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Opinion | Don’t expect US-China relations to significantly improve in 2023
- Xi and Biden may have managed to avoid a US-China conflict in 2022, but their meeting won’t change the long-term course of bilateral relations
- As long as Washington sees China as a threat to be contained, its provocations are unlikely to cease
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Countless people in China had a sleepless night as outgoing US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on August 1 last year. The visit was the culmination of a series of provocations by Washington against Beijing, sending ties between the two to their lowest point in decades.
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Since the beginning of 2022, Washington had relentlessly waged ferocious attacks on China.
On the political front, it put into effect the Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act to substantiate its claims of genocide in Xinjiang while sanctioning dozens of mainland and Hong Kong officials over Beijing’s crackdown on separatists in the special administrative region.
Militarily, Washington frequently sent warships and planes through and over the South China Sea to threaten China’s security and maritime rights, while orchestrating the Quad to “counter” China in the region.
Economically, the Biden administration ramped up efforts to restructure global supply chains to isolate China. It placed hundreds of Chinese companies and individuals on its blacklists. Then, to hobble the country’s tech sector, it imposed a total export ban on semiconductor technology to the country.
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What is more, Washington continued hollowing out the “one-China” principle, developing substantial relations with Taiwan through military exchanges and arms sales. President Joe Biden himself went further than previous US presidents in pledging to defend the island.
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