The Observer reported that recently, a speech on Sino-US relations by Ma Kaishuo, a well-known scholar and senior diplomat in Singapore, was widely circulated on the Internet. The video is the content of a speech he gave at an international conference in the UAE last month. In his speech, Ma Kaishuo said that the United States only has 10 years to prevent China from becoming the world's first, and during this time, the United States will inevitably continue to increase pressure and sanctions on China to avoid being surpassed by China and maintain its own global hegemony.
This also means that the biggest uncertainty in the next decade is actually the competition and confrontation between China and the United States, and the confrontation between China and the United States will show a spiraling trend, no matter which candidate in the United States is elected president, it is impossible to change the policy of suppressing and containing China.
The reason is that although there are irreconcilable contradictions between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on some key issues, which has caused the American society to be in a state of serious division, the United States has a consensus from top to bottom, that is, to contain China. Therefore, whether Biden is re-elected in the future or Trump returns to the White House, there will be no substantial change in US policy toward China.
Ma Kaishuo, a well-known scholar and veteran diplomat from Singapore
Biden, as a traditional political figure of the establishment, is likely to continue to rally allies to join the team of confronting and containing China, while Trump may gradually go to extremes, leading to a head-on conflict between China and the United States. But neither Biden nor Trump will have any positive impact on Sino-US relations.
Under Biden's leadership, the United States has taken a series of actions against China, targeting high-end chips, artificial intelligence, and other high-tech fields, as well as export restrictions on China's new energy electric vehicles. In American logic, the world is a "zero-sum game" chessboard, with winners take all. If the United States cannot continue to sit in the first place in the world, then everything that the United States has in the past will also be on the fire.
Therefore, the United States wants to turn China into a second Soviet Union, and then, with its own successful experience, continue to defeat China. But the problem is that the United States is naïve in this way. China is a country that is good at learning lessons from history. It has only been more than 30 years since the Soviet Union fell apart, and the collapse of the Soviet Union is vividly remembered, so how can China follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the United States suppressed China's economic development through trade, and we immediately strengthened relations with neighboring countries and launched the "One Belt, One Road" initiative to deal with the isolation strategy of the United States.
In addition to the already leading new energy electric vehicles, China continues to make efforts in the field of high-end machine tools and chip industries, and actively integrates into the global industrial chain to cope with the key suppression of the United States.
And now China has a strong national defense force, which makes the United States dare not easily launch a war against China. China's status as a global manufacturing center has also made it difficult for the United States and its allies to give up, and the so-called "decoupling and broken chains" have eventually become "small courtyards and high walls".
In addition, there is still a fundamental issue in the US strategy toward China that has not been resolved, and what kind of goal does the United States want to achieve in encircling China. This is a strategic goal that the United States has failed to put forward since the Obama administration proposed the "Asia-Pacific rebalance" strategy. The current United States is only busy encircling China and pandering to political correctness, but it has never explained what exactly it wants to achieve, just to contain China for the sake of containing China. If you don't even know what you want, how can you talk about success?
But the problem is that China and the United States, as the top two countries in terms of global comprehensive strength, have a huge influence on the world, whether it is military, economic, or political. The direct confrontation between China and the United States will inevitably affect other countries and thus affect global development.
Based on this statement, Ma Kaishuo issued an appeal, hoping that the United States will abandon the strategy of encircling China, because it will not succeed in the end, and the United States should cooperate with China, because the world is big enough to accommodate two big countries. He said that although China seeks to become "the world's first", it only wants to develop its economy, and China's economic development and strength are based on the size of its population and hard-working people, not the so-called "overcapacity".
Politically, China does not want to become a global hegemon, nor does it intend to replace the United States as a "global policeman."
China's power will have more advantages than disadvantages for the world. China pursues an independent foreign policy and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and has never taken the initiative to initiate any foreign war over the past 70 years or so. In the modern era, China has led the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has boosted infrastructure and economic development in countries in the Global South. The establishment of the Asian Investment Bank (AIB) was promoted, from which a large number of developing countries have benefited. The establishment of the BRICS Development Bank is also progressing steadily, which is good for the world.
According to the current growth rate of China's economic development and comprehensive strength, in 10 years, there will be no problem for us to surpass the United States in terms of economic volume, and at the same time, we can catch up with the United States in terms of military, science and technology, diplomacy and other comprehensive strength, and in the case that the United States loses the world's first throne, it can only be delusional to comprehensively encircle and suppress China, because then the offense and defense will be out of place.