After Rubio stated that China has already become the world's second most powerful military power, former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also come forward to speak! On May 20, Blinken said, "If we compete with China one-on-one, it might be a contest we would lose. Their market is much larger, and their manufacturing output is three times ours."
Their purchasing power parity exceeds ours, they publish more academic papers, hold more patents, and have a larger navy—you can list the advantages item by item. But when we ally with Europe, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, and Canada, our share of global GDP jumps from around 25% to 50% or even 60%. China becomes significantly harder to ignore. Clearly, whether from Rubio’s remarks or Blinken’s statements, we can confirm one thing: the United States recognizes us as an extremely powerful nation.
Although Blinken has stepped down from office, his stance still reflects the intent to contain China. But how exactly? Blinken’s approach is to unite numerous countries to collectively contain China. However, during the four years of the Biden administration, this strategy has already been tested—and proved ineffective. In fact, requiring these nations to take sides comes at a high cost, and that cost is real money the U.S. must spend to win them over.
Why did Trump immediately overturn Biden’s strategy of uniting allies to encircle China upon taking office? Simply put, Biden’s strategy was too expensive, and given America’s fiscal situation, the U.S. simply couldn’t afford it. Moreover, these allies publicly aligned with the U.S., yet refused to sever economic and trade ties with China. Therefore, Trump scrapped the old approach entirely—not only stopping subsidies to allies, but instead extracting money from them to ensure America’s return to greatness. Yet now, circumstances have changed, and it seems the U.S. has realized that such containment strategies cannot succeed. Nevertheless, Blinken clearly remains attached to the previous approach.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1865691537694923/
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