The National Security Strategy released by President Donald Trump's administration last year augured a major change in China-US relations. Where its predecessors lauded the merits of co-operation with the emerging superpower, Mr Trump's document promised competition and resistance to Chinese trade and other abuses. The tirade Mike Pence launched against China last week doubled down on that commitment. In a speech delivered at the Hudson Institute, a short walk from Congress and the ongoing Kavanaugh brouhaha, the vice-president castigated the Chinese for bullying investors, buying allies with cheap loans, “tearing down crosses” and much else. This may turn out to be Mr Trump's most significant mark on the world. America's new adversarial posture towards China is overdue, popular and probably irreversible.
That is notwithstanding the fact that the vice-president's speech was in some ways cynical and reckless. Much of it seemed to have more of an eye on the mid-terms than the world. “To put it bluntly, President Trump's leadership is working,” he purred. Mr Pence then parroted his boss's recent, probably bogus, claim that Chinese “covert actors, front groups and propaganda” were spreading more disinformation in America than the Russian spies to whom Mr Trump may owe his job.
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