China’s head diplomat has called on the US to drop the sanctions and restrictions introduced by Donald Trump and warned against international “hegemony and bullying” and interference in what Beijing considers internal affairs, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the South China Sea. “We hope the United States will move in the same direction and remove all its unreasonable restrictions on bilateral cooperation as soon as possible, not create new obstacles,” the country’s foreign minister, Wang Yi said, referencing the sanctions and legislated restrictions on Chinese trade, diplomacy, and media introduced by Trump and which Biden has said will be reviewed. On the topic of human rights and geopolitical concerns, Wang said, “The issues you refer to are mostly internal affairs and the Chinese people … can best decide what is the right thing for China to do.”
I do not think that we should loosen our restrictions and regulations on China. Yang also mentioned that China and Russia have been working closely in combating the coronavirus, which is a worry, because national security analyses have repeatedly found that China and Russia are top countries of concern. We need to maintain some sort of advantage if we want to remain one step ahead of them, whether it be economically or militarily. I do hope that this is one of the things that Biden follows Trump’s path on and doesn’t let up on China, because I think that we could see a second Cold War between the US and China if we’re not careful.
My connection to class that I drew was the types of global polarities that we have drawn, like unipolar, bipolar, and multipolar systems. The world was in a unipolar system for a little while with the United States being the unipolar power. But it seems that the world has been shifting closer to a bipolar or even a multipolar system, with China on the predicted path to pass us in gross domestic product, Russia to return to a similar stance as they were as the Soviet Union, and even India, with their rising population and GDP which recently surpassed the United Kingdom’s GDP. A multipolar system like the one we are approaching will most likely end poorly for everyone and ensure mutually assured destruction.