Why American voices on China are being drowned out and the consequences of a hardline approach – a perspective from Europe

These are voices that fail to make themselves heard in the United States, and that try their luck in Europe. Americans who are not very suspicious of being complacent with Chinese power, and who nevertheless consider that the American strategy of « containment », containment, leads straight to confrontation. The political debate in the United States, as soon as we touch on China, no longer allows for nuance or complexity: it requires us to align ourselves with the hardest line; the pre-electoral climate certainly contributes to this, leading more to one-upmanship than to serenity.

They are former senior civil servants, sinologists or members of think tanks, who believe that confrontation is inevitable if the current spiral continues. And they consider that this confrontation would be disastrous for everyone, for the Chinese as well as for the Americans or the Taiwanese, not to mention the economy.