Trump wants ‘alliance of democracies’ to oppose China
Not since 1989, and the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, have Chinese leaders looked out at the world and seen so much hostility.
From Britain to India, Japan to Australia, and even among the usually deferential nations of Southeast Asia, China’s aggressive expansionism, trade warfare, alleged espionage, cyberattacks and COVID-19 propaganda have provoked a growing pushback against President Xi Jinping’s ambition to build the world’s next superpower.
Bans on Chinese tech and software companies and joint drills by rival navies in the Pacific have buoyed the Trump administration’s effort to rally other nations against Beijing in what increasingly resembles a new cold war. The rift deepened this week with the tit-for-tat closures of consulates in the U.S. and China and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo’s call for “a new alliance of democracies” to oppose China’s “new tyranny.”
Such an alignment is beginning to take shape, instigated in part by an American president desperate to deflect widening criticism at home of his administration before the November election. But that could also play into the hands of Xi, his country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, who has stoked an us-againstthe-world nationalist fervor and painted the U.S. as a declining power bent on denying China its place as a global leader.
“There’s any number of developments that point to a much more concerted global pushback against China,” said Richard McGregor, senior fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “Whether that has any impact on China and Chinese behavior, of course, is another question.”
Some analysts believe the opposition could prompt the Chinese Communist Party to steel its resolve to protect its stature domestically, the party’s paramount concern. Others say commercial bans and sanctions could add pressure on China’s slowing economy — but not without disrupting world markets and costing nations that depend on Chinese trade and investment.
The U.S. is “launching a new crusade against China in a globalized world,” Hua Chunying, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said in a tweet. She added that Pompeo’s strategy to create an alliance against China was “as futile as an ant trying to shake a tree.”
Still, the outlines of a broader, multi-nation alignment against Beijing are emerging — most clearly among democracies that had tried to accommodate China’s rise in the hopes of gaining access to its 1.4 billion consumers, supporting political reforms or placating a giant neighbor.
This year, even as the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, China has asserted control over Hong Kong, engaged in a deadly border skirmish with India, flown military planes over Taiwan’s airspace, harassed or sunk several countries’ vessels in the South China Sea and launched a trade war with Australia.