Here is a thought experiment. If Taiwan didn’t exist, would the United States and China still be at loggerheads? In my opinion, yes. The antagonism between great powers and emerging powers is a constant in human history.
Then, assuming that China was a democracy, and not a one-party regime, one might wonder whether such tensions would persist. It’s harder to say, but it’s not clear that a democratically elected government would be less resentful of the world order led by the United States. It is also hard to imagine under what circumstances the Americans would be ready to share the limelight.
Suffice to say that the discussions on the possibility of a conflict between the United States and China are no longer so far-fetched. Countries rarely change tinsel: China remains the Middle Kingdom and wants to take its revenge on decades of Western humiliations; america is the dangerous nation looking for monsters to destroy. Each of the two actors is in his role.
The intransigence of the two giants
It remains to be seen whether planetary stability can survive the intransigence of these two giants, who both want victory. Presumably, if the United States and China break the impasse, it will not be to move towards an accord, but towards war.
In early March, Chinese President Xi Jinping went further than he had ever gone, blaming the United States for“dam up”d’“circle” and D’“to choke” his country. He might practice provocative rhetoric, but he was not wrong in principle. US President Joe Biden remains officially in favor of cooperation with China.
But Biden was blown off course as easily as a weather balloon. Washington’s panic over what is never anything but 19th century technologye century [allusion au ballon “espion” envoyé par Pékin] prompted Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, to cancel a visit to Beijing in early February that was to pave the way for a som
