Biden's Détente With Beijing Has Failed

As these recent “close encounters” in the South China Sea have demonstrated, the CCP will likely force the U.S. into a military conflict at a time and place of its choosing.

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Photo by Clayton Malquist on Unsplash

This piece was originally published in The Federalist.com.

President Joe Biden announced at the G7 summit in Japan last month that he was open to détente with Beijing and “the beginning of a thaw [of the Sino-U.S. relationship] very soon.” Since then, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rhetoric and actions suggest Biden’s détente is wishful thinking. 

Last week, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China sent its J-16 fighter jet to conduct “an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver,” as the U.S. military characterized it. It was dangerously close (about 400 feet) to a U.S. Air Force RC-135 surveillance plane over the South China Sea in international air space. The incident took place when U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was visiting Japan. Almost exactly a year ago, a Chinese fighter jet made a similar move against an Australian reconnaissance plan…