More importantly, the panel will discuss a principled and strategic roadmap for the future of Canada’s short-term and long-term engagement in the Middle East. While these challenges pose serious risks to Canadian security, Ottawa will also have the opportunity to limit such risks and prevent a spillover effect vis-à-vis effective humanitarian initiatives in the region. In this panel, we will primarily investigate Canada’s Middle East Strategy’s degree of success in providing humanitarian aid to the region. Secondly, the panel will discuss what programs and initiatives Canada can introduce to further build on the renewed strategy.
When it is in our interest, the United States will conduct results-oriented diplomacy with China on shared challenges such as climate change and global public health crises. Further, U.S. restrictions may be contributing to a broader “chilling” effect on the Chinese economy. Global businesses understand that investing in China and entering partnerships with Chinese suppliers presents some risk as future U.S. restrictions may disrupt their business plans. For instance, even if the current U.S. export controls are limited in scope, all U.S. semiconductor firms must weigh the risk that those export controls will expand in the future and encompass their products. Companies may determine that it is prudent to diversify and invest in and develop relationships with other countries, even if that comes at a higher up-front cost. At the same time, U.S. restrictions are having some adverse effects on the Chinese economy.
China Is Radically Expanding Its Nuclear Missile Silos
The true test for the Biden administration is what it will do about China in the remaining 1,360. The Biden administration could realize some quick wins by filling in the gaping holes the Trump team has created by abandoning traditional sources of U.S. leverage and influence. Rejoining international institutions and agreements, partnering with European allies, strengthening the United States, and reconstructing the U.S.-China diplomatic framework are likely all on Biden’s agenda. U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden will have to grapple with all these challenges from day one in office. In this roundup, CFR experts look back on significant moments over the past year that will have lasting implications for the relationship and offer their analysis on what to expect under Biden.
But if it does follow through, reopening closed consulates in Chengdu, China, and Houston as well as easing mutual visa restrictions should follow. The only way to answer fundamental relationship questions is to put aside assumptions and pursue negotiations that will test intentions on the issues that created friction. Taiwan’s jets scrambled to keep up, while the United States warned China that its “provocative military activity” undermined “regional peace and stability.” China did not cower. When a Taiwanese combat air traffic controller radioed one Chinese aircraft, the pilot dismissed the challenge with an obscenity involving the officer’s mother.
- The United States and China are profoundly at odds on how people and economies should be governed.
- U.S. imports from China across all sectors decreased 24 percent in the period of January-May 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.
- The complexities—and existential risks—of the multidimensional relationship between two nuclear weapon states bumping against each other pull in different directions.
- Critics have accused Biden’s China policy (not entirely unfairly) of being “Trump lite”—tariffs, decoupling, virtue-signaling, and all the rest—just with a softer tone.
Moreover, after China opened its financial markets to majority foreign ownership in 2020, Wall Street firms have poured $212 billion into Chinese bond markets. In the economic realm, for all the rancor and trade wars, U.S.-China interdependence has not exactly shriveled. Yes, there’s been some decoupling by both sides on sensitive tech trade, U.S. firms diversifying supply chains and near-shoring, and China delisting firms from U.S. exchanges as well as applying retaliatory tariffs. Chamber of Commerce poll, while firms are scaling back China operations, 71 percent of firms have no plans to leave.
After Taiwan’s Election, China Is Now Ratcheting Up the Pressure
Secretary Raimondo’s visit comes on the heels of several moves by the United States targeting the Chinese economy. President Biden has not only maintained the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports but has bolstered some restrictions. On August 9th, the Biden administration released an executive order that halts new investments into China’s semiconductor, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence industries. This executive order complements earlier economic policies issued by the Biden administration on national security grounds, including the export control rules on advanced semiconductors released in October 2022 and the CFIUS executive order in September 2022. This year saw significant escalation in the technology competition between the United States and China.
They are also major trade and business partners, making their rivalry more complex than those of the Cold War, to which it is sometimes compared. Earlier this month, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited China with the goal of both promoting commercial ties https://www.tradebot.online/ between the United States and China while remaining firm on U.S. restrictions on the Chinese economy. This dichotomy—increasing economic ties while simultaneously increasing economic restrictions—reflects the complex nature of the U.S.-China relationship today.
U.S. imports from China across all sectors decreased 24 percent in the period of January-May 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. According to figures published by China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, foreign direct investment in China from Q decreased 76 percent from the previous quarter and 87 percent from Q2 2022, hitting the lowest quarterly level since 1998. A Financial Times investigation also found that foreign investors sold a net $12 billion of Chinese stocks in August alone. While the two nations are still economically intertwined, businesses and investors may be recognizing the geopolitical trends and reducing ties with China on their own. With Canada’s Middle East Engagement Strategy expiring this year, it is time to examine and evaluate this massive investment in the Middle East region in the past five years.
But on more urgent issues of new risk reduction measures, the upcoming, top-level military-to-military talks will be a test of Beijing’s seriousness. With U.S. and Chinese maritime and air forces operating in dangerous proximity to each other, there is pressing need for new arrangements so operators can better communicate to prevent incidental clashes that could escalate. Both sides could take reciprocal steps to reduce the games of chicken being played in the East and South China Seas as well as in waters and airspace around Taiwan. The Middle East continues to grapple with violence and instability, particularly in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
On one hand, the Kremlin has maintained its military presence in Syria, and on the other hand, China has signed an unprecedented 25-year strategic agreement with Iran. Military interventions, political and economic instabilities, and civil unrest in the Middle East have led to a global refugee crisis with an increasing wave of refugees and asylum seekers to Europe and Canada. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has, in myriad ways, exacerbated and contributed to the ongoing security threats and destabilization of the region.
NATO’s Confusion Over the Russia Threat
Combined with fears of looming conflict, this predicament may help explain Xi’s interest in the recent summit, perhaps creating possibilities for altering some of Beijing’s policies. The United States—and the rest of the world—may have more leverage over Beijing’s behavior than they realize, despite the heated rhetoric emerging from Chinese media and diplomats. After holding out against unification demands from China’s communist rulers for more than 70 years, Taiwan is now at the heart of the deepening discord between China and the United States. The island’s fate has the potential to reshape the regional order and even to ignite a military conflagration — intentional or not. And no relationship seethes, across such a wide and consequential set of issues, with more tension and mistrust.
The U.S. Is Getting Taiwan Ready to Fight on the Beaches
The U.S. must remain wary of China’s appetite for retaliation, which may impair critical U.S. industries that are still dependent on Chinese suppliers and consumers. The recent visits of four senior Biden administration officials to China demonstrate a commitment to maintaining cordial ties. Meanwhile, the U.S. should factor in the potential for greater geopolitical instability into its near- and long-term strategy. Changes to the international economic system will take time, particularly in China-centric supply chains or those where a relatively small number of international entities dominate key segments.
A virtual summit in November between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, produced no breakthrough steps toward better relations. Instead, both sides reiterated points of longstanding contention, agreeing only on the need to prevent competition from escalating into broader conflict. Even so, there are reasons to believe that the U.S.-China economic relationship that has been built on innovation, manufacturing, and trade will continue to deteriorate.