Illustraion: Luo Xuan/GT

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on January 25, 2022 the America COMPETES Act of 2022. Although the content of this 2,900-page bill is complicated, it focuses on the big theme of "comprehensively containing China". It is a hodgepodge of several previously unveiled bills involving China, including bills to approve funding to help boost chip production and research in the US, to enhance US supply chain resilience, to encourage the relocation of manufacturing of critical goods to go back to the US. It also calls to strengthen ties with Taiwan island and suggests to continue provocation of China on affairs involving Xinjiang, Xizang and Hong Kong. 

Analysts pointed out that the bill can be called a comprehensive playbook of panoramic suppression against China, reflecting the unanimous attitude of both the Democratic and Republican parties in the US to comprehensively contain China's development. Since the bill is full of zero-sum mentality, some people say that Washington has blown the trumpet of a new cold war. It must be said that Washington is now trapped in a collective trek in which they are drifting off course without knowing it. The policy elites are blinded by "competition" with China and have lost their way. 

US President Joe Biden issued a statement after the bill was announced, saying it would help the US to "outcompete China and the rest of the world for decades to come." He also said that "I'm heartened by Congress' bipartisan work so far... Together, we have an opportunity to show China and the rest of the world that the 21st century will be the American century." 

But it is not difficult for any one with good sense to see that Biden is talking big again. The higher the hope the Biden administration is pinning on the bill, the bigger disappointment it will bear in the end. Because it can be sure that the unprecedentedly comprehensive anti-China bill will not make the US stronger, but will only accelerate its decline.

The bill appears to be aggressive, but given US morbid partisan politics and the struggling financial situation, it is determined to fall into the fate of becoming all bark and no bite. In June, 2021, the Senate approved the US Innovation and Competition Act. The version of the House inherits most of the distorted China-related content, smears China's development path, domestic and foreign policies, hypes the "China threat theory" and even goes further on some specific issues. But the House's version cut more than half of the $190 billion in funding to be used to strengthen US scientific research and technological innovation. 

Some Republican lawmakers criticized that Democratic Party is "not serious about confronting" China. This is mainly because the US is short of money. The previous infrastructure bill pushed by the Biden administration was sharply cut from $4 trillion to $1.2 trillion. This is a strong signal to prove that "the landlord's family has no extra money." The reality encountered by the US is that it is difficult to get enough subsidies for its own key industries, but it still wants to make great efforts to sabotage China. The result is bound to be a dilemma in that the more it acts recklessly, the more it will decline, and the more it declines, the more futile efforts it will make to confront China.

Washington is now addicted to passing the buck to China. The US is now attributing both its internal and external problems to China. This is a serious political depravity and a trick that can fool nobody. The US is now tied with many shackles such as the pandemic, inflation, stock market turbulence, labor shortage, racial tensions and political division. Instead of seriously curing its own chronic woes, Washington bets its future on "crushing China," hoping to trip China and keep its own advantage in the race. This is bound to be a very wrong choice.

The US is extremely anxious about the decline of its relative advantage in the high-tech sector, but its desire to "revive the engine of economic innovation" has been seriously distorted with the bill announced by the Congress - the progress of the high-tech industry is no longer to serve the purpose of promoting development, but directly for hostility and its political purpose targeting China. It is precisely because of this severe deviation that the grotesque logic of "strengthening chip research and development by attacking the chip market" is staged. How can a country that goes against the trend of the times and economic laws "outcompete" others in the competition?

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday. Wang said that competition between major countries is not the theme of a post-pandemic world that will encounter new situations and challenges, nor will it address the problems facing the US and countries worldwide. Pressure will only make the Chinese people more united, and confrontation will not stop China from becoming stronger, he stressed. It is hoped the US can take in these candid and sincere words.