US cannot contain China except its lawmakers vent sentiments in vain

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a new act on Thursday which requires the State Department to report the human rights record of an Olympic-hosting country to American athletes 180 days ahead of the event.

A number of US senators have boycotted the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. Canada’s House of Commons passed a motion which called for a relocation of the Olympics from Beijing. Parliamentarians from the Five Eyes members, coordinating with anti-China forces like the Xinjiang separatists, are fanning the first round of flames to assault the Beijing Olympics.

But the governments have adopted a cautious attitude. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday that the UK “is not normally in favor of sporting boycotts.” Not any government explicitly echoed or indicated calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics.

The US and its allies cannot do anything about China. So far, Washington has failed to find any effective means to hurt China while not being hurt. During the Trump era, the former president resorted to the senseless trade war, and three years later, many view it as a failure. What next? The new US administration boasted of coordinating with its allies, but with no concrete plans.

This leaves room for lawmakers who do not shoulder any responsibility for their country’s strategies. They are only spokespersons of Western politicians and radicals who are furious but have no way out. In their circles, they play high by issuing some proposals with no or little effect, or write a few open letters to deliver their hostility toward China and prove their presence.

It is known to all that the US, followed by other members of the Five Eyes alliance, creates trouble with China. If they boycott the Beijing Olympics, it will show to the world their hysteria of pursuing geopolitical goals. China will not suffer more than them.

A new survey done by a UK consultancy shows that despite the repeated Western offensives of China over the pandemic and Xinjiang, China’s soft power is still strong among developing countries. Western opinion failed to defame China outside its own camp.

Ahead of the Olympics, the Five Eyes and the opinion forces in some Western countries will certainly create waves. The more they make a fuss, the more they are at their wit’s end in dealing with China.

What the US truly intends to do is to destroy the international environment of China’s development and its booming economy. But it cannot. What happened in the past three years is enough to frustrate it. If a Western journalist goes to any shopping mall or dines at a restaurant in Beijing or Shanghai, and compares the situation with his own country, he would know the vitality of the Chinese economy is unstoppable.

China acts restraint and keeps a low profile. But its steps of going forward are steady and firm. The US will feel more and more pain if it resorts to real action, while the human rights rhetoric does not need any cost. For the world, detaching from the Chinese market is becoming more and more inconceivable than detaching from the US market. The US dares not force its allies to pick sides between it and China, because the impact and consequences will be highly unpredictable.