As President Trump begins pushing heavily against Chinese expansionism, the Chinese Regime has begun to take moves of its own. Just this week it scrambled jets on its border with India, threatened to take Taiwan by force, and actively inserted itself into Hong Kong, eviscerating the One China Two Systems policy.
While everyone assumes the USA and China are heading to a Cold War style relationship, the speed of China’s pushback has been alarming to even the most pessimistic Asia experts.
China’s moves have not gone unnoticed. Australia is now rethinking its relationship with China, and Britain has begin to discuss evacuating most of its dual citizens there as Beijing clamps down.
For its part, America has sailed one of its battle ships through the straights of Taiwan as the Chinese Liberation Army starts its drills focused on taking over the island.
Sumantra Maitra of the Federalist has gone as far as saying that it may be time reinstitute the Quad.
“As a result, there are talks in Australia of reviving the Quad, the security system started around 2007, which pits India, Japan, Australia, and the United States in an alliance like an Asian naval North Atlantic Treaty Organization to balance the rise of China. This is an extremely important endeavor, and would redistribute the Indo-Pacific security burden among the powerful and democratic regional powers that are already in some form allied with the United States.”
The chances of calming the tensions between China and the USA as well as the US allies in the region appear to be unlikely as the CCP understands its real plans have been called out and is now attempting to consolidate its holdings while pushing back against the global order it has sought to manipulate.
For his part, President Trump has been successful in his ability to paint the regime in Beijing as the real enemy, which he needs to do in order to boost his chances of winning the Presidential Election this November.
While both Beijing and Washington appear to be drawing into a direct confrontation, one must consider that this friction serves both of their needs right now. America has never done well in a uni-polar world and appears to thrive best when there is another arch foe it needs a multi-decade plan to defeat. China appears to have reached the point where it must jettison the US as a consumer in order to grow its own wings and begin to carve out a true path to global ascendency.
A direct conflict may be in the offing, but there is also good reason to believe that just like the Cold War, it may be avoided.