Last week, the world watched as Donald Trump wrangled up his bro-squad of capitalist billionaires and chartered them across the world to China. We watched in disbelief as the China-hating Trump administration paraded around Beijing gawking at beautiful ceilings and giant rose bushes. “China is beautiful,” Trump said.
By Megan Russell
All the while, the top U.S. oligarchs met with Chinese officials, hoping to find openings they could slither into China’s large, booming markets and siphon off even more wealth that they most definitely don’t need. Fortunately, China just wasn’t that interested.
Even though nothing much came of the meetings, all the China hawks in Washington were on the edge of their seats, anxious that better relations with China would risk their favorite justification for raising the military budget to an unprecedented 1.5 trillion dollars. But we need to prepare for war with China by 2025… no, 2027… wait, maybe 2030? Forever?
Mainstream media had a lot to say about the meeting. The Guardian was especially deceptive, with one article titled:
This is the kind of headline we’ve come to expect from outlets like the New York Post, whose credibility is on par with a spam email. In fact, they did have a similar article:
It’s not a huge surprise that Western media is trying to make it sound like war was China’s idea, when it’s the U.S. that has been actively preparing for it for the last decade. It’s part of their strategy to use misleading headlines to stoke fear about China, so nobody pays attention to the war-antagonizing behavior of the United States.
When President Xi Jinping speaks about the “Thucydides Trap,” he is warning the U.S. against treating war with China as inevitable and instead pursuing diplomacy and cooperation. Many U.S. policymakers, however, continue to frame China’s rise primarily as a military threat, expanding military posturing across the Asia-Pacific in an effort to preserve U.S. dominance even at the risk of escalation.
It’s reported that Trump and Xi also talked at length about the U.S. war on Iran. This conflict — as well as U.S. military actions in Venezuela — is also tied to the broader U.S. confrontation with China. Both countries possess major oil, gas, and critical mineral reserves and have become important economic partners to China. By targeting two of China’s key energy suppliers, the U.S. is attempting to limit China’s access to the resources, while hoarding them for itself (and Israel).
The U.S. war on Iran has been a disaster, which is one of the reasons Trump is in China, hoping for concessions. It’s not just energy dominance the U.S. is worried about. While oil and gas prices are skyrocketing around the world, Iran has made an exception for Chinese oil tankers, which trade with Iran using the Chinese yuan. For decades, U.S. global power has depended on the petrodollar system, which keeps global energy trade tied to the U.S. dollar and gives the U.S. enormous economic warfare abilities. But China’s continued purchase of Iranian oil using the yuan, along with growing efforts by countries across the Global South to trade outside the dollar system, threatens to weaken that dominance.
The global order is clearly shifting toward a more multipolar world. The question is whether the U.S. will respond with diplomacy or attempt to preserve unipolar dominance through military confrontation with China. To prevent escalation, we must reject the idea that war between great powers is inevitable. And we must also demand media coverage that accurately and credibly covers the role the United States is playing in escalating tensions. That includes news outlets like The Guardian, which clearly prioritize painting China as the villain over credible and in-depth reporting.
Megan Russell is CODEPINK’s China is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator. She graduated from the London School of Economics with a Master’s Degree in Conflict Studies. Prior to that, she attended NYU, where she studied Conflict, Culture, and International Law. Megan spent one year studying in Shanghai and over eight years studying Chinese Mandarin. Her research focuses on the intersection between US-China affairs, peace-building, and international development.
