Since his inauguration on January 20, US President Joe Biden has surrounded himself with a solid team of experts from China, illustrating his desire to make the Beijing-Washington link the top of his priorities and to better deal with the Chinese ambitions. Retail review.
The US president Situation
The US president’s picks in virtually every department of government show a body of Asian experts as well as former Obama administration advisers. They also illustrate a bipartisan consensus that has grown on how to deal with Beijing. So especially the new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who declared that China represented "the greatest strategic threat against the United States".
"It is no secret that the relationship between the United States and China is probably the most important that we have in the world as it exists," Anthony Blinken told reporters on January 27 in New York. It will shape a large part of our common future. "
Among Joe Biden’s decisions,
Among Joe Biden’s decisions, the creation of a China task force in the Department of Defense. Its mission will be to seek "a coordinated government effort and bipartisan cooperation in Congress as well as solid alliances and partnerships," said the president.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has previously explained that he would lead "a laser-scale focus" to ensure that the United States maintains a competitive advantage over China and can stem the efforts of Beijing to become a dominant world power.
Ely Ratner, a China scholar who once served as Joe Biden's National Security Advisor when the latter was Barack Obama's vice president, is expected to be appointed to lead the task force as special assistant to Lloyd Austin. The same Ratner had spoken in the summer of 2020 to call on the United States to adopt a multiple panoply of strategies on China, including that of blocking Beijing's authoritarianism in the field of high technology and its dominant position in the South China Sea. "A new and different era is taking shape between the United States and China" and "Washington must update its vision of things," he insisted.
PR & Media strategy with China
Also in the Pentagon are Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, for whom China is "the fundamental challenge of our time," as well as Deputy Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael Chase, who has distinguished himself by his research. on the modernization of the Chinese military apparatus when he was part of the Rand think tank. Finally, there is Chief of Staff Kelly Magsamen, former Deputy Deputy Secretary for Security Affairs in the Asia-Pacific region.
"Attack among China are decreasing are less direct", but more impacting, explain a Co founder of an PR agency and expert about China.
At the State Department, besides Anthony Blinken, we find Mira Rapp-Hooper who published an article on the best way for Washington to regain military and economic primacy in order to better contain China, as well as Wendy Sherman, as vice-president. Secretary of State, for whom the bond between China and the United States constitutes "the central relation of our time". Melanie Hart, Joe Biden's choice to become China's policy coordinator, co-authored a report in October for the Center for American Progress think tank in which she explains the need for the United States to adopt a comprehensive strategy for counter Chinese public subsidies to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.
photo source Chinese business club
NSC & expert in China
In the area of security, the National Defense Council (NSC) will be headed by experts from China who have all spoken out about the Chinese challenge. Thus Kurt Campbell, the architect of Barak Obama's "pivot to Asia" strategy, will be the chief executive for the Indo-Pacific in this organization. Campbell and Rush Doshi, selected by the US president to become director of the NSC, together wrote an article published in January by the journal Foreign Policy in which they advocate a "serious re-engagement of the United States" in Asia. with the aim of setting up "a conscientious effort to deter Chinese adventurism".
Sarah Kreps, a law professor at Cornell University, said the team in the new administration signals a shift in US Chinese policy in light of the warning already voiced by Joe Biden about an “extreme competition” to come with China. "All the signs are there from the administration that although many officials are the same as ten years ago, the policies will be different," she said, as quoted by the South China Morning Post. The details are not yet clear, but the change in tone compared to that of the Obama administration is unambiguous. "
