Photo: Donald Trump, Xi Jinping cold war conflict between the two.Peking, Damir Sagolj, Reuters, 2017.
Wars Have Been Fought For Less: The US-China Conflict Against the Backdrop of the Global Pandemic
written by Vaishnav Rajkumar
An escalating trade war, an expulsion of diplomats, and conspiracy theories about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic — wars have been fought for less. These issues merely form the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mounting tensions between the United States and China. It’s undeniable that the coronavirus pandemic has forced world leaders to focus most of their attention on internal state affairs, and has demanded a higher degree of effective statesmanship than what has been witnessed in recent times. However, China and the US have still managed to stoke the fires of their increasingly strained relationship over the last few months, and, in some instances, have even managed to weaponise the issue of the pandemic as a justification for hostility. After a period of general inactivity following the tariffs and sanctions of 2018, has the pandemic been trivialised to become a convenient smokescreen rationalising the actions of an ambitious despot, Xi Jin-
ping and a Machiavellian populist, President Trump? More importantly, perhaps, the article will discuss how the half-hearted nature of the Chinese response to US aggression can be attributed to China’s desire to prolong the truce amidst the trade war between the two countries. When the first reports of a deadly virus in Wuhan began to gain international attention, the rumours that usually accompany major global developments were not far behind. The tide of racial stereotyping and mischaracterisation that followed the spread of the virus in Europe and North America was of course not quelled by a President who labels one of the most critical health emergencies of the decade as a hoax and derogatorily refers to it as the “China-virus”. With a leader as unpredictable as Trump, it is impossible to identify how or why his antagonism toward China first originated.
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Dialogue • Autumn 2020
