How U.S.-China ‘Competition’ Could Lead Both Countries to Disaster

On at least one important topic in Washington, bipartisanship is very much alive: China.

Most Democrats with influence on American foreign policy, and their Republican counterparts, concur that China is now the biggest national security threat the United States faces. They see conflict between the two countries becoming more probable, with Taiwan the likely catalyst. President Biden met President Xi Jinping in a virtual summit last week, but afterward, a senior U.S. official said that “nothing new in the form of guardrails or any other understanding” had been reached on Taiwan.

Compare the China policies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden and you’ll find many more similarities than differences. Four months after Biden’s inauguration, Kurt M. Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs at the National Security Council, declared that engagement, the approach American leaders have adopted toward China since the 1970s, had failed and that “the dominant paradigm is going to be competition.” A much-praised book by Campbell’s top deputy, Rush Doshi, warns that China’s goal is nothing less than supplanting the United States as the world’s premier power.

Left unsaid by both officials is what this future U.S.-China “competition” will look like, and what will prevent it from turning violent.

Read the full article in The Los Angeles Times.