Asian Angle | As US-China ties worsen, India and China must revisit the ‘Bandung spirit’ to avert a new cold war
- While Beijing does not intend to get involved in an ideological battle with Washington, all of Asia risks getting caught up in their strategic competition
- China and India took part in the 1955 Bandung Conference. Now they must reignite that spirit and look towards peaceful coexistence among nations
Symbolically, Pompeo’s July 23 talk at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, calling for a new “alliance of democracies” to confront the Communist Party, evokes former British prime minister Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech of more than 70 years ago and seems to highlight a new cold war with China.
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US-China relations: Joe Biden would approach China with more ‘regularity and normality’
To set the decoupling of bilateral relations in motion, Washington has taken concrete actions such as closing the Chinese Consulate-General in Houston, sending its health secretary to Taiwan, attempting to ban Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat in the US, and restricting Chinese apparel and tech goods allegedly produced by forced labour in Xinjiang.
