Resist the escalating New Cold War on China

The following text is based on a speech given by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez at the Stop the War Cymru AGM, held on Saturday 8 March 2025. Carlos participated in the panel Imperialism’s Drive to War: Middle East, Ukraine, Russia, China, Cuba, alongside Andrew Murray (Deputy President of Stop the War Coalition), Bethan Sayed (former Member of the Senedd [Welsh parliament] for Plaid Cymru) and Ismara Mercedes Vargas Walter (Cuban Ambassador to the UK). The session was chaired by David McKnight (co-chair of Stop the War Cymru).

The speech takes up the questions of the Trump administration’s strategic orientation towards confrontation with China; whether the global working class should take sides in a conflict between the US and China; and what the tasks of the British anti-war movement are in relation to the US-led New Cold War on China.

Likelihood of a further escalation of the New Cold War

What can we expect in terms of the US-China relationship in the coming months and years?

First, we need to consider the Trump administration’s moves towards extricating itself from the quagmire in Ukraine. Presumably most people understand that Trump and his cabinet are not motivated by any abstract love of peace; they’re not attempting to recreate the spirit of Woodstock and “make love not war”. Rather, they are carrying out a strategic reorientation to fight a New Cold War on one main front instead of two. This means reducing conflict with Russia in order to focus their efforts and resources on the project of containing and encircling China.

A number of commentators have pointed to the parallels with Henry Kissinger’s “triangular diplomacy” of the early 1970s, in which the US sought to befriend China in order to concentrate on attacking their number one strategic enemy at the time: the Soviet Union.

Half a century later, the People’s Republic of China is considered the greatest threat to the long-term interests of US imperialism. China is the world’s largest economy in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. It’s the major trading partner of over two-thirds of the world’s countries. It’s catching up with – and indeed surpassing – the US in a number of crucial areas of technology and science. Furthermore, China is at the core of the trajectory towards a multipolar world.

In a recent article, Ben Norton cites various statements from Trump and his team indicating that a strategic reorientation towards aggression against China is precisely what they are planning. For example, in an interview with Tucker Carlson last year, Trump stated that “you never want Russia and China uniting… I’m going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that, too. I have to un-unite them.” Similarly, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said in his Senate hearing last year: “The Chinese see great benefit in Ukraine because they view it as: the more time and money we spend there, the less time, and money, and focus we have on them.”

Trump’s cabinet is packed with China hawks. Marco Rubio is an anti-China fanatic who stands for increased tariffs, more sanctions, more slander, more support for Taiwanese separatism, more provocations in the South China Sea, and more destabilisation in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Mike Waltz (national security advisor) has long pushed for closer military cooperation with India, Japan, Australia and other countries in the region in preparation for war against China. Pete Hegseth, defence secretary, says that the US is “prepared to go to war with China”.

In its first few weeks in office, the Trump administration has already made a number of moves aimed at countering China. The absurd bluster about “taking back” the Panama Canal has been justified on the basis of “security concerns”, with Trump claiming that China controls the canal: “China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back.” Needless to say, China does not “operate the canal”. Two of the five ports adjacent to the canal are managed by Hutchison Port Holdings – a subsidiary of CK Hutchison Holdings, a privately-held Hong Kong-based conglomerate founded by Li Ka-shing – but the canal is owned and operated by the Panama Canal Authority, an agency of the Panamanian government. Lo and behold, the US has mediated a deal for the two ports managed by CK Hutchison to be turned over to BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager, headquartered in New York City.

It’s clear that the Trump administration’s threats to Panama’s sovereignty aim at subverting the increasingly friendly and mutually beneficial bilateral relationship between China and the Central American nation. Panama established formal diplomatic ties with China in 2017, and was the first Latin American country to join the Belt and Road Initiative. This has led to a substantial expansion of trade and investment, which in turn has had a strongly positive impact on Panama’s economy.

Likewise, Trump’s threats to colonise Greenland are also connected to the New Cold War on China. Joshua Frank writes: “Greenland and its resources are merely the latest potential casualty of Trump’s quest for global domination and his fear of China’s economic power. His interest in the green energy sector does not signify a change of heart regarding the dangers of climate chaos or the value of renewables but rather a drive for global financial supremacy. Like the billionaires around him, he desires it all – the oil, the gas, and the critical minerals essential for the global energy transition, while China is pushed aside.”

In a bid to damage China’s export market and to move towards a broader “decoupling”, the Trump regime has imposed blanket 20 percent tariffs on Chinese goods. Even the actual and threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico are about drawing those countries unambiguously into the US’s economic orbit and attempting to isolate China.

Meanwhile, the State Department has been quietly undermining US adherence to the One China principle, removing a line from a fact sheet that stated: “We do not support Taiwan independence”.

Trump is of course unpredictable, but we can very likely expect to see a further escalation of the trade war; further attempts to suppress China’s economic rise, particularly in relation to new technology; deeper sanctions, including on China’s renewable energy materials and electric vehicles; escalated military pressure via AUKUS and the deployment of US troops and weapons to the region; support for Taiwanese separatists so as to create a potential trigger point for a hot war if US strategists decide to go down that road; and increasingly intense pressure on countries around the world to move comprehensively into the US “camp” and downgrade their ties with China.

Should the anti-war movement take a side?

Given the situation described above, what position should the anti-war and progressive movements take? There is a significant section of the Western left that adopts a slogan of Neither Washington nor Beijing, defining China as an imperialist country and placing it in the same category as the major powers of North America and Western Europe, along with Japan. According to this analysis, the basic dynamic of global politics is today that of inter-imperialist rivalry between the US and China.

It follows from such an analysis that, if China is simply another imperialist power, and its only interest is growing its own profit margins and competing with the US, Britain, the EU, Canada and Japan for control of the world’s resources, labour, land and markets, it goes without saying that the global working class and progressive people need not take sides in this rivalry – other than perhaps on a basis of the main enemy being at home.

However, this equating of China and the US does not stand up to even pretty elementary scrutiny. A comparison of the two countries on the major issues connected to war and peace indicates that they follow profoundly different ideologies, strategies and policies.

The US is in a state of permanent war; as is well known, it has been at war for 229 out of its 249 years of existence. China meanwhile has not been at war in over four decades, and its overall record has been remarkably peaceful.

The US has over 800 overseas military bases; China has one, in Djibouti, to protect shipping lanes off the coast of the Horn of Africa.

The US has hundreds of thousands of troops deployed around the world, along with vast quantities of weapons (including nuclear weapons). China does not. The US makes prodigious use of unilateral sanctions and economic coercion, along with destabilisation, proxy wars and regime change operations. China does not.

Both are nuclear powers, but the US is the only country to have ever actually used nuclear weapons, and it routinely engages in nuclear bullying and nuclear brinkmanship. China is the only nuclear power to have a consistent policy of no first use, in place since its first successful nuclear test in 1964, such that China is committed to never using nuclear weapons except in retaliation for a nuclear attack against it.

Regarding the Gaza genocide, it’s clear and well-understood that this horrifying situation has been enabled by the US. If it weren’t for US weapons, sponsorship and diplomatic cover, the genocide could not take place. China meanwhile has consistently called for an immediate, comprehensive, unconditional ceasefire. China’s lawyers have defended the right of the Palestinian people to engage in armed struggle against occupation, and furthermore China has brought the Palestinian resistance factions together with a view to strengthening Palestinian national unity.

On the Ukraine conflict, the US provoked the war, has consistently added fuel to the fire, has stood in the way of a negotiated resolution, and has generally followed a policy of “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian”. China has advanced realistic and fair proposals for a peaceful settlement from the very start of the conflict.

This brief comparison should be enough to demonstrate that there is a fundamental political difference between the US and China, and that it is not reasonable or realistic to simply put an equals sign between the two and call for a plague on both houses.

Opposing the New Cold War

Britain is faced with a choice. It can participate in this escalating New Cold War; it can “decouple” from China; it can go along with the attempts to encircle and contain China, and to suppress its economic rise; it can accede to Washington’s demands for undivided loyalty; it can contribute to the Project for a New American Century; it can join trade and military alliances aimed at excluding, isolating and pressuring China.

Alternatively, it could exercise some strategic autonomy; it could recognise that there is a clear trajectory towards a multipolar and more democratic system of international relations in which every country enjoys its sovereignty; it could recognise that the existential challenges faced by humanity (climate change, pandemics, antimicrobial resistance, the dangers posed by unrestrained and unscrupulous use of artificial intelligence, and the threat of nuclear war) cannot possibly be solved without the highest levels of global cooperation.

The anti-war movement has a critically important role to play in creating pressure for Britain to make the right choice here. Those of us in the West who want peace, and who want to help ensure humanity’s survival, need to educate and organise, to demand peace, and to build a mass movement that can’t be ignored.