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On Balance | US’ China policy: proposed ‘strategic competition’ law may just find the right balance

  • The bipartisan bill is long on strategic reviews and building relations, and short on wild conclusions and warnings – on Xinjiang, for example
  • Under Biden, Washington may well realise the ‘pivot to Asia’ that Obama had aimed for

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Farmers sow cotton seeds in Shache county in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region on March 26. Photo: Xinhua
Were it not for the US warship and Chinese fighter jets in the Taiwan Strait last week, the announcement of the Strategic Competition Act of 2021 might have made more of a splash. 
Before Beijing’s crushing of Hong Kong’s political opposition, the revelation of Uygur internment camps and the massing of Chinese vessels around Whitsun Reef to suspiciously wait out bad weather for weeks, any one section of the nearly 300-page omnibus of anti-China resolutions would have generated a wave of analysis.
The daily drama leaves little time to dissect a document distilling what the US legislative branch will expect of the White House in terms of US-China relations for many administrations into the future.

But for those hoping for a more pragmatic approach to China by Washington, the legislation hammered out jointly by the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (read: very likely to pass) is worth a look.

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The Obama administration spent too much time watching developments like the build-up of Chinese military installations in the South China Sea and accepting formal dialogue with Beijing as a substitute for actual movement towards greater economic reciprocity. 

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