I am so appalled at the hypocrisy of both the American government and the American media's obsession with creating some sort of cold war with China. China is certainly a rival, particularly economically, but the panic seems crazy to me.
We are supposed to be horrified by China's human rights record. But I can't remember the last time an American public official has said anything other than Susan-Collins-like "concern" about supposed friends and partners like India, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, who have serious human rights issues of their own. We can get in a spitting match about who is "worse" but the fact remains that we should have higher expectations of our supposed allies than of those we claim to be our enemies. But we don't.
This is true of both political parties. Other than the exit from Afghanistan, the Biden foreign policy is the same as Trump's. Israel is set to illegally annex the West Bank; Saudi Arabia paid exactly no price for murdering a journalist (indeed the PGA just merged with the authoritarian Saudis); India continues its religious cleansing of Muslims. Unchanged from Trump.
The scary part for me is that we have an economic rivalry with China that is too often presented in an aggressive, militaristic vocabulary. This is dangerous, and is being driven by the same neoliberal blob that got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, and before it Vietnam. These are not people who should be trusted to direct our foreign policy.
