India’s options in the time of a Sino-US détente

The Trump-Xi summit in Busan, South Korea, is the first attempt by the US and China to start a new détente.

- CHINTAMANI MAHAPATRA

U.S. President Donald Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, in Busan on Thursday.

(@WHITEHOUSE X/AN)

It was President Donald Trump who unleashed an economic Cold War against China during his first term in office.

He did conclude an agreement with China in 2020 during the last year of his administration and amidst presidential election campaign, making China promise to buy more American goods to manage the imbalance in bilateral trade, among other things.

After Trump lost the election to Joe Biden in 2020, many expected that his successor would not continue the hard policy choices on China and would rather seek to improve ties with China. But several factors, including the Ukraine War where China apparently sided with Russia, made Biden toughen the US policy towards China. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who was a well-respected leader of the Democratic Party touched China’s raw nerve when she made an official visit to Taiwan. It angered China so much that it conducted massive live fire exercises around the Taiwan Strait, making Taiwan almost nervous and since then China’s military manoeuvres to assert its military dominance has never ceased.