The Biden administration, and the U.S. ruling class as a whole, have identified China as the U.S.’s foremost imperialist adversary, and the only one capable of mounting “a sustained challenge” to U.S. global supremacy. The U.S. has initiated an intense series of military, diplomatic, and economic measures to “out-compete” China in all these arenas, leading all the way up to potential nuclear war.¹ The following is a list of some of these measures over the past 12 months.

As of Sunday morning, February 19, after the below article was written, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken and Wang Yi, the top Chinese official for foreign affairs, held what was described by the U.S. as a “confrontational meeting” over the shooting down of a Chinese balloon. The Chinese have described the balloon as a weather balloon which drifted off course, while the U.S. has insisted that this was a “spy balloon.” This adds to the truly ominous chronology below.

February 4, 2022: The U.S. carried out a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, accusing the Chinese government of human rights abuses in Xinjiang (in northwest China) and elsewhere. Those human rights abuses are real, but U.S. indignation over them is highly selective given the crimes of brutal regimes aligned with the U.S., its own “gold medal” record of racist police terror and murder and mass incarceration within the U.S., and war crimes and crimes against humanity across the globe (go to the revcom.us series American Crime to read about many of these).

March 18, 2022: Biden called China’s ruler Xi Jinping and threatened implications and consequences if China provided material support to Russia during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

May 13, 2022: The NBC show Meet the Press ran a half-hour special segment depicting “war games” between the U.S. and China. A “blue team” representing the U.S. and a “red team” representing China faced off, with members of both teams coming from top U.S. “think tanks,” former government officials, and current Congresspeople, both Democrat and Republican. (See Playing War Games, and Preparing for the Real Thing.)

May 23, 2022: Biden said he would be willing to use force to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression, in a comment upending what had been an ambiguous U.S. policy towards the island that both the U.S. and China formally agree is part of China. For background on Taiwan and conflict over it, see Aftermath of Pelosi’s Provocative Taiwan Visit: More Rabid U.S. Brinksmanship, Dangerous Saber-Rattling vs. Rival China.

May 26, 2022: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called China the “most serious long-term challenge to the international order.” He said, “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” And Blinken laid out a strategy to economically and militarily forge alliances against China.

June 14, 2022: U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said: "The Taiwan Strait is an international waterway, meaning that the Taiwan Strait is an area where high seas freedoms, including freedom of navigation and overflight, are guaranteed under international law."

July 13, 2022: A U.S. destroyer conducted a “freedom of navigation” exercise in an area of the South China Sea claimed by China.

August 2-3, 2022: Democratic Party leader and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi went to the island of Taiwan—the highest-ranking U.S. official in 25 years to do so. With this visit, she aggressively ratcheted up the already extremely dangerous, expand-or-die imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China over which will be the dominating exploiter in the Asia-Pacific region, and the world. And she did so knowing full well the official visit would be seen by China’s rulers as an act of aggression against them and interference in China’s “internal” affairs. (See Aftermath of Pelosi’s Provocative Taiwan Visit: More Rabid U.S. Brinksmanship, Dangerous Saber-Rattling vs. Rival China.)

August 10, 2022: The Biden administration vowed to continue sailing U.S. warships through the Taiwan Strait.

August 12, 2022: Former U.S. Secretary of State (and war criminal) Henry Kissinger told the Wall Street Journal, “We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.” His ominous warning to the U.S. ruling class reflects the serious danger in U.S. moves against its imperialist rivals.

August 15, 2022: In the aftermath of Pelosi’s provocative trip to Taiwan, China reiterated it alone had sovereignty over the strait between China and Taiwan. The U.S. responded by announcing that within weeks its Navy was planning to sail warships through the strait, in a direct challenge to China’s declaration.

August 28, 2022: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) announced that its “money and resources would be increasingly shifted to focus on China.” Jason Crow, a Democratic congressman, explained his support for the shift when he said that groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda “will not destroy the American way of life … the way China can.”

September 18, 2022: Biden once again declared U.S. troops would “defend” Taiwan if China attacked Taiwan. This reversed a long-held U.S. policy of "strategic ambiguity"—not making clear whether the U.S. would respond militarily to an attack on Taiwan by China.

September 26, 2022: In a 60 Minutes interview that aired on September 18, Joe Biden ratcheted up U.S. threats on China, and the possibility of conflicts between Chinese and U.S. armed forces, on and around the island of Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The U.S. and Chinese fleets that infest the South China Sea—jets and bombers, warships and submarines—bristle with nuclear weapons. Biden was asked whether "U.S. forces, U.S. men and women, would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion." He responded, “Yes.” This was the fourth time Biden went on record saying the U.S. would respond militarily, with its own weaponry and forces, in the event of a conflict between Taiwan and China.

October 7, 2022: The U.S. Commerce Department applied new export controls to restrict China’s access to advanced computing chips and its ability to develop and maintain super computers and manufacture semiconductors. Analysts pointed out that the global semiconductor industry is almost entirely dependent on the U.S. and countries aligned with it for chip design, the tools that make them, and fabrication.

October 22, 2022: The Biden administration released its new National Defense Strategy. A senior “Defense” Department official said the document describes China as “the only competitor with both the intent and increasingly the capability to systematically challenge the United States across the board, militarily, economically, technologically, diplomatically.”

December 2, 2022: “Defense” Secretary Lloyd Austin unveiled the B-21 Raider, the U.S.’s new nuclear stealth bomber, which according to PBS is designed to prevail over “quickly growing cyber, space and nuclear capabilities of Beijing” (China’s capital). Austin said that “… we’re aligning our budget as never before to the China challenge. In our imperfect world, deterrence does come through strength.” The B-21 is part of an overhaul of the U.S.’s land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear arsenal that will cost an estimated $1.2 trillion.

January 5, 2023: As soon as the Republi-fascists took over leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, they established a new “Select Committee on China.” Mike Gallagher, a former Marine Corps officer and rabid fascist, was named to head it. Gallagher said his committee will be “looking big picture. What are the immediate things we need to do in order to prevent World War III from breaking out over Taiwan? And then what are the long-term investments we need to make to win this new Cold War with Communist China?”

January 11, 2023: The U.S. and its imperialist ally Japan announced plans for a new Marine “quick-reaction” force on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, as part of plans to “deepen military cooperation on Japan’s remote southwest islands near Taiwan.” The new Marine regiment will have “advanced intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, anti-ship, and transportation capabilities.”

January 13, 2023: A U.S. Navy “carrier strike group” entered the South China Sea for the first time. This “group” is an armada consisting of an aircraft carrier, a guided missile cruiser, and three guided missile destroyers, and armed with weaponry fit for conditions from “space to undersea, across every axis, and every domain.” China considers much of the South China Sea as part of its sovereign territory, and Chinese warships immediately began patrolling near the U.S. group.

January 23, 2023: Republi-fascist congressional leader Kevin McCarthy announced he plans a trip to Taiwan, similar to the deliberately provocative trip his predecessor Nancy Pelosi made last summer. As Revolution wrote of Pelosi’s trip, it was “a major—and dangerous—provocation by U.S. imperialism against its nuclear armed rival China.” If McCarthy follows through with his trip in an even more enflamed atmosphere, it will further heighten the possibility and danger of direct encounters between Chinese and U.S. military forces.

January 25, 2023: Republican U.S. Senator Josh Hawley introduced the No TikTok on United States Devices Act to prohibit the Chinese-based TikTok app from being downloaded on U.S. devices, claiming it “opens the door for the Chinese Communist Party to access Americans’ personal information, keystrokes, and location through aggressive data harvesting.” People in this country should be infinitely more concerned about “their own” government—which has a long and violent record of monitoring and suppressing dissent—tracking everyone’s activities through their phones. (See, for example: American Crime Case #42: COINTELPRO—The FBI Targets the Black Freedom Struggle, 1956-1971.)

January 26, 2023: The U.S. officially opened “Camp Blaz”—the first new Marine base in 70 years, on the Pacific island of Guam (which is already the site of a major U.S. naval base). A press release from the Marines said that “Camp Blaz will serve as a strategic hub as the Department of Defense realizes the vision of the 2022 National Defense Strategy,” whose top priorities are “defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China)” and “deterring strategic attacks against the United States, allies, and partners.”

January 31, 2023: Japan announced that it is doubling its military budget and asked the U.S. for $50 billion worth of cruise missiles with range to hit targets in China and North Korea.

January 31, 2023: The U.S. acknowledged that its allies Japan and the Netherlands are restricting their exports of tools to make silicon chips for advanced military use to China. This move is meant to “hobble (China’s) ability to supercharge its chip industry and enhance its military capabilities.”

February 2, 2023: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg met with Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, where he stressed the importance of developing a military and political “partnership” against China and North Korea. In November 2022, NATO military officials had observed Operation “Keen Sword,” a military exercise by Japanese and U.S. naval forces, and reports from Japan said Kishida was “hurrying to deepen cooperation with NATO due to its growing sense of crisis over a possible Taiwan (conflict).”

February 2, 2023: In what he called “a big deal,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced an arrangement with the Philippines that will allow U.S. access to four more military camps in that country. BBC News said the arrangement gives the U.S. access to “a key bit of real estate which would offer a front seat to monitor the Chinese in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. … With the deal, Washington has stitched the gap in the arc of US alliances stretching from South Korea and Japan in the north to Australia in the south.”

February 2, 2023: A memo written by U.S. Air Force General Michael Minihan, commander of the Air Force Mobility Command, became public. The memo read, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight [China] in 2025. … Go faster. Drive readiness, integration, and agility for ourselves and the Joint Force to deter, and if required, defeat China. This is the first of 8 monthly directives from me. You need to know I alone own the pen on these orders. My expectations are high, and these orders are not up for negotiation. Follow them. I will be tough, fair, and loving in my approach to secure victory.”

February 3, 2023: CIA director William Burns claimed that China’s president Xi Jinping has told his country’s military "to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion" of Taiwan. Such an accusation could serve to pressure China to act to preempt U.S. military counter-moves.

February 4, 2023: The shooting down of what the U.S. claimed was a Chinese spy balloon unleashed a frenzy of American chauvinism and world-class hypocrisy.