A lot has happened in the first few months of 2022, and although it seems that the United States and the West will temporarily put aside political differences pointing to China for two weeks during the Winter Olympics, this is not the case, just saying that media resources are limited.
Even the armed conflicts in other regions during the Winter Olympics were not completely over, and even before February 20, the United States and the West were impatiently launching shelling into the Donbass region to lure Russian troops.
The subsequent war in Ukraine briefly attracted the attention of the West, but now that the war has entered "garbage time", their targets have refocused on China.
Before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, senior WHITE House officials, including Biden, repeatedly warned that if Russia sent troops, the White House would consider economic sanctions against China;
They didn't live up to their promises at the first time, and the reasons for this are unclear, but recent indications are that:
Unilateral economic sanctions against China without any external political conditions are coming, and senior White House officials in charge of the economic and trade field, including U.S. Trade Representative Dai Qi, Treasury Secretary Yellen, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimundo, have begun to discuss tariffs on Chinese exports and some trade embargoes in Congress.
As for the reasons, these three "female officials" said that "because of China's unfair trade competition, the US government must take measures to protect the interests of its own enterprises", but in fact I guess they are likely to force China to sign the "Sino-US Phase II Economic and Trade Agreement".
In 2020, during the Trump administration, China and the United States signed the "Sino-US Phase I Economic and Trade Agreement", according to which China will increase its imports of a total of $200 billion in US goods from 2020 to 2021, covering four areas: energy, food, services and manufactured goods.
And open up China's insurance industry to allow American companies to enter, allowIng American companies to have some economic and trade privileges such as wholly-owned insurance companies in China.
The original intention of the Trump administration to force China to sign this agreement was nothing more than to narrow the US-China trade deficit and bring some jobs at home, which was a major success during Trump's presidency in terms of signing the agreement, but the final result was not satisfactory.
The first is that the agreement has not been fully implemented, according to their statement, the agreement has only been implemented by 60%, China has not imported enough goods, on the other hand, because of the poor operation of the United States, commodity prices have risen, oil prices and grain prices have doubled, resulting in China not suffering losses due to the partial implementation of this agreement;
For example, due to the recent impact of the war in Ukraine, The price of energy in Europe has soared, and China has resold a batch of natural gas imported from the United States at a high price to Europe, which was originally because of the agreement to buy a natural gas contract at a high price that was not cost-effective.
The grain imported from the United States supplements the domestic strategic grain reserves, which has become the guarantee that China's domestic grain prices will remain stable after the second year of the epidemic, of course, the United States will not lose, even this partially implemented economic and trade agreement has greatly reduced the US trade deficit with China.
If it weren't for this deal, the U.S. trade deficit with China would be as high as $450-500 billion in 2021, 28 percent higher than the current trade deficit, just to say that from their point of view, they need to profit from it and harm China's interests as much as possible.
The latter goal was not achieved, and in the process of pulling between the two sides, it was very unexpected that this agreement really achieved "mutual benefit and win-win results".
But they are not going to let this situation continue, and China has regained its focus after the war in Ukraine has entered "garbage time", and in early April the White House prepared two sets of "combination punches", one for the review of trade sanctions against China.
The U.S. Department of Commerce has begun a 90-120-day "investigation" that will decide after 4 months at the latest whether to impose sanctions on China and how to impose sanctions on China.
The purpose of the sanctions will mainly serve the two objectives of the United States to reduce its own inflation rate and consumer price index, reduce the US-China trade deficit, and increase import inflation to China.
Another set of "combination punches" is the Taiwan issue, following biden's delegation to visit Taiwan in March, pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives known as the "Empress Dowager Nishinomiya", will lead a high-level congressional delegation to visit Taiwan.
The delegation that Biden sent earlier was mostly composed of White House officials during the former Obama administration, and Biden's colleagues during his tenure as vice president, naturally had very obvious intentions.
This time, the delegation was a member of the US Congress, although it did not belong to the White House framework, but the specifications were actually greatly improved.
You know, Pelosi is the speaker of the House of Representatives, and under the system of separation of powers in the United States, the three factions of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, that is, the president, the speaker, and the justices, represent the highest level of power in the United States.
Pelosi is the speaker of the House of Representatives, and the president of the Senate is the vice president, and since the speaker of the House of Representatives has led a delegation to visit Taiwan, is it time for the president of the Senate to go up?
In April, Biden signed his third arms sale to Taiwan since taking office, amounting to $95 million, which was to send American technicians to provide logistics operation and maintenance services for the Patriot air defense system actively in service in taiwan;
Although the amount of this arms sale case is not large, the content is very sensitive, for example, the technical personnel in the United States are active duty soldiers? Or is it the technicians at Raytheon, which designs and manufactures the Patriot system? Do they travel to Taiwan on a specific cycle to provide services or are they stationed in Taiwan for a long time?
The most extreme situation is that the combat unit equipped with the Patriot air defense system of the US military will dispatch active military personnel stationed in Taiwan for a long time to provide logistical support to the Taiwan military, so that it is completely equivalent to the US military stationed in Taiwan, and this nature is extremely bad.
Therefore, any form of claim that the Taiwan issue has a tendency to improve in the future is self-deception, because China has already been very patient on this issue and has not shown any tendency toward possible "military reunification."
Moreover, through various channels, it has made clear its position of being willing to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait at the present stage, so as to meet the needs of the United States in maintaining the status quo on the Taiwan issue.
During the war in Ukraine, China did not "take advantage of the fire" in any form, did not take advantage of this opportunity to make any counterattack against the United States, but even so, they were not only unwilling to give in on this issue involving China's core interests, but even pressed forward step by step.
This is really worrying, how long will this peace last in the future? Just as the leaders of the two countries warned during their online talks before: The Taiwan issue is not handled well, which will cause subversive damage to Sino-US relations.
In the more than seventy years since the founding of New China, China has spent a long time at an extremely high price to maintain its claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, so that today, although the United States and the West generally support "Taiwan independence," they dare not deny the "one-China principle" on the surface.
This shows that although they are unwilling to recognize China's sovereignty over Taiwan, they actually do not dare to rush to break through the bottom line of this political relationship proposed by China, and at the same time, it also proves another point, that is, the journey to recover Taiwan may be full of ups and downs, because the future of Taiwan is still full of uncertainty to this day.
The current East Asian order, that is, the order established by the reconciliation of Sino-US relations after Kissinger's secret visit to China in 1971, is very interesting, on the one hand, some of the basic characteristics of this order actually profoundly express the United States' reverence for China for a period after the founding of the Country.
In 1971, when this order was laid, the United States directly denied the possibility of Japan's rearmament and military development, and denied the possibility of competing for political influence with China in the mainland.
However, on the Taiwan issue, which concerns China's sovereignty, it does not give a clear definition, or does not characterize Taiwan's future, but is similar to "believing in the wisdom of future generations", leaving an open-ended ending to Taiwan's future.
As for whether Taiwan will return to China in the future, or will it become independent according to the ideas of some people from now on? This is not qualitative in this order.
As far as China's position on the Taiwan issue is concerned, in terms of this order, can only be said to have the leading right to the Taiwan issue, or similar to the "right of first refusal", so the Western interpretation of the "one-China principle" is completely different from ours.
In fact, it is not to deny China's sovereignty, because they have never considered Taiwan to be China's inherent territory, and their view is that "Taiwan's separation from the mainland is itself the result of civil war."
Based on this, they believe they have the right to choose to support either side in a war of liberation that is not yet completely over.
The recognition of the "one-China principle" is, in essence, an acknowledgement of China's "right of first refusal" over Taiwan, and this "right of first refusal" in their eyes is actually equivalent to the fact that they are still more supportive of the Chinese mainland between the Chinese mainland and the remnants of the Kuomintang on the whole.
Therefore, they put forward another demand: that China cannot use force to settle the Taiwan issue; and they regard the military solution to the Taiwan issue as a table-setting, and they believe that in that case they have the right to stop supporting the Chinese mainland on the Taiwan issue and turn to supporting the remnants of the Kuomintang.
This point is reflected in the US "Taiwan Relations Act" of 1979, which on the one hand makes an "unofficial" characterization of US-Taiwan relations, but on the other hand, it stipulates that "if Chinese mainland resolve the Taiwan issue by force, the United States may send troops to intervene", providing the legal basis for military intervention in the United States.
Further inference we have found that if the military solution to the Taiwan issue is equivalent to lifting the table, then the peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue is equivalent to a repair of the order between China and the United States.
After clarifying this point, it is not difficult to find a fact: since the peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue is equivalent to adjusting the order, this system based on the consensus reached between China and the United States in the 1970s requires the common consensus of both sides to adjust, not to say that either party can unilaterally change it.
That is to say, peaceful reunification requires the United States to nod, and only when they agree to peaceful reunification and stop supporting the Taiwan authorities will the "Taiwan independence" on the island be peacefully divided.
Under what circumstances can the United States agree to such conditions? I'm afraid it's in another parallel universe.
For example, when Sino-US relations reached their peak in 2006-2008, some American political scientists even put forward the idea of G2, which extended to develop for a decade or eight years under this framework, and they may agree to completely turn to the Chinese mainland on the Taiwan issue and agree to our demand for peaceful reunification.
But now, since 2012, China has gradually embarked on industrial upgrading, and now that it has been a decade, this possibility is very small.
In short, everything is incompatible with the current China, and now that China has embarked on a development path that is completely unpredictable by the United States, the consensus and foundation of the two sides on the Taiwan issue have ceased to exist.
Fundamentally speaking, the Sino-US consensus itself has been shaken, the Peninsula issue, the Japan rearmament issue, and the Taiwan issue.
Although we are willing to continue to maintain the political foundations of these three previous orders, the United States is no longer willing, and they are desperate to integrate all pro-American forces in East Asia into a solid and powerful military bloc, and then establish an Asia-Pacific version of NATO at China's doorstep;
The question is not whether they will still play the "Taiwan card", but what card is the Next Step, what card is the United States going to play? Japanese cards? Korean cards?