According to a Chinese tabloid, the United States and China’s delicate relationship might lead to war.
More than thirty days have passed since President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in San Francisco in November, a move widely seen as pivotal in resuming regular interactions and averting an escalation of the competition between the two nations. On Saturday, however, the governing Communist Party’s propaganda arm, the nationalist English-language newspaper Global Times, warned that even a little event might have that effect.
General Liu Zhenli of China and General Charles Q. Brown of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff met virtually on Thursday, and the editorial also analyzed that discussion. The Global Times hailed the gathering as “substantive” and “a significant step” toward mending fences between the two superpowers’ militaries. The publication stated that the United States might spark a conflict with only a single slip-up.
The United States claims that China’s transformation of reefs in the region into tiny islands capable of sustaining military installations endangers freedom of navigation, and tensions have been rising ever since. Several neighboring nations have also claimed these reefs. In response to Chinese territorial claims in the seas around the man-made islands, the United States has repeatedly repeated that it would dispatch more warships to cruise close to the contentious islets.
A regional power struggle and Beijing’s wrath are expected to be stoked by Thursday’s ruling by an international tribunal that it had the authority to hear a lawsuit filed by the Philippines about the contested waters. The Philippines has pushed for a resolution to the territorial dispute over uninhabited islands and reefs via the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which both China and the Philippines have signed.
China has declined to participate in the proceedings, claiming that the matter is beyond the purview of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a court with a history dating back over a century and located in The Hague.
China has multiple “delicate relationships” with nations worldwide.
