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Donald Trump
OpinionComment
Josef Gregory Mahoney
Josef Gregory Mahoney

Opinion | Forget a cold war and the TikTok, WeChat bans. Is the US preparing for a hot war with China?

  • The White House has sent mixed signals on China, agreeing to hold talks while announcing a ban on Chinese apps
  • But the hope that these are just Washington’s negotiation tactics is fading, amid worries of a potential armed conflict

Reading Time:4 minutes
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The Trump administration is targeting Chinese social media app TikTok with a ban. However, the long-term view may be even more troubling. Photo: AFP
Josef Gregory Mahoney

In the past few days, several developments have rippled across the communities that closely watch US-China ties. In some ways, these narratives appear to be at odds with each other but, as is so often the case, the contradictions are where the real meaning can be found. 

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The first is a recent report by The Wall Street Journal, indicating the United States and China have agreed to hold high-level talks on August 15 to discuss progress on the bilateral trade agreement signed earlier this year. The article notes that each country’s point man in the ongoing trade war, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, will meet, probably through a videoconference.
The second is the Trump administration’s decision to take another step against China – indeed, another step against Chinese technology firms – by targeting two apps, TikTok and WeChat, with bans effective in 45 days.
The third is the publication of Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War, by Wall Street Journal reporters Bob Davis and Lingling Wei, the former a veteran covering the US presidency and the latter a Chinese-born US citizen who was among the American journalists expelled from China in the wake of the newspaper’s insensitive “Sick Man of Asia” opinion headline earlier this year.

Whether the anticipated meeting between Lighthizer and Liu takes place, how should we understand this story, presumably a deliberate White House leak, given Washington’s increasing political and economic aggression against Beijing?

01:14

Trump gives Microsoft 45 days to buy TikTok from China’s Bytedance

Trump gives Microsoft 45 days to buy TikTok from China’s Bytedance

In the context of Trump’s well-established approach to negotiations, and Lighthizer’s famous dictum about focusing on points of leverage, should the new attack on Chinese tech firms be seen as an attempt to merely create new leverage in the trade talks, or a Cold War tactic aimed at re-establishing American strategic dominance, or both?

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