SINGAPORE – The current state of US-China relations is at its most tense in years, and both sides are re-examining competition between them to avoid serious miscalculations that could set the world on a dangerous path. need to do it.
This was a key takeaway from a meeting with former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Friday (August 19), as he underscored the importance of the relationship in a conversation between the two superpowers. I appealed to all countries.
Rudd, who served as Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013, speaks fluent Mandarin and graduated from the Australian National University with a major in Mandarin and History. He said he had never been so worried about the state of the relationship between the two giants in his 40 years of studying China.
“I’ve seen a lot of these things over the years. But they all happened within a certain bandwidth, within a certain spectrum. seems to be heading in a different direction,” he said.
For this reason, Mr. Rudd, now president of the think tank Asia Society, felt compelled to write a book called ‘Avoidable War’, which was published at the Institute of East Asian Studies, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and the Law School of the National University of Singapore. .
Rudd, who spoke with more than 200 academics, students and diplomats, said he felt an urgency to tackle the issue head-on as the situation became “increasingly urgent.”
U.S.-China relations have reached a new boiling point in recent weeks following developments such as the visit of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan earlier this month. On Monday, the Chinese military conducted further exercises near Taiwan following another visit by a group of US lawmakers.
Rudd describes the current state of the relationship between the two powers as two men soldering with a welder without proper protective equipment in a workshop with bare wires and standing water everywhere. I likened it to how it is.
“What could go wrong? That is the problem we have in this relationship right now. There is no political or diplomatic isolation to reduce the risk of crisis, escalation, conflict or war. That’s what we have at the moment. I call it unmanaged strategic competition,” he said.
Ambassador Chan Heng Chee, one of two panelists who attended the event, described the situation in the Taiwan Strait as an example of “enhanced kabuki”, referring to traditional Japanese theatrical forms. I explained that it was an example.
“We have entered difficult times, and now we are entering dangerous times. think.”
Taiwan’s issue is not new, but all parties have changed, she said.
China has now established itself as a major economic and political power, and the United States is now more forward-thinking, allowing higher-level government officials to go to Taiwan.
Taiwan is not the same, she said, and today most Taiwanese want independence.
