First the trade war started by Donald Trump, Huawei and cybersecurity, then the investigation into the origin of Kovid. And again: the Confucian institute, Taiwan, semiconductors, spy balloons, the TikTok ban and the so-called support for Russia in the war in Ukraine. The list of points of conflict between Washington and Beijing is long, but it doesn’t seem to know (yet) an endpoint. And this is despite both countries’ attempts at dialogue, which vanished punctually at the dawn of a new crisis front.

for the sake of continuity

In 2021, when Joe Biden was ready to take office in the White House (after his predecessor Donald Trump’s victory over allegations of electoral fraud and the attack on Washington’s Capitol Hill), what direction did analysts and international leaders wonder about? The new US president would decide how to approach the country’s foreign policy, and especially towards China, the world’s second largest economy.

Speculation was short lived. Biden betrayed the predictions of those who saw a change of course from his predecessor. Let’s be clear. There has been a change, but mainly in terms of style and communication: the current tenant of the White House has abandoned violent interference via social networks (Trump’s repeated “China!”?) to promote calmer diplomacy after continuity with his predecessor’s foreign policy. .

Thus, Biden retracted Obama’s “Return to Asia” strategy in his memory, by rejecting allies with Asian allies and wide-ranging security platforms to counter China’s rise and assertiveness in the region. Then war broke out in Ukraine and the attention of the American administration was turned to Russia and the Asian scene was put into the background.

Is it covid again?

However, the conflict between Beijing and Washington takes place in different fields. Three years after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the first outbreak in Wuhan, China, cross-accusations between the two superpowers about the origin of the virus are resounding once again. On February 26, the U.S. Department of Energy said that the Covid-19 outbreak was most likely caused by a leak in a Chinese laboratory, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.

Did Covid arise from a laboratory error in China? New releases are coming

FBI director Christopher Wray considered fueling the fire a few days later (we’re on Feb. In response, Beijing accused Washington of “political manipulation”.

The theory that the virus escaped from the Wuhan laboratory first emerged at the beginning of the pandemic and was supported by the then US President Donald Trump. Some even suggested that the virus was designed as a possible biological weapon. Many (fortunately) viewed the Trump administration’s claims as the basis for a conspiracy thesis because—as several scholars have confirmed—there is no evidence to support it.

Right after Biden took office in the White House, he ordered a report on the origins of Kovid-19 to shed light on how the virus spread. The other commitment took effect in May 2021, when the current US president instructed intelligence officials to “double up” their efforts to get answers to questions still unanswered.

Three years later, the issue is still highly controversial. And in the face of the many restrictions and restrictions imposed by the Beijing government, the hopes that WHO scientists who went to China placed on the investigation raised more questions than answers.

‘Beijing is honest about the source of the COVID epidemic’

Washington’s accusations drew a strong reaction from Beijing. Wolf warriors (that is, Chinese diplomats with a hard and sharp line of communication) banded together to encourage more conspiratorial ideas. China has put forward another thesis that suggests that the coronavirus entered Wuhan through food packages and shipments of frozen food from the United States. Then there was the work of some Chinese virologists whose government traced the birth of the virus to bats in a remote part of China. Beyond the cross-charges is the current “natural origin” theory. The virus spread naturally from animals without the intervention of scientists or laboratories.

TikTok ban

While scientists are trying to understand the origin of the virus by avoiding various conspiracy theories, Washington and Beijing also clash over the security of user data of TikTok, the Chinese social network of technology giant ByteDance.

“Uninstall Tiktok now” warning from Europe

The US government has forced federal employees to delete the app from their mobile phones, as requested by the European Commission, to protect the amount of data – sensitive or otherwise – that could fall into the hands of the Beijing government. There is an explanation to be made. TikTok has repeatedly denied its affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party, but acknowledged that the data collected could get in the way of its Chinese employees. This is where the alarm goes off, because the line between private company and government intervention in China is very thin. But to date, there is no evidence that Beijing is using the collected data, but nothing excludes that this is not the case.

Is Beijing helping Moscow in the war in Ukraine?

Then the war in Ukraine and Beijing’s uncertainty in its relations with Moscow cause the White House, which is waving the sanctions weapon, to squint (Beijing is careful to stay away from sanctions, respecting them but condemning them).

The United States has been accusing the Asian giant of supplying arms to the Kremlin for weeks. And although no evidence or data has been presented, according to four US officials cited by Washington, Washington Reuters – Initiated informal talks with the closest allies to explore the possibility of imposing sanctions on China if it provides military support to Russia.

In short, the United States is currently considering the possibility of hitting China, despite the lack of official and concrete evidence confirming Beijing’s role in the conflict initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Therefore, we are in the field of hypotheses. Watch out though. Washington’s accusations – taking into account the more calm and rational communication of the Biden administration – are likely corroborated by classified documents that have not yet been released. The Chinese Communist Party, on the other hand, feeds assumptions and inferences in the face of internal and external censorship and propaganda campaign in order to gain benefits and success in the political and economic fields. But in both Beijing and Washington, conspiracy theories and propaganda are weapons used in a wide-ranging conflict where the only imperative is to limit the opponent’s influence and rise.