US President Joe Biden is on his first foreign tour since getting elected, a necessary exercise that had to be put on hold until the Covid-19 pandemic settled down at home and abroad. The primary theme of this visit that includes a meeting of the G7, a NATO summit, a UK visit and a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is to tell the world that ‘America is back’, following a diplomatically disastrous four years of Donald Trump. Additionally, he is leading with an anti-China narrative, speaking out against the country at the NATO summit, calling its ‘authoritarianism and growing military might’ a threat to the ‘rules-based International order’. The G7 forum was used to criticize China for alleged human rights violations in the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, to encourage Hong Kong to maintain a high degree of autonomy and emphasize the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. China expectedly denounced the mention of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the G7 statement, as all three are considered highly sensitive matters by the country. It seems the USA, with support of its allies, is making an attempt to diplomatically isolate China, an approach that is different from President Biden’s predecessor who tried to take the economic giant head-on with a trade war that ended up hurting the US economy more than anything else.
In the last 20 years, China has solidified its place in the world as an economic giant whose astronomical rise is attributable to large-scale capital investment, both domestic and foreign, and rapid growth in productivity. It is no wonder that the country is sometimes referred to as ‘the world’s factory’. Many economists who believed that the Chinese economy would overtake the US by 2033 now suggest that the Covid-19 pandemic may cause that to happen as soon as 2028. Therefore, apart from concerns over its human rights record, expanding military and advanced weaponry base and alliances with Russia and Turkey, the USA also has a fear of losing the economic fight. From a regional perspective, the USA is propping up India as a sort of counterbalance to China’s dominance. China has invested heavily in Pakistan through CPEC and expects a certain level of support and loyalty in return. In this backdrop, Pakistan must be wary of being dragged into a new cold war, while it is still somewhat reeling from the previous one it became a part of.
