USA vs China: The new cold war on the horizon | DW Analysis

National Nurses Day a special occasion in the White House National Nurses Day is a moment to honor the people on the front lines of the pandemic Donald Trump is here to say thank you and sign a declaration well the nurses look as he turns to the press a reporter asks a question about the economy in his answer Trump turns his fire on China framing the spread of the coronavirus like a military attack this is really the worst attack we've ever had this is worse than Pearl Harbor this is worse than the World Trade Center there's never been an attack like this and it should have never happened it could have been stopped at the source could have been stopped in China it should have been stopped right at the source and it wasn't of course we're all used to Donald Trump mouthing off that's his trademark but this is important this matters to all of us whether you live here in Europe or anywhere in the world the two most powerful countries on earth are slipping deeper and deeper into a profound form of conflict some are even calling it a new Cold War and just like the corona virus itself this has the power to define our age from the military to technology the economy to political influence the rivalry between the US and China is intensifying in just about every realm of human existence now the outbreak of the corona virus in China and its spread around the world has taken tensions to a new extreme relation is historical oh and since China and the US has established diplomatic ties in the last four decades the current state is very serious and it's it's very dire I think we're at a point where tensions bilateral tensions are really really high I think it's going to be a very dangerous year and the world is gonna have to face up to some very important choices well our European friends need to decide what they stand for we are allies with America but that does not imply that we just follow the lead of an incapable leader like president drop like sheep it will be of all of us to realize where our heart is you know is it towards business interest or is it towards values at some point we will have to make a choice now one thing in this story that's so important to emphasize is that this clash between the United States and China isn't just about the coronavirus the pandemic we're living through right now can seemed so all pervasive and was as if it's a reset of everything but these tensions between the US and China have much deeper roots so in this video we're not just going to ask what's going on now we're going to dig down and find out what lies beneath and finally we're going to ask what's coming next are we about to enter into a new Cold War January 2020 is just a few months ago but it feels like another era Donald Trump went to Davos and hailed his relations with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a relationship with China right now has probably never been better we went through a very rough patch but it's never ever been better my relationship with President Xi is an extraordinary one he's for China out for the US but other than that we love each other Trump was buoyant after signing what was being called a phase 1 trade deal with China easing tension submit a long-running trade war the Trump himself had started and even as the kovat 19 outbreaks spread in February Trump was still flattering Xi Jinping late last night I had a very good talk with President Xi and we talked about mostly about the corona virus they're working really hard and I think they're doing a very professional job but soon the outbreak hit the United States with full force New York became one of the worst hot spots in the world and the Trump administration came under massive fire for failing in its response at the same time evidence was mounting that China hadn't been open about the early days of the outbreak losing crucial time that could have saved lives and speculation even grew about whether a special laboratory in Wuhan was the source of the virus so as the political pressure has intensified on the Trump administration Donald Trump has seized on China as the true villain of the coronavirus crisis Johnny should be held responsible for what they've done they have hurt the world very very badly they've hurt themselves also but they've hurt the world very very badly and with the election campaign looming pro-trump groups have put out ads attacking China and linking it to his opponent Joe Biden the message don't blame us for what's going on blame China the data suggests that it might be effective two-thirds of Americans have a negative view of China a figure that's risen higher and higher in recent years all this is the backdrop to those comments we saw Trump making when meeting those nurses in the White House this is worse than Pearl Harbor this is worse than the World Trade Center like this China for its part has been firing back well my friend either make war down easier cause I see it all down findell Shui when he's in Japan Pope would see Dada Yoko Yuri tweeting shut up he's turning into a bitter blame game played by both sides one thing that I do think is interesting between in this whole blame China strategies that the Chinese also have a blame u.s. strategy Melissa Chan reported from China for out zero for several years before her credentials were revoked she now works for a number of outlets including DW News Asia as some of their diplomats have come out to say and blame the United States as being the ones who created this virus during a military game international military games that was held in China they are accusing the Americans of having brought the virus to China to Wuhan and so you have this geo political spat where both sides are arguing sometimes based on what appears to be unsubstantiated conspiracy theory we've been speaking to analysts in both China and the US about this and of course they have very different perspectives but there's one thing that they do agree on relations have never been this bad well I think the china-us relations is probably at historical oh I mean since China and the US has the established diplomatic ties in the last four decades when who Yao heads the center for China and globalization think-tank in Beijing and has close ties to the Chinese government there is a wide consensus actually amount of issues here in China among elite among business community that somehow u.s. is turning that back its back on China the current state is very serious and it's it's very dire I think we're at a point where tensions bilateral tensions are really really high now - for long fuse us-china relations from a transatlantic perspective she spent 20 years as a China expert at the French Ministry of Defense now she's based at a u.s. think-tank she points out that the coronavirus crisis isn't just putting the Trump administration under political pressure but Beijing - and that adds to the danger if there's a prospect of recession in the next few months then there's always the possibility that the regime will want to deflect the pressure the internal pressure on something else and the possibility of conflict is not to be dismissed unfortunately that would be of course very escalatory and the risks will be enormous all this tension already goes way beyond angry statements and tweets this has real consequences right now things that could matter in the fight against the coronavirus the u.s. pulled funding from the World Health Organization accusing it of being too cozy with Beijing it was a dramatic move and an example of how the Trump administration has broken with America's previous global approach to crises like this the last pandemic that we had was Ebola in Africa and at that time the United States took a leading role internationally to coordinate efforts to push back and to fight against Ebola crying heart boutique offer is a veteran German member of the European Parliament and leads the parliaments delegation on China today there's no not even an attempt to show leadership on the part of the United States China sees that everybody sees it and China tries to exploit that meanwhile the pandemic has exposed America's dependence on China for essential medical supplies this is fueled talk of a major rethink a decoupling of America's economy from its deep ties with China and Donald Trump has egged this on in one of his most striking comments so far he's even raised the prospect of a complete detachment between the US and Chinese economies in an interview with the Fox Business channel he said we could cut off the whole relationship now if you did what would happen we'd save five hundred billion dollars Trump made no explanation of that figure but even by his standards this was a radical thing to suggest could the u.s. really cut all ties with China well we'll get to that question later on in the video first let's dig down to the roots of the current crisis the story begins 40 years ago with this man done shopping he took power in Beijing after the death of Mao Zedong in the late 1970s began to develop an economy that had been crippled by decades of communist experiments throughout done stuck to a modest approach to China's role in the world outside effectively don't stick your neck out well I think dongs helping will be recorded in history as one of the extraordinary figures of the history of the 20th century former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd remembers that time he worked at the Australian Embassy in Beijing in the 1980s he took this Maoist wreck otherwise called the China in the Cultural Revolution and through a internal party coup took out the Maoist ideologues and instead inserted what's known as a pragmatic economic program domestically and internationally which turbocharged China's economic growth economic development didn't mean an end to oppression a tenement Square massacre near the end of dongs time in 1989 brought the condemnation of the world but under dung successes China's economic growth continued and with the return of Hong Kong from British rule in 1997 it gained a significant new stepping stone into the world economy and you could see the 21st century so far as the incredible story of China's rise to become a global power but what's really striking is if you look at a timeline of the last 20 years his milestone after milestone where China took a step forward and the United States stumbled in December 2001 China joined the World Trade Organization it was the key moment in becoming part of the world economy joining the WTO provided a massive boost to growth in investment and triggered a boom in low-cost manufacturing his firms from around the world turn to China so what was happening in America at the end of 2001 it was reeling from the 9/11 attacks and launching into two decades of war that still haven't fully ended today fast forward to August 2008 and China was in the limelight as never before the Beijing Olympics were like a coming-out party for an ever more confident power just three weeks later Lehman Brothers went bankrupt intensifying the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression the world economy took a huge hit but the impact was deepest in the West and for the first time China's economy played a significant role in powering the world back to recovery so you can see these years in the aftermath of the financial crisis is the time when the balance of power between the US and China was shifting quietly but significantly the American economy was in deep trouble and the federal government was borrowing massive amounts of money to keep it afloat here too China played an active role within three years of the Lehman crash China more than doubled its holdings of US federal government debt becoming the biggest foreign lender to the United States at well over one trillion dollars even some of America's success stories had Chinese DNA the iPod and iPhone for instance were manufactured in China's ever more sophisticated factories so things were looking pretty good for China when this man became its new leader in 2013 xi Jinping he rose to power just as China's economy was overtaking Americans in the key measure of purchasing power t Jinping is an absolutely pivotal figure in this story his accession to power marked the moment that China really shifted up a gear from that primarily economic development that began at generation earlier Onderdonk shall ping to something much more assertive but much more consequential for the rest of the world in one of his first big speeches he even spoke of a Chinese dream this was a confidence to say that China's success was no accident that it didn't happen despite being an authoritarian power but because of it government advisor in Beijing Wang who yelled says that China's track record against his Democratic neighbor India proves the point in the 1980s China and India was the same level now China's are five times ahead of India so so so China's doing well China is doing fine they just wanted the world to not be a bit more accepting on them a bit more tolerant just a few months into Xi Jinping's time in office there was another of those moments where you saw America's stumbling just as China moved ahead for a time in autumn 2013 the US didn't even have a functioning government American politics had become so divided the Congress couldn't agree on how to fund basic services so they simply shut down the American political system was breaking under intense polarization the fallout from a decade of war and financial crisis around the same time Xi Jinping was in Jakarta where he announced China's most ambitious project ever he called it one belt one road evocatively named after the historic Silk Road trading route Belton Road was a monumental plan to connect the infrastructure of China to the rest of Asia and beyond to Europe and Africa the message look at what we've built in China let's bring that to you the project let loose hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese investment particularly in developing countries it was especially attractive to government's with patchy records on governance and human rights with the signal funding would come without Western strings attached that meant that China wasn't just exporting infrastructure it was exporting its way of doing things to what they're saying though is you know it worked for us so you don't have to choose a liberal democracy for your own countries if you don't want to because our own example proves that you can you can be somehow like us and be successful too and not only that but through the Belton rail initiative we china are going to be able to help you grow economically through the distribution of loans or investments and we're not going to look at your political records or your human right records or your transparency or your anti-corruption levels in your own country we're not interested in that and that message has found a huge number of takers over the past seven years with more than a hundred countries joining belton Road in one way or another it's creating a growing bloc of Nations many of which have become highly dependent on China for economic growth and development what you could call a glow fear of influence china wants to pull smaller and weaker countries into its own orbit and create some sort of sino centric sphere of influence what China wants out of those countries is a level of a level of respect a level of deference but this deference and respect is not just symbolic I think it's it has real concrete implications those implications can be onerous as Sri Lanka discovered it's been a hot spot at belt and road investment but his debts to Beijing mounted it ceded control of a key seaport to China for 99 years their fears that similar fates could await governments in other parts of the world and what's more that sphere of influence doesn't just have financial implications their political - because of this enormous leverage economic leverage that China has over other countries none of these countries will or governments will want to go against China's will you see it's a it's um it's not just a symbolic deference it's also a very it has a very concrete application on to how China is you know acting and behaving and other countries are basically paralyzed because they don't have any ways to go against to go against it so Belton Road is a potentially huge source of power and influence for China around the developing world but let's take a look at the map again because it's not just developing countries that are joining in just last year in Europe Italy Greece and Portugal all signed up to the project Xi Jinping has received a great fanfare as he toured his new partner capital's place is still feeling the after-effects of the 2008 financial crisis and now the economic crash caused by the pandemic has made them more desperate than ever for sources of growth these countries are in the European Union they're in NATO two core members of the Western alliance now of forging closer ties with China China's forays into Europe don't stop there as we saw in a recent video it's made highly publicized deliveries of supplies to many European countries during the coronavirus crisis seen as an attempt to patch up its image after the outbreak began on its soil and in another initiative called 17 + 1 China's created a platform for cooperation with a swath of Central and Eastern European countries from the Baltics to the Balkans most of them young democracies tempted by the prospect of Chinese investment on the military front China's been advancing rapidly - it's been strengthening his foothold in the strategically essential South China Sea here the United States has been pushing back frequently sending warships through the region to assert its freedom to use the waterways but in every realm of military power China continues to advance the fundamentals of China's economic power have purchased for it now extraordinary military reach in conventional and military capabilities and cyber capabilities which never before what about political development are there any signs that China is opening up politically as it has done economically well here the answer is a very clear no pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have only seen Beijing tighten its grip on the territory raising concerns that it won't honor the agreement signed when it regained control of the former British colony and in the western region of Xinjiang the Muslim minority Weger population is undergoing repression on an epic scale with as many as a million people subjected to re-education camps dwu has reported on systematic abuses revealed in leaked documents far from opening China's politics up Xi Jinping has tightened its authoritarian system and he's consolidated his own power removing limits so that he could potentially rule for life since Xi Jinping has taken control of all things Chinese in China on the mainland China has seen what could be described as amounting to a kind of regime change collective leadership term limits for the the top position a certain small level of well I don't want to say Liberty but allowing civil society to to find niches in which it could play an active role at least addressing human rights issues all that has vanished and as China's global ambitions grow that commitment to its authoritarian model has more and more implications for the rest of the world try to be a global leader he tries to be a global fully this leadership obviously finds that if they push hard they can establish a North China centric order then would have been conceivable 10 15 20 years ago so what was happening in the u.s. since we last checked in well those political divisions that we forcing a government shutdown back in 2013 have only gotten deeper and deeper the election of Donald Trump in 2016 brought that to its logical conclusion and while so much attention has focused on whether Russia helped him to win you could argue with that actual his victory was all about China I covered that 2016 election as one of DWS US correspondents and I went to a lot of Donald Trump rallies and everywhere he went every time he spoke he always talked about China his views on this deeply held Trump has been remarkably consistent about China for someone who's known for being fairly inconsistent if you look at his rhetoric in the 1980s it wasn't China that was the bogeyman it was Japan but it's clear that he has a certain view on trade where he believes that certain countries take advantage of the United States and our takers are exporters to the United States and have really benefited from American consumers and what he's done in terms of his rhetoric with China is essentially transferred his point of view from the 1980s when he was talking about about Japan and made it a China issue and you could see that when he was on the campaign trail in 2016 so he can point to the historical past and say I have been warning you guys about China all along we need to be tough on China so little wonder Trump's trade war with China has been one of the defining features of his presidency so far so let's take stock for a moment of where things stood when the coronavirus hit in the last seven years under Xi Jinping China has become an undisputed economic superpower and it's rolled out a global sphere of economic and political influence its military power is rapidly growing and far from backing down on its belief in authoritarian government it thinks it's been proven right and offers its success as a model to the world a model that says you don't need democracy to get ahead meanwhile in the US years of war financial meltdown and political dysfunction culminated in the election of Donald Trump a man who's made it his mission to take the fight to China we've ended up with two leaders in the United States in China which are now distinctly nationalist president Trump make America great again and President Xi Jinping who has discarded dong scalpings cautionary advice about hide your strength bide your time so therefore the dynamics of these two leadership's has made the structural factors at work even sharper if you look to some people in the Trop administration secretary Pompeo for instance it's extending towards all-out confrontation so what now is this all pointing to a new Cold War it's November 2018 an attack is underway in Karachi Pakistan [Music] the target the Chinese consulate in the city police blame separatists from the state of Balochistan they're down on the coast China is developing one of the most important projects in the belton Road initiative a giant port complex at the city of Gwadar the site itself has been the target of attacks to whadda is an absolutely crucial piece of infrastructure for China a direct foothold in the Arabian Sea connected all the way to kashgar in China's Xinjiang region why are militant attacks in Pakistan even relevant to our story well think about it so far we've been talking about belton roads as an economic political initiative but the more assets China has out in far-flung parts of the world the more it's gonna want to keep them safe and that's where belton road takes on more of a military dimension nowadays Hollow explains they're looking at different ways to deal with the security risks some of it is for example what happened in Pakistan which is subcontracting the Pakistani army the military Pakistani military forces specifically to protect the china-pakistan economic corridor so you have several thousands of Pakistani soldiers who are devoted to the protection of the workers the Chinese workers and the projects along that corridor so you already have China subcontracting a special division of Pakistan's army looking to the future former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd foresees a more active role for China's own military in protecting belt and road or Bri for short I think one of the things we have to be very careful in monitoring is what now happens with Bri member states in the extent to which China moves to militarize those relationships for example but in Southeast Asia and across the so-called string of pearls that is maritime bases in the in the Indian Ocean states particularly in Sri Lanka in Bangladesh but also in Pakistan and now prospectively in Iran and already in Djibouti in the Red Sea where China is beginning to for deploy naval and air assets and these are the sorts of assets where belton Road could really turn into a staging ground for cold war style confrontation with the United States so under those circumstances if we begin to see an American push back in those third country theaters then it's not a large gap between what we now have which is an emerging as it were diplomatic chasm for that to become a chasm of assuming more military characteristics it seems to have so many echoes of the last cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union but there is one fundamental difference between then and now in the 20th century Cold War the American and Russian economies had virtually no ties with each other in the 21st century between the US and China that is very different they do a lot of business together the characterization I've given the us-china relationship in the future of the post COBIT order is cold war 1.5 and the reason I choose that term is because the one differential between the previous Cold War with the Soviet Union and the current estrangement for the People's Republic of China is the degree of indigent economic interconnectedness between China in the US that interconnectedness weathering iPhones or almost any kinds of goods and services has been a key economic story of the past two decades decoupling as the expression goes would involve massive disruption on both sides the seventy thousand US company has set up in China and generating seven hundred and a hundred billion u.s. dollar revenue a year in China for example Ian sells more cars in China than the US and China's Apple largest market outside us so so the company is not that easy but some decoupling is already happening the u.s. has banned American firms from working with the Chinese 5g mobile networks giant who are away and as the pandemic drags on more and more sectors might bring their supply chains back home if finance gets hit by the decoupling trend - that could mean a much bigger break that is starting to unravel not just in trade where the trade wars not just through technology where the United States is taking an increasingly restrictive approach and not just in 5g but prospectively in financial markets as well and if the economic ties that bind unravel then you begin to look at the characteristics of a cold war we've been through once before and Donald Trump is threatening to push down that road to be economic decoupling remember the interview with Fox Business that we flashed up earlier where he talked about cutting off the whole relationship with China and said it would even save hundreds of billions of dollars you can just imagine that becoming a centerpiece of Trump's re-election campaign this year bring back all that business from China to rebuild the US economy post coronavirus and make America great again as for China well over in Beijing Hwang Hui Yao says it's ready for anything u.s. is forcing you know decoupling it's going to first hurt us companies secondly going to help China it's going to help China to just thrive on its own channel eventually develop its own technology and it's a system you may slow it down sometime but eventually we will overcome this is what a new Cold War could look like with the US and China severing more and more ties economic and political and retreating into their own spheres of influence the US and its Western Allies on one side and China and belton Road on the other and just like the last Cold War this could mean that the rest of the world has to decide which side he won this is a nightmare scenario for Europe in particular its economy has become even more interlinked with China than Americas has it's just huge Germany alone exports more to China than the UK France Italy Spain and the Netherlands combined to some on the outside Europe has just been coasting along well our European friends need to decide what they stand for Europe's historical policy with engagement with China has been periodically complain about human rights make as much money as you can and consign any security policy concerns to the United States and its specific allies the European Union has started to toughen its tone on China a year ago it came out with a new strategy paper that described a three-part relationship with China one based on partnership competition but also systemic rivalry the two sides have been preparing for a major summit on investment between Europe and China later this year one way Europe wanted to demand a more level playing field for European companies doing business in that summit has been thrown up in the air by the pandemic and there are questions about just how tough Europe will be on huawei for example the EU has not followed America's lead with a ban it's just recommended that member states limit who are ways access to the most sensitive parts of the 5g network individual European countries are free to take a harder line if they want to the German MEP Einhard Boutique offer says that Germany should do so let's check whether on the basis of national security concerns and technological dependency concerns it's a smart approach to allow far way into the 5g network to the conclusion that this would not be smart but what way is now trying to sweeten the deal saying it will build a 5g equipment factory in France and as Beijing continues to nurture relationships with European States there are doubts that Europe will be able to unite around tough decisions involving China this is a way for Beijing to be able to make sure that Europe is divided and some and because Europe I mean the EU is based on on the need for consensus speak before you take any decision at the EU level you need just one country not to agree on this consensus to be able to to discard or to disregard a joint posture in societies and and countries where we still haven't fully emerged from the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008-2009 I mean these economic opportunities that China is putting on the table on the table can be quite vital and this is an enormous leverage that Beijing has on the decision of these countries so you don't want to you to upset or to anger China by voting against or by voting for a measure that would limit the Chinese investments in Europe and here's the thing public opinion here in Europe is also pretty divided a new opinion poll in Germany shows that Germans are almost equally split between those who want closer ties with America and those wanting to put China first that's an extraordinary result when you consider the depth of the historic relationship between the US and Germany but it could get even worse Donald Trump has made repeated threats to open up a new trade war between the u.s. and the European Union so that's where Europe finds itself right now facing the possibility of a new cold war between a difficult America and an encroaching China what should they do as Europeans you know we're I think we're very interested in in free trade and we're very interested in keeping all the lines open and transparent but how is that going to be still possible in the years to come if China continues to to go in the same direction that here it has taken for the last five years where you see an increasing closing down and increasing repression and increased aggression so I I don't know it we will be of all of us to realize where our heart is you know is it towards business interest or is it towards values at some point we will have to make a choice I really believe so we are allies with America but that does not imply that we just father the lead of an incapable leader like president drop like sheep we don't believe in restructuring international governments according to the age-old concept of big power confrontation we insist as Europeans to face international relations faith on the rule of law international rule of law and multilateral listen so and and of course we give much more relevancy to international challenges that would benefit a lot from Chinese contributions president Trump has never thought about a Chinese contribution to the fight against climate change because in his mind climate changes of Chinese folks and speaking out from Australia former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it's time for like-minded nations to get together and try at least and limit the fallout of whatever's to come I would if I were the mainstream Europeans team up with comparable countries of of parallel clout in the international system to support financially and diplomatically these essential institutional pieces of machinery of the system of global governance now while the elephants continue to rampage in the living room this is partly started happening already the EU led an online fundraising effort to coordinate work to find a corona virus vaccine China only sent her junior delegate and the u.s. didn't even take part but Kevin Rudd says it is essential to keep multilateral cooperation alive or at least on life support keeping the institutions of global governance afloat and functioning to the greatest extent possible until we reach even of either strategic equilibrium with China United States or alternatively a new era of day taunt is arranged which defines the areas in which a cold wall will be conducted and not conducted this is the new world that's appearing on the horizon the world remade not just by the coronavirus but by a new type of cold war

Channel: DW News

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Keywords: us china, usa china, china us war, us china trade, us china news, usa and china, trade war, new cold war, new kind of cold war, xi jinping, donald trump, us vs china war, china vs usa war, belt and road, china militarisation, china cold war, us china conflict, us nationalism, china nationalism, us china war, china belt and road, belt and road initiative, new cold war 2020, china vs us 2020, china us 2020, richard walker, dw news, us china sea, us china military

Id: taAHtUDo18Q

Length: 43min 22sec (2602 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020