Sino-American relations have been deteriorating for years. Lately, trade disputes have grown acute, though commercial issues are far from the only differences that divide the United States and China.
The US government has called for inquiries into security concerns surrounding the newest Huawei chip. And that’s not all. Some kind of an eventual TikTok ban now seems likely, if not inevitable, given that such a move has gained support among both major political parties.
(Note: If you still associate suspicion of Beijing’s motives exclusively with Donald Trump and the right wing of the GOP, you’re living in 2015.)
China, for its part, is levying sanctions against US firms. China’s latest retaliatory move is a ban on Apple iPhones, pods, and watches in government workplaces.
The ban may spread. At any rate, Apple products are no longer “politically correct” in China. The Chinese Communist Party is encouraging Chinese consumers to purchase such products from Huawei. And Chinese citizens, unlike rowdy and independent-minded Americans, usually do as their government instructs them. Apple is not necessarily finished in China, but its business will never recover.
We should not be surprised at any of this. We have seen it coming. When was the last time you saw a positive news story about China or Sino-American relations in the American media? Sometime before 2010, I would venture, if not earlier. The present tensions can be traced back practically to the beginning of this century.
It is well nigh impossible for two countries who are one step away from outright enmity to remain trading partners indefinitely. Trade, after all, depends on friendly relations.
We should also keep two additional factors in mind.
The first of these is that Apple has always been a globally oriented, fashionably liberal company. Apple has been criticized in the past for kowtowing to the Chinese government’s demands for censorship measures and user data access. Yet now Apple is in the Chinese Communist Party’s crosshairs. If this can happen to Apple, it can happen to any US interest.
The second factor is that Joe Biden is not Donald Trump. Joe Biden, you will recall, is the POTUS who was supposed to make nice with the rest of the world. (Foreign governments, at any rate—the Chinese government notable among them—were heavily invested in Hunter Biden’s shady business deals.)
The odds of a change in the White House after 2024 are fifty-fifty at present, higher if the US economy deteriorates next year. Whatever happens in the next US presidential election, US-China relations are unlikely to improve in 2025, or in the years immediately after that.
-ET