Iran Press/ America: Over the past decade, as China has continued its economic rise, the United States has ramped up its military deployments and diplomatic engagement with Asian partners to try to hem in China both militarily and diplomatically.
China is the “only competitor” to the US “with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel has indicated.
Patel’s statement, shared via tweet, was a response to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s December 29 tweet advertising the US-China strategy document he penned in May.
“The strategy I set out to meet the challenge posed by the PRC rests on investing in the foundations of our strength at home, aligning our efforts with partners, and competing with China so that we can defend our interests and our vision for the future,” Blinken wrote Thursday, in response to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s Christmas Day statement about the economic superpowers’ need to adjust their relationship.
“We will follow through with the common understandings reached between the Chinese and US presidents, strive to recalibrate the China-US relationship, and bring it back on the right course,” Wang told a forum on December 25.
Tensions between China and the US continue to escalate in 2022, with tensions owing largely to President Joe Biden’s continued provocative Taiwan policy, including pledges to “defend” the island in the event of an invasion by Beijing. Increased US deployments of military assets to the Asia-Pacific region, including so-called “freedom of navigation” missions through the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, have exacerbated tensions further. Washington has also ramped up arms sales to the island, notwithstanding commitments under a 1982 agreement with China to stop.
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