Michael R. Auslin

Fifteen years ago, I remarked to an acquaintance over lunch that it looked like China might eat America’s lunch in naval power. My interlocutor, a person well-known in leadership positions in the China studies community, scoffed at my comment. Over the next few years, he never missed an opportunity to ridicule my wild-eyed prediction. I often wonder what he thought in February 2021 when, less than a month after becoming president, Joe Biden warned US senators that if America didn’t “get moving, [China is] going to eat our lunch.” I claim no credit for prescience, just a historian’s sensitivity to trends over time. The fiftieth anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s visit to China falls in February 2022.

In the toxic world of American politics, the bipartisanship showed by the House of Representatives last week in overwhelmingly passing a bill to stop the import of Chinese products made with forced labor from Xinjiang is a rarity. The 428-1 vote on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the second in as many years, is the clearest indicator yet of how a new era in American relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is developing. It's one where national security and moral concerns find common ground in opposing the oppressive and predatory policies of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

As recently as a week ago, there was talk that Monday night’s virtual summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping was an opportunity to “reset” the US-China relationship. By the time the two leaders sat down in front of their video screens, the summit had been downgraded to a “meeting” and the White House made clear that little concrete agreement, and no breakthrough, was to be expected. The meeting lived down to expectations, uneasily combining a more sober and realistic US assessment of the parlous state of bilateral ties with what seems a return to a pre-2017 model of surface bonhomie and references to the “the long-term work that we need to do together,” according to a senior US official.

Washington DC, 2030 The reasons why the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) avoided total war, let alone a nuclear exchange, during their armed conflict in the autumn of 2025 remain a source of dispute. What is clearer is why the Sino-American Littoral War broke out, and what course it took. The United States lost part of its position in Asia, while China found its gains an unexpected burden. The resulting cold war between the United States and China became the defining feature of geopolitics in the Asia-Pacific in the middle of the 21st century.

While final negotiations on the UK’s relationship with the EU continue to drag, No. 10 is moving rapidly to expand Britain’s role in the Indo-Pacific, returning ‘east of Suez’ after a half-century absence. Tied to this goal, Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled a modest, yet real, increase in Britain’s defense spending last month, totaling some $21.25 billion and pledging to once again make Great Britain the foremost naval power in Europe. Johnson’s budget announcement sets the stage for implementation of London’s long-awaited ‘Integrated Review’, which is touted as the most significant strategic reassessment of the UK’s diplomatic and security policies since the end of the Cold War.

You might think a global pandemic and the worst crisis since World War Two would lead to a welcome, if temporary tamping down of military activity in already tense and contested environments. Yet even as the novel coronavirus ravages the world, old fashioned geopolitical jousting continues in Asia, reminding us that the passing phase of COVID-19 will simply return much of the world to the status quo ante of great power competition. In a strange way, the ongoing military activities and geopolitical jockeying of China and the United States in Asia’s vital waterways is almost comforting.

The Reuters photo could be mistaken for a shot of one of America’s ‘supermax’ prisons, the ones where the most dangerous criminals are held. An endless green security fence, topped with coils of barbed wire, punctuated by soaring octagonal guard towers with 360-degree views, all fronting what looks like a massive concrete wall or side of a building. Yet the Chinese workers walking outside the fence give away the truth. The picture is not of a US prison, but rather a Chinese ‘re-education’ center in vast Xinjiang, in the country’s far west. According to research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, there are 28 such massive detention camps in Xinjiang, most built within just the last several years.