China and the US are no longer concerned about how to avoid war

On August 20, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article saying: "For years, Western public opinion has focused on the so-called" institutional competition "between the East and the West, but the possibility of military conflict between China and the United States has obviously not received due attention. And what this institutional struggle means for war and peace is that the United States needs military intimidation and an effective strategic containment of China to prevent war.

Whether such a situation leads to peace and stability in the region can only be determined by power politics and regimes that think they are strong. The United States is by far the most powerful country in the world and has a global presence, with 374 military bases in more than 140 countries and regions and 300,000 troops stationed overseas. Moreover, the United States is also used to seek profits for its own capital by means of exporting hegemonism and waging wars, fearing that its "world hegemon" status will be challenged.

But just because the United States is the "world hegemon" does not mean that it can only intervene in global affairs, big or small. At least in the first island chain of the Asia-Pacific, China's power is not in doubt: its naval and air forces are second only to America's, and its rocket force has the world's most comprehensive range of operational strategic-class missiles. However, the United States is blind to what it sees as China's provocation to its "world hegemon" status, which makes the United States want to intervene in every way possible. As a result, a two-power rivalry has emerged in the western Pacific.

Although China and the United States are currently in a state of intense confrontation and competition, they have to do their best to avoid the outbreak of war because their respective economies require deep cooperation. In this situation, both sides need to keep the tension high, a careless brush off the gun, it will lead to disaster. As a result, US President Joe Biden said as early as last year that a "guardrail" between China and the US was needed to avoid war.

But on the other hand, the "guardrails" between China and the United States have not been established, and the two sides have created a "crisis of confidence." Pelosi's visit to Taiwan is a sign of the lack of a war-avoidance mechanism, which has intensified the Sino-American rivalry over the Taiwan Strait. In this situation, German media quoted former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as saying in his new book Avoidable War: both the US and China are no longer concerned about how to avoid conflicts, but when and under what circumstances conflicts will occur.

It is not that China and the United States no longer care about avoiding conflict. It is that the strategic position of the United States and China has changed: the United States is worried about gaining parity with China in the Western Pacific. At the same time, China and the United States are already in a state of high competition and confrontation. The United States continues to pursue the "Indo-Pacific strategy", and China is also making efforts to build a combat system with both offensive and defensive capabilities. In this context, it is extremely difficult for the two countries to build a "guardrail" to avoid conflict.

There is no doubt about the location of the conflict: the Taiwan Strait. Since Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has conducted various exercises around the Taiwan Strait and stressed that it will conduct regular exercises around Taiwan in the future. The United States did not want to do anything more. The USS Reagan aircraft carrier strike group and the USS Tripoli amphibious strike Group were once on the loose off Taitung, practicing how to counter anti-ship missile attacks, strike anti-ship missile launchers, and land the amphibious strike group on beaches.

It is because the US has been playing the Taiwan card again recently, sending the wrong signal to the Taiwan separatist forces of "rejecting national unification by force" and "leaning on the US to reject national unification". In order to safeguard China's territorial and sovereignty integrity, the PLA has upgraded the use of military aircraft for "regular patrols around the island" to the "regular exercises and training" of multiple services and arms, and began to emphasize that the combat forces along the southeast coast should remain in a war-ready state and can be quickly transferred to a combat state.

It is obvious that the entire asia-pacific region has become the current meetings between the two sides game "main", but the future will conflict in the region of China and the United States is still in a state of not clear: the United States has been the "China threat" build be "politically correct", so as long as there have interests of China and the United States at the same time, China is bound to corresponding suppression by the United States. Therefore, it is impossible to determine. What will trigger the conflict in the future is also unknown.

Once the conflict between China and the United States breaks out, the negative effects will sweep across the world. In recent times, the United States has repeatedly identified China as a "long-term threat and primary adversary," which reflects the strength of China's overall power. In terms of economy, China has become the world's second largest economy after decades of reform and opening up. In terms of conventional military strength, the overall gap between China and the United States has been very small, and China has even appeared to overtake the United States in areas such as hypersonic missiles, fifth-generation aircraft and large destroyers.

From this point of view, the US would not stand a chance of winning a war with China in the First island chain. As a result, the United States is constantly wooing countries to participate in the Asia-Pacific affairs, and these countries are either complicated geopolitical conflicts with China or capitalist developed countries. For example, in the NATO summit, the G7 summit, Japan is on the list; In the quadrilateral Security Dialogue, India became the only non-developed country in the dialogue.

Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia, believes that China and the US cannot avoid conflict unless a "controlled strategic competition framework" is established. Under this framework, the "savage growth" of competition between China and the United States would be limited, and the framework would specify what each side should and should not do: similar to the intermediate-range missile arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was signed in the mid-range Nuclear Forces Treaty.