USA and China towards the new cold war

So the fate of the world is to live a new cold war, which is likely to last many years. But the analogies with the remote conflict between the US and the USSR are very few, apart from the comparison between a democracy and an undemocratic regime. From the economic point of view between the current Beijing and the Moscow of the years from the second post-war period until the fall of the Berlin wall, there are no similarities. Now China is playing a practically equal role with the USA on the economic scene, and indeed this competition is considered the real cause of the confrontation at a distance. Certainly there are problems related to the increasingly authoritarian turn of Beijing, with the intensification of the repression of Muslims, the increasing denial of civil and humanitarian rights and the struggle with dissent engaged in Hong Kong, carried out, inter alia, with failure to comply with an international treaty. But if the counterpart is represented by Trump and his American supremacy policy, especially in economics, these arguments, although valid and shareable, seem a sort of pretext to tighten the relationship with Beijing. Certainly the Chinese behavior is regrettable, made of provocations, of an increasingly consistent use of industrial espionage, of equivocal behaviors, as in the case of the pandemic that started precisely from the territories of China. Washington has exploited all this context, not acting as the first world power, trying to involve allies on a political level for an effective contrast based on programs and principles, but has given the impression of wanting to protect its economic supremacy for exclusive national advantages . Trump envies the Chinese president for his great autonomy and practically unlimited decision-making capacity and this does not make him the champion of the interests of the western field, also because he favors economic results over political ones, such as respect for rights, just like in Beijing. This is also the reason for the timid attitude of the Europeans towards the current administration of the White House, which, moreover, are geographically distant from the disputes that have most involved countries in the western field, such as Japan, Australia or even India in the against Beijing. On the contrary in the populations of USA and China there is a very disheartening common datum: in both peoples and in a symmetrical way there is an aversion to the other country (66% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion on China, balanced by 62% of Chinese who have the same opinion towards the USA), which represents an element that cannot be taken into consideration and also exploited by the respective administrations. One proof is that Trump’s contender in the upcoming US presidential election, Joe Biden, has already expressed his opposition to Chinese politics; the only hope is that it will shift attention from the economy to broader political issues. However, the contingent problem is that the two economies are strongly interconnected, in fact on both sides there is a need for raw materials and processed products that are produced by the opposing country; Trump adopted the strategy of trade tariffs (also imposed on allies) to reduce the trade balance gap with China, a short-sighted strategy, which did not take into account the United States’ global trade balance and which triggered similar Chinese countermeasures. Proceeding on this path does not suit either of the two contenders, but the military unknowns related to the geopolitical aspects remain, which are in close relationship with the maritime communication routes of goods in the Pacific seas and the confrontation on the growth of armaments. The current situation, albeit with a high level of danger, does not seem to be able to turn into an armed conflict, even if the potential opportunities for clashes are not lacking, but rather to settle on a non-traditional conflict based on the use of technologies to influence the respective opinions public, an increase in espionage and, possibly, the exploitation of low intensity local conflicts. If this may seem a good signal for world peace, but not for everyone, it is also true that it is the best situation to keep up the level of a war that can be defined as cold, with all the risks involved: from the return of the balance of terror and nuclear proliferation, up to heavy global repercussions on the economy, with rising prices and limiting the circulation of products and services and therefore the return of phenomena such as that of inflation. It is not easy to resolve this situation, especially considering the constant lack of rights in the Chinese country and Beijing’s willingness to export its model, a danger from which Europe must absolutely preserve itself.