Guest columnist Keith Peterson: The scope of the longterm challenge China poses

As surging COVID cases in China were matched by growing protests against the government's "zero COVID" policy last week, U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns took time to speak to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs from a Beijing in the throes of a lockdown.

Burns, formerly the State Department spokesman, our ambassador to Greece and to NATO, and undersecretary of state for political affairs, has brought vast diplomatic experience to a relationship that he characterizes as "the most consequential, the most important and the most challenging" for the U.S. at this juncture in history. He presides over an embassy and four consulates where 47 federal agencies are represented. It is a broad and difficult relationship.

We have serious differences with the government of Xi Jinping over trade and the fair treatment of American companies; tech, where China is overtly seeking domination of certain key technologies; security, whether one is talking about the East and South China Seas or Taiwan or North Korea or nuclear weapons; and human rights and the rule of law, that include Xinjiang's Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Tibet, the fundamental right to protest and the rights of journalists to operate freely.

However, we also need to work with the Chinese on climate change (we are the two largest emitters of carbon and, as such, Burns says we have an obligation to other nations to make progress together), food security, global health and the fentanyl crisis as illicit Chinese companies provide precursor chemicals to Mexican and Latin American drug cartels. Underlying all this is an annual $718 billion bilateral trade relationship with a million different connections.

Burns reiterated the U.S. strategy that was laid out most comprehensively by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a speech last May. The shorthand is "invest, align, compete" and it seeks to shape the playing field where the competition will take place.

The passage of the infrastructure bill, the Chips Act and the Inflation Reduction Act with its significant investments in alternative energy technologies are all part of this strategy. The impact of these investments will be felt, first and foremost, domestically, but they will also strengthen America's hand in a competition with China that Burns notes will continue for a very long time.

The align part of the equation is our alliances, and we have seen significant and often reactive initiatives from the Biden Administration.

A year ago, the administration announced the AUKUS (Australia, the U.K. and U.S.) security partnership. It is also working with the Quad, which brings India into closer security cooperation with the U.S. Working with the G-7, the U.S. has helped create the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment as an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative. It is paying closer attention to ASEAN and to the micro island states of the Pacific.

However, the political and security alliances will always be underpinned by the economic relationships and here there is work to be done. The Trump Administration withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership in what many saw as a self-inflicted wound, though the other 11 members kept it alive. The Biden Administration, unwilling to rejoin the TPP, launched the alternative Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. However, it lacks the trade access to the U.S. market of the TPP and, thus, remains half a loaf for the dozen participating nations.

Xi Jinping has demonstrated his hostility toward America, so the U.S. is seeking ways to constrain China. As Secretary Blinken stated in his May speech "we cannot rely on Beijing to change trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system."

Diplomacy never had a greater challenge.

• Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.