The U.S. rivalry with China goes back a long way, but it has grown recently, to the point of weakening diplomatic relations.
By Roberto Morejon
The U.S. rivalry with China goes back a long way, but it has grown recently, to the point of weakening diplomatic relations.
The hackneyed discourse of politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, and a media propaganda frenzy, encourage prickly rhetoric in the United States with respect to China.
With the arrival of President Joseph Biden, the already tense composure of Donald Trump, who insisted on Taiwan and human rights issues, was strengthened.
In recent months, a dangerous chain of events contributed to souring ties, despite diplomatic attempts to calm the storm, including an interview between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Indonesia last November.
That conversation, appreciated in the world as an attempt to lower shudders, was followed by attacks such as the famous balloon off California, which according to Washington was for surveillance purposes, a version rejected by Beijing.
Even more virulent is the divergence over what the United States alleges as the possibility of sending Chinese weapons to Russia for the conflict in Ukraine.
The U.S. discourse then takes on levels of hysteria without shying away from threats of sanctions, in the face of what the Asian giant denounced as "the absolute hypocrisy of the United States", because it accuses while it sends arms to Kiev and makes peace more difficult to achieve.
Without the fumes of such an accusation having evaporated, Washington revived the theory in disuse about what it exposes as the cause of Covid-19.
According to the Biden administration's view, the virus would have leaked from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
China angrily rejected the libel and warned that the Americans should stop politicizing the question of the origin of the virus.
As if that were not enough, the U.S. reportedly vetoed the Chinese-origin TikTok app from government devices, to which Beijing responded that the other side is abusing by unjustifiably cracking down on companies from other countries.
All of the above highlights the accumulation of disagreements between important players on the world stage, with relevant accusations and strong responses.
Strikingly, in the midst of the storm, Chinese spokesmen reiterate that their government promotes peace and dialogue, in line with what is expected in many parts of the world.
