Can America live in Xi Jinping's world?

 Can America live in Xi Jinping's world?

Xi Jinping has emerged as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades as his predecessors broke the tradition of only serving two terms in government, and he has a third term to lead.He has strengthened his grip on China and his rule may now be indefinite, but while Xi Jinping's grip on the domestic level has strengthened, the situation at the international level has looked more volatile.The more the Communist Party leader reinforces China's authoritarian model, the more he challenges a tacit assumption of our age of globalization that as China gets richer, it will become freer.That assumption underpinned decades of trade and rapprochement between Washington and Beijing.It was the basis of an economic partnership that has resulted in more than half a trillion dollars worth of goods passing through the Pacific each year.Now, as Xi begins his third term, he faces an ongoing trade war with the United States.Beijing argues that the significant recent chill in relations is due to America's desire to maintain its position as a world power.President Joe Biden's newly released national security strategy calls Beijing a bigger threat to the current world order than Moscow, and Washington has begun talking about a Chinese attack on Taiwan as a far-fetched threat. A realistic possibility rather than a possibility.This is a far cry from the days when US and Chinese leaders proclaimed that mutual development would ultimately overcome ideological differences and tensions between a superpower and a rising power. So how did we get here? "The Habit of Freedom"It is no less ironic that it is President Joe Biden who is treating China as an adversary on a daily basis.When Biden was a member of the US Senate in the late 1990s, he was a key architect of efforts to welcome China to the World Trade Organization (WTO).He told reporters on his visit to Shanghai in 2000 that 'China is not our enemy.'This statement was based on the belief that increased trade would bring China into a system of shared norms and global values, and aid in its rise as a responsible power.China's WTO membership became a reality under President George W. Bush and has been supported by every president since Richard Nixon.

Corporate America was also lobbying hard for greater opening to China. British American Tobacco, for example, was eager to sell its products to Chinese consumers, while the US-China Business Council was eager to access a cheap, compliant force.China's WTO membership was perhaps best presented by Mr Bush, then governor of Texas, in a May 2000 speech to Boeing workers during his presidential campaign.He said that the issue of trade with China is not just a matter of trade but a matter of trust. Economic freedom creates habits of freedom and habits of freedom create expectations of democracy.For a while, China's growing prosperity actually seemed to increase the chances of political reform, albeit on a limited scale.In the years since WTO membership, the Internet has given Chinese people, like the rest of the world, opportunities for debate and disagreement that were previously unimaginable.Even when Mr. Xi began his first term as party general secretary in 2012, international media coverage often focused on skyscrapers, cultural exchanges and a new middle class, saying that There is evidence that China is fundamentally changing for the better.But there were many signs early in Mr Xi's tenure that he did not see these new 'liberty habits' as a welcome consequence of globalisation, but as something to be fought against at all costs. But to fight.Document No. 9, reportedly issued by the Central Office of the Communist Party a few months into his first term, listed seven dangers to be avoided and included 'universal values', Included were the concept of a 'civil society' outside party control and an independent media.Mr. Xi believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was due to ideological weakness and failure to maintain a socialist line.The idea of ​​shared, universal values ​​was for him a Trojan horse that would lead the Chinese Communist Party down the same path. Hence, their response was swift and uncompromising whereby they shamelessly reasserted dictatorship and one-party rule. Xi Jinping's second term Imprisoning lawyers, silencing dissent, curtailing freedoms in Hong Kong and mass incarceration of more than a million Uyghurs in its western region of Xinjiang were common during Xi Jinping's second term.Yet there is little evidence that Western governments are in any hurry to withdraw their support for trade to actively curtail China's rise, as Beijing now claims.For decades, China's entry into the WTO offered huge profits for corporations that tied their supply chains to Chinese labor and provided a new front for businesses to sell to Chinese consumers.Embassies have long been staffed with commercial teams still numbering in the hundreds.

Britain's so-called 'golden age' trade mantra with China was launched during Mr Xi's first term and continued into his second term.The period even saw a UK chancellor visit Xinjiang as a photo opportunity to highlight trade opportunities in the region, even though it had been the focus of serious human rights concerns. .Although politicians from democratic states have always proclaimed the benefits of engagement, human rights issues have often been raised 'behind closed doors'.During the same period, Hunter Biden, the youngest son of President Joe Biden, developed business relationships with Chinese entities affiliated with the Communist Party. It is a relationship that is at the heart of the political controversy surrounding them to this day.There is little evidence that American or European political elites were willing to reassess the engagement process.While in Beijing, corporate executives often told me that my journalism covering China's growing repression somehow missed the bigger picture of growing prosperity.It was as if instead of opening the minds of Chinese officials to promises of political reform, trade and engagement had changed the minds of people outside the world who saw only skyscrapers and high-speed railways US-China relations: Is the US increasing pressure on China under the pretext of Tibet
The United States on Monday appointed a senior State Department official, Ezra Zia, as the Special Coordinator for Tibet. China has described this appointment by the US as interference in its internal affairs.Ezra Zia is of Indian-American origin and his parents' family is said to be from Bihar province. In April, Senator Tim Kaine in the US State Department said that Ezra had previously served in the State Department during the periods of five US presidents. Of these five American presidents, three were Republicans and two were Democrats.At the time of his appointment, Ezra had stated that he was of Indian origin and that his grandfather was a supporter of India's independence. She is a graduate of Georgetown University of Foreign Service.The US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken said in a tweet about Tibet, a sensitive issue for China, that Zia's appointment is to protect Tibet's religious, cultural and linguistic heritage and China's human rights violations. is an expression of American determination to combat. Blanken said Zia would encourage dialogue between India's exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, or democratically elected Tibetan leaders, and China.There has been a strong reaction from China on the appointment of Ezra Zia. The Chinese embassy in Washington has described the US move as a 'political ploy'. "The United States should stop interfering in China's internal affairs and stop destabilizing," said Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the embassy.Earlier, China had objected to this type of appointment made during the previous US President Donald Trump's tenure.US-China relations are currently going through a very critical period. There are sharp differences between the two countries on issues like trade, Taiwan, human rights violations, the South China Sea and the Corona epidemic.

China's sensitive region of TibetThe most controversial issue in the relations between Tibet and China is the 'independence' of Tibet. Soon after the establishment of the Communist regime in China, ie in 1950, it annexed Tibet by sending troops into China, claiming that it was a 'peaceful liberation'.Gradually, China consolidated its control over the Buddhist-majority region and began spreading communist ideology. At the same time, local language, culture and education were also discouraged in Tibet.Many critics, including the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who resides in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, have termed China's rule over Tibet as 'cultural genocide'.America's attitude towards Tibet has been very interesting.