by Marco Horn –
Twelve years after the inauguration of the “Pivot to Asia” by the Obama administration, which strategically changed US foreign policy by orienting it mainly in the Indo-Pacific with an anti-Chinese function, the challenge between the United States and China has intensified more and more, reaching levels of tension never seen before. The outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine has not only exacerbated Sino-American relations even further but has generated a geopolitical situation in which the level of competition between the two superpowers has become so high that any kind of détente would now seem to be utopia .
After the first months of the war last year, when Beijing decided to maintain a position equidistant from the conflict also due to internal socio-economic problems related to the management of Covid-19, Chinese foreign policy has gradually changed, becoming more active in following the visit of the speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan last August which was followed by other visits by representatives of the American Congress, considered by Beijing to be provocations and a violation of Chinese sovereignty on the island of Formosa. The American position and the Chinese reaction with massive military exercises both in the Taiwan Strait and around the entire Formosa archipelago have generated a new crisis in the Strait, much more dangerous than the previous ones not only due to the vastness and depth of these exercises but also for the great instability that currently afflicts the international order. Precisely these events may have drastically reduced the margins of diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Beijing for the peaceful resolution of the Taiwanese dossier. In fact, since then the Sino-American competition has been progressively transforming into a hybrid war no longer limited only to duties and sanctions: the violation by a Chinese balloon of American airspace in January and its subsequent shooting down by the US defense have started a “war of the skies” between China and the United States for the control of their own and the violation of those of others through air-space espionage. The Chinese use of the balloon may also have been a political response to what Beijing considers an unjustified American interference in its internal affairs in the South China Sea, seeking to highlight the vulnerabilities and frailties of the hegemonic power in guaranteeing the inviolability and the integrity of its sovereignty.
However, the definitive “quantum leap” of the Sino-American competition took place in February on the occasion of the anniversary of the first year of war between Russia and Ukraine. The visit of the director of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China Wang Yi to Moscow on February 22 and the publication on February 24, 2023 of the 12 points for peace in Ukraine by the Chinese government officially mark the beginning of the expansion of the Sino-American challenge to the European continent. With these moves, China has definitively put an end to its low profile foreign policy, the spearhead of the presidency of Jiang Zemin (1993-2003) and Hu Jintao (2003-2013), choosing instead to adopt a clearer policy and outspoken on the main international anti-American lawsuits also with the aim of reacting to Washington’s political offensive against them on the most sensitive geopolitical issues from cyberwar to human rights. The Chinese regime perhaps fears that an overly defensive position of China in the international arena could be seen by other states as a factor of weakness and result in a loss of credibility, sharpening US anti-Chinese containment in the Indo-Pacific.
The change of pace of Chinese diplomacy led to the signing on March 10 of a historic reconciliation agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, opposing powers, which could significantly change the geopolitical balance of the Middle East in the coming years. A very important result for China, a civilization historically closed to the world and therefore not particularly accustomed to “Western-style” mediation, which is perhaps learning to consider diplomacy a useful soft power tool to present itself to international society as a harmonic power to which interests stability and the spread of well-being but above all as an asset to increase its credibility and prestige: the Chinese regime may have understood that a superpower, if it aspires to be such, must also know how to mediate and become a point of reference in the international community . Furthermore, China’s new political-diplomatic posture could also serve to achieve an important tactical objective: to unload geopolitical tensions with the United States far from its national borders, trying to distract them from South-East Asia.
The challenge between Washington and Beijing increasingly takes on the appearance of a new “Great Game” of the 21st century fought by the United States and China in which the two superpowers compete for the influence of the most important geopolitical areas of the Eurasian continent from Asia to all Europe via the Middle East. Within this new game, the Russo-Chinese axis would seem to consolidate more and more, reforming the Mongol empire in the form of an alliance. A telluric giant still in the making but which will probably represent the most difficult challenge for the entire West at least for this decade.
The meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin last month is an important geopolitical message: Beijing would like to prevent the war in Ukraine from weakening the neighboring Russian state to such an extent as to destabilize it or even cause its collapse. If that were to happen, the chaos could breach Chinese borders and take root in Chinese regions most susceptible to rebellion such as Xinjiang and Tibet. A scenario that culturally and historically China could not accept.
