it would be unreasonable to decouple from China, but he also stated that "we agree [with the U.S. position] on almost all points" and that he believes Western policy toward China can become more effective on human rights, climate change, fair competition and arms reduction. On February 17, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin participated in an online meeting of NATO countries at the ministerial level, emphasizing the need for NATO to protect supply chains and technology from possible damage by "strategic competitors.” 
 
In an online speech at the Munich Security Forum on February 19, President Biden said that a reinvigorated Atlantic alliance is essential to counter Russia's undermining of Western democracies and to rise to the long-term challenge of China. According to a subsequent Associated Press report, "Europe cheers Biden's approach."
 
In a significant anti-China development of dual symbolic and substantive importance, on March 22, 2021, the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada announced further sanctions against the leaders of China's Communist Party Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and the Public Security Bureau. On March 24, Blinken told a meeting of NATO foreign ministers that "there is no doubt that Beijing's coercive behavior (particularly in the areas of technology and infrastructure) threatens our collective security and prosperity.” 

While the complex relations of allies with China will not always be fully compatible with the U.S. posture toward China, "when one of us is coerced, we should respond as allies to ensure that our economies are more integrated with each other and work together to reduce our vulnerability,” so as to jointly resist and push back against such coercion. On May 5, the G7 Foreign Ministers' meeting communiqué declared, "We will work collectively to promote global economic resilience in the face of arbitrary and coercive economic policies and practices." 
 
The so-called primary target of China’s "economic coercion"—Australia—is on the front lines of this restructuring of trade relations. In early August 2021, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a special envoy of the Australian government, visited India and immediately wrote in The Australian that a swift conclusion of a free trade agreement between Australia and India would signal that the "democratic world was distancing itself from China," because "trade deals are about economics but even more about politics.”  Meanwhile, in a speech to the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull conveyed Prime Minister Scott Morrison's call for an Australia-U.S. "strategic economic dialogue" with the Biden administration intended to counter China's "economic coercion.” Turnbull said: "In the coming decades…geostrategic competition will take place in the economic arena…as our recent experience with economic coercion underscores. That's why I believe our bilateral strategic cooperation must extend into the realm of economic affairs."
 
The Biden administration is also attempting to unite with allies to use the issue of the origin of the coronavirus to encircle China.  On March 30, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) investigation team in Wuhan released its report on the investigation completed in cooperation with China, and the U.S. and 13 allied governments—Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, South Korea, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom —immediately issued a joint statement expressing concern that the investigation was "severely delayed and lacked access to complete and original data and specimens.”  On the same day, the European Union issued a separate statement expressing the same concerns in slightly milder terms. White House spokesman Jen Psaki said "the report lacks access to critical data, information and materials and presents a partial and incomplete picture" and that "China is not transparent and has not provided fundamental information, and that cannot be considered cooperation.”
                                       
Later on, after a series of developments reignited concern about the coronavirus and China, Secretary of State Blinken said in a media interview that the Biden administration was determined to "get to the bottom" of the outbreak and hold China accountable because it still had not "given us the transparency we need.” On June 11, Blinken spoke by phone with Yang Jiechi—the first time the U.S. had spoken with China since the heated exchanges between the U.S. and China in Anchorage in mid-March—and similarly urged that the World Health Organization (WHO) conduct the second phase of its investigation into the source of the disease in China.

On June 10, EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel echoed the Biden administration in calling for a second phase of the WHO-convened investigation into the source of the epidemic in China, and insisted that "investigators need to have full access to everything that is necessary to actually identify the source of the epidemic, whatever it might be," without any hindrance or interference. Under Biden's urging, the 2021 G7 Summit communiqué called for "a timely, transparent, expert-led and science-based, WHO-convened Phase II study of coronavirus in China.” Another important collaborator bringing increased pressure to bear on China in this new situation is WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. On July 15,  Ghebreyesus said publicly that it was premature to rule out the possibility that coronavirus originated from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research:  "I'm an immunologist, I work in a laboratory.  Accidents happen in laboratories…they happen all the time."  He said that China should produce more original information so that so that the international investigation into the source of the outbreak can continue.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn also made this call on the same day. On June 20, U.S. National Security Advisor Sullivan defined U.S. policy in a dual-track manner: on the one hand, waiting for the entire U.S. intelligence system to come up with an assessment within 90 days, as ordered by Biden on May 26, and on the other hand, advocating that the WHO lead a second round of investigation into the source of the coronavirus in China, and that "if in the end China refuses to meet its international responsibilities," the U.S. will "increase pressure on China" through "extensive diplomatic efforts" involving allies and partners.
 
At the end of the above-mentioned 90-day period, the entire U.S. intelligence system was still unable to come up with a definitive conclusion about the source of the coronavirus, as had been widely expected. On August 27, President Biden issued a statement on this issue, focusing on China's lack of transparency and cooperation: "Key information about this outbreak exists in the People's Republic of China, but from the beginning, Chinese government officials have been working to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from evaluating it."  "We must have a full and transparent explanation of this global tragedy; anything short of that is unacceptable.” The issue of the source of the epidemic will continue to be an important factor in maintaining and exacerbating the near full-scale confrontation and rivalry between the United States and China.
 
Against the backdrop of a dramatic improvement in the fight against the epidemic and the beginning of a strong economic recovery in some developed Western countries, including the U.S. and U.K., the heads of government of the G7 group met face-to-face for the first time in nearly two years at the British seaside resort of Cornwall on June 11-13, 2021. on June 7, European Council President Michel excitedly said. "America is back" and "multilateralism is back"; in his view, the G7 Cornwall summit, together with the subsequent NATO summit in Brussels and the U.S.-EU summit, would be a great opportunity to fight the epidemic, recover economically and in his view, the G7 Cornwall summit, along with the subsequent NATO and U.S.-EU summits in Brussels, would provide a major opportunity for developed countries to display joint leadership in the fight against the epidemic and for economic recovery and to develop "a more active approach in defending their values in the face of China's rise and Russia's expansion.”  In addition, the G7 Cornwall summit negotiated a supply chain restructuring that was largely directed at China, in line with a decision announced by the Biden administration on June 8 to "expand multilateral diplomatic ties on supply chain vulnerabilities, particularly through side-by-side cooperation between the Indo-Pacific Quadruple Alliance and like-minded allies like the G7. 
 
In a disturbing recent development, Siegfried Russwurm, president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), spoke in Berlin on June 22, 2021, saying that "if a red line is crossed," Germany must be unafraid to confront China because "universal human rights are not 'internal affairs.'" He also expressed support for the "Rebuilding a Better World" infrastructure investment program launched at the G7 Cornwall Summit in response to China's One Belt—One Road initiative. Russwurm's comments will therefore have a negative impact on German policy toward China, as the industrial federation has a strong influence in Germany, with a membership of more than 100,000 industrial and related labor companies employing a total of about 8 million people in 39 industrial associations. 
 
On June 14, 2021, NATO held a summit of heads of government of its member states in Brussels, after which it issued a communiqué declaring that "China's stated 'ambitions' and the acts it commits constitute a comprehensive challenge to the rules-based international order and to the security of the (NATO) alliance " and announced that NATO plans to strengthen "political dialogue and practical cooperation" with Indo-Pacific Alliance members Japan and Australia, as well as with New Zealand and South Korea, to promote common security and support a rules-based international order. In addition, Jake Sullivan, the Security Advisor to President Biden, said the United States was already pushing other members to agree to revise NATO's Strategic Concept, the overarching strategic framework, at the 2022 NATO summit to include addressing the China challenge. 
 
It is clear that the Biden administration's China-related allied diplomacy is designed to combine efforts to encircle and isolate China as much as possible, seeking to maximize sympathy, support, and collaboration from all allies in the developed world and the European Union on all major issue areas of Sino-American confrontation and rivalry. The Xinjiang issue, economic coercion, the coronavirus epidemic, the One Belt—One Road initiative, and the restructuring of supply chains make up the focus of Biden's China-related allied diplomacy in non-military strategic areas since he took office. U.S. efforts in this area reached a peak in mid-June, with Biden's trip to Europe for the G7, NATO and U.S.-EU summits. 
 
Five:  Extremely Limited and Complicated Localized Cooperation with China 
 
At a press conference on Jan. 27, 2021, Secretary of State Blinken said the U.S.-China relationship will be a mix of antagonism, competition, and cooperation, and that it is in the U.S. interest to work with China on issues like climate change, but that it remains "within the larger framework of our foreign policy and many of our China-related concerns.”
 
On the same day, John Kerry, the U.S. government's special envoy on climate change, attacked China in an online speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying that China has announced that it wants to reach zero carbon dioxide emissions (carbon neutrality) by 2060, "but we really don't have a clue how they plan to get there," citing China’s continued support for burning goal to produce energy. He also stressed that the U.S. must deal with China on climate change—a "critical separate issue"—but will maintain its hardline China posture on a range of other issues, including "theft of intellectual property, market entry, the South China Sea, etc. We know all about these issues, and they will never be traded off to make deals for anything that has to be done on the climate front." 
 
On April 15, Kerry arrived in Shanghai for two days of talks with Xie Zhenhua, the Chinese government's point man on climate change, which resulted in the issuance of the U.S.-China Joint Statement on Responding to the Climate Crisis, which emphasized the need for each side to strengthen domestic efforts and international multilateral cooperation and to develop their own long-term strategies for achieving carbon neutrality/net zero greenhouse gas emissions. On May 12, Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that climate change talks with China "have progressed," but that the debate over China's funding of overseas coal-fired power plants was "very heated" because the U.S. side believes that this will ruin the chances of achieving the global temperature control target of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.

He added that "it would be foolish and wrong to believe the rhetoric of the Chinese government's commitments without monitoring and pressuring them to ensure their implementation," and to that end, his ministry is in advanced talks with some 25 countries about imposing high tariffs on imports of Chinese high-carbon goods. On June 8, Kyodo News reported that Kerry asked China to bring forward the 2030 date foreseen as the peak of carbon emissions in China, the date announced by Chinese leaders during his meeting with Xie Zhenhua, but Xie refused, citing China's development needs as a developing country. 
 
Kerry and Xie Zhenhua met again in Tianjin on Sept. 1-3, and in that context, Kerry said in a speech to the U.S.-Japan Association in Tokyo on Aug. 31 that he would still press China hard to significantly move up the date of their peak carbon output or the point at which they would achieve carbon neutrality, and that "China's senior leadership needs to take steps that are entirely doable." "We're not asking China to do something that's impossible. Some of the things are hard, but not impossible. China has been bringing huge amounts of coal-fired power online for the last few years."

On September 1, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke by video with Kerry in Tianjin, echoing Kerry's position that addressing climate change is a "key separate issue" and that the series of contentious issues between the U.S. and China "will never be used as a basis for any of the things that need to be done on climate.” Instead, he emphasized that the U.S. side should stop viewing China as a threat and an adversary, stop surrounding and suppressing China around the world, and that U.S.-China cooperation on climate change cannot be separated from the broader context of U.S.-China relations. This is tantamount to a rejection of Kerry's request. 
 
Potential U.S.-China cooperation in addressing climate change is linked in complex ways to and exists in parallel with related competition between the two countries in terms of world prestige, global governance leadership, ideological influence, and economic/high tech interests. In terms of competing economic/high tech interests, in an April 19, 2021 speech in Annapolis, Maryland's capital, Secretary of State Blinken cautioned that the United States is falling behind China, the "largest producer and exporter," as well as the largest patent holder in the field of renewable energy and eco-technology. "If we don't catch up, the United States will lose the opportunity to shape the future of the world's climate in a way that reflects our interests and values, and we will lose countless jobs for the American people." 
 
In any case, at least for now, the only potentially important area of cooperation between China and the United States is in addressing climate change, but not only has there been a lack of significant concrete cooperation in this area so far, such possible cooperation is interlinked and coexists with competition between the two countries, as noted above. The most important current dispute over U.S.-China cooperation on climate change is on two fronts: first, whether China is significantly advancing its carbon peak and carbon neutrality under pressure from the United States and its allies; and second, whether U.S.-China cooperation in addressing climate change is a separate issue, unaffected by poor U.S. attitudes and policies toward China, or an issue that cannot be separated from the broader context of U.S.-China relations. Arguably, it is impossible, or at least unlikely, that these two major contentions will be resolved. 
 
Six:  The General Outline of Biden's Emerging China Policy 
 
How does the United States define the fundamental nature of China and U.S.-China relations? The definition of this question is the fundamental premise and starting point for U.S. policy toward China. The Biden administration's definition was most formally and directly reflected in Secretary of State Blinken's first foreign policy speech on March 3, 2021, in which Blinken defined China as "America's only comprehensive adversary and competitor," arguing that "China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge a stable and open international system, challenging all the rules, values and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to." He also repeated the three components of his understanding of America’s relationship with China that he laid out at a press conference on Jan. 27, saying, "Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, cooperative when it can be, and hostile when it must be. We will deal with China from a position of strength." 
 
Similarly, but in more hostile fashion, on April 13, 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is pivotal in the U.S. foreign policy-making process, released its 2021 Annual Threat Assessment, which asserted, in O'Brien/Pompeo-esque terms full of bias against China, that "the Chinese Communist Party will continue its government-wide efforts to expand Chinese influence, undermine American influence, separate Washington from its allies, and construct new international norms in the interests of China’s authoritarian system.”  “China will maintain its major innovation and industrial policies because Chinese leaders see this strategy as necessary to reduce dependence on foreign technology, advance military progress, and sustain economic growth in order to ensure the survival of the CCP."  "Beijing increasingly combines its growing military power with its economic, technological, and diplomatic might in order to sustain the Communist Party, secure its perceived territorial and regional dominance, and pursue international cooperation at Washington's expense." These sentiments were also reiterated by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and FBI Director Christopher Wray at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on April 14. 
 
"China is a near-comprehensive hostile threat to and competitor with the United States in the short, medium, and long term."  This is the most fundamental nature of U.S.-China relations, as repeatedly defined by the Biden administration, and might be understood as the sole focus of the Biden administration's China policy. On February 19, in a speech at the Munich Security Forum, Biden channeled “Rocky” yet again, saying: "Competition with China will be tough…We have to make rules that will govern technological development, that will govern norms of behavior in cyberspace, in artificial intelligence, in biotechnology, so that they are used to uplift people, not to suppress them…We have to protect space, to protect innovation, to protect intellectual property, to protect the freedom of thought that depends on an open economy, and the creative talents that flourish on the free exchange of ideas in a democratic society, and we must defend…democratic values and counter those who would monopolize repression and make it commonplace."
 
On March 3, the White House released its report, the Interim National Security Strategy Outline, which also defines China as "the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to mount an enduring challenge to a stable and open international system" and vows to take a series of measures that "will strengthen our enduring advantage and enable us to prevail in strategic competition with China or any other country. The report outlines a four-pronged approach to the China "threat:"  (1) "strengthening our people, our economy, and our democracy;" (2) " restoring the credibility of the United States and renewing forward-looking global leadership…ensuring that the United States, not China, sets the international agenda and…shapes new global norms and agreements;" (3) "strengthening and defending our unparalleled network of allies and partners;" and (4) "engaging in smart defense investments" to "deter Chinese aggression" (along with allies and partners). On May 4, Secretary Blinken also stated bluntly that it is these approaches, which can be summed up as "dealing with China from a position of strength"—that constitute the Biden administration's fundamental approach to China. 
 
More than six months have passed since Biden entered the White House, and it is important to emphasize that while we should not underestimate the Biden administration's capabilities and what it has already achieved, we should also pay close attention to the ups and downs in the objective difficulties Biden faces and in terms of his own performance.

First, by late May of 2021, 50% of the U.S. population was fully vaccinated, the highest among great powers,[9] while the number of new cases of the coronavirus had fallen to its lowest point. Since then, however, a serious "underestimate of the enemy’s force" or perhaps even policy misdirection has allowed a new variant to strike hard.

Second, the $1.9 trillion bailout was passed by both houses of Congress, leading CNN, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, for example, to predict high GDP growth in the U.S. in 2021. On August 10, the U.S. Senate passed the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act by an overwhelming vote of 69-30. On August 11, the U.S. Senate voted to pass the $3.5 trillion draft budget framework for fiscal year 2022 on a narrow 50-49 vote. The budget initially included investments in areas such as combating climate change, universal education for preschool children, and affordable housing. The U.S. economy has not grown as much as widely expected in recent months, and the damage done by the Delta variant is bound to bring new shocks to the economy.

Third, the internal ruptures and socio-cultural turmoil that we have witnessed in the U.S. have eased somewhat, but it is unclear whether this is a lasting trend.  In particular, the prospect of a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which allowed the Taliban rapidly to take control of the country, led The Guardian to observe that:  "Biden is only the latest president to stumble into a 'hall of mirrors,’ where there is a counter-argument for every argument, a counter-action for every action, and no obvious solution…As the blame game begins in Afghanistan, Biden finds himself in a quandary with no exit.” 

Fourth, on the issue of illegal immigration from Latin America, an important domestic concern, the Biden administration is determined to implement a substantive "America First" policy, but there is no end in sight to the problem.  The internal and external consequences of the withdrawal from Afghanistan may well be serious enough to represent a major headache for the Biden administration.

Fifth, the Biden administration's internal and external policy adjustments are fully underway.

Sixth, while U.S. efforts to woo its allies are making clear progress, the fervor of the three major summits (G7, NATO and U.S.-EU) has already diminished to some extent, with some Western European political circles beginning to feel that it is too soon to get too close to the U.S., and some German officials are even privately arguing that the EU should quietly remove the label of “systemic rival” that they have affixed to China over the past few years. 

Seventh, less expensive and more efficient ways military preparations are under construction, but it is doubtful that the U.S. will be able to reverse the continuing decline in its strategic military advantage over China. Eighth, Biden's "Rocky" imitation is wearing thin.[10] 
 
Seven: Conclusion 
 
Biden's non-military posture and behavior toward China during the first half of his administration include: first, partially continuing the basic philosophy of the Republican Party and even Trump himself, partially bucking the economic liberal beliefs of the Democratic Party centrists themselves, using the idea of "fighting for every American job" as the general outline of trade policy toward China, and continuing the trade dispute with China, initially launched in 2018, for a longer period of time.  He has also launched a supply chain restructuring campaign aimed primarily at China.

Second, compared to its predecessor, the Biden administration has intensified its efforts to decouple high tech from China, and is doing its best to hinder China’s own innovation initiatives, thus adding containment to decoupling. In addition, in order to target specific Chinese companies, the Biden administration has created a fourth major reason to be added to previous national security risks, namely, collaboration with the Chinese military and involvement in strengthening China's military power, which joins the existing reasons: involvement in island-building in the South China Sea, mass detentions in Xinjiang, high-tech surveillance and forced labor.

Third, there have been significant new developments in the joint allied efforts to decouple from and contain Chinese high tech.

Fourth, President Biden treats the growing contest between the United States and China as a global ideological contest, and sees himself as being on a self-appointed mission to prove that democracy still works in the face of the threat of what he calls authoritarianism (i.e., the "Biden Doctrine"), which consists of four main practical foreign policy objectives, to be achieved in the near and medium term, all at China’s expense:  To ensure that the United States and its allies in the developed world play a decisive role in the global fight against the epidemic; to ensure that the United States and their allies act as the sole leaders in the global fight against climate change; to restore their worldwide ideological dominance; to restructure supply chains in order to decisively reduce their vulnerability, to maintain and enhance their high-technology dominance, and to set the future direction of the world's high-tech developments.

​All of this implies a desire to frustrate and damage China, or, more precisely, a goal not only of competing against China, but defeating China and achieving final victory. Fifth, allied diplomacy with China is a major focus of the Biden administration's approach to foreign affairs, as it seeks to maximize the sympathy, support, and collaboration of its allies in the developed world and the European Union in all major areas of Sino-U.S. confrontation and rivalry.
 
The outline of the Biden administration's China policy is emerging, based on what it has repeatedly declared to be the fundamental nature of the U.S.-China relationship:  that for the United States, China is a near-comprehensive "hostile threat" and competitor in the short, medium, and long term.  The U.S. will hence strive to win the strategic confrontation and competition against China with an almost full range of long-lasting policy systems and practices. China must observe the comprehensive strength and multifaceted potential of the United States under Biden over time and with an open mind. The minimum and immediate basic approach should be for China to act according to its capabilities, to act according to its interests, to weigh the costs of its actions, and to guard against risks, only after which can it chart a long-term future course. 

Notes

[1]时殷弘, “拜登政府对华态势考察—非战略军事阵线” originally published in 国际安全研究 (International Security Research) in June 2021, posted on Aisixiang on November 15, 2021. 

[2]Translator’s note:  The quotation marks around “Xinjiang,” “Hong Kong,” and “decoupling” presumably mean to suggest that these are only “issues” because the West has deemed them to be so.  I do not know if this was Shi’s choice or editorial conventions, but this is a very common practice in the texts I read and translate.  My common practice is to leave the quotes in my translation the first time they occur, but to omit them afterwards, because they are a distraction, both because we do not use quotation marks in quite the same way, which creates a certain misunderstanding, and because leaving them in often makes the text seem more “arch” than it in fact is.

[3]Translator’s note :  Translation taken from:  https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-speech-on-foreign-policy-transcript-march-3 .

[4]Translator’s note :  Translation taken from: https://www.usw.org/news/media-center/articles/2021/new-ustr-pushes-worker-centered-trade-policy .

[5]Translator’s note:  Translation taken from:  https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/02/19/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-2021-virtual-munich-security-conference/ .

[6]Translator’s note :  Translation taken from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/03/25/remarks-by-president-biden-in-press-conference/ .

[7]Translator’s note:  The expression Shi uses is 绝地反击, which literally means “to counter-attack from a dead-end situation.”  It is the title of a 2020 Chinese movie (perhaps a remake of a 1998 film) in which two former enemies come together to blow up a hidden Japanese airfield during the Sino-Japanese war, losing their  lives in the process.  Shi seems to mean that Biden is being “corny” and “over the top.” “Rocky” was the best I could come up with as an equivalent, although there is surely something close in the vast storehouse of American movies about World War II.   

[8]Translator’s note:  The Chinese word for crusade, 圣战, can be translated as “holy war” or even “jihad.”  I can’t tell just how derisive Shi is intending to be.

[9]Translator’s note:  This does not ring true to me, but it is not clear what Shi means by “great powers,” so it does not seem worth the effort to trace down relative vaccination rates in May 2021.

[10]Translator’s note:  The Chinese reads “第八，拜登“绝地反击”式的激情已在开始迸发.” I admit that I am guessing here. 迸发 should mean “erupt” as in “Sparks flew when the hammer hit the rock,” but I am reading it as a “bubble bursting” because the sentence makes no sense to me otherwise.