In response to the United States’ trade war and military escalation against China, Chinese officials warned that the relationship between the world’s two largest economies is “derailing.”

“Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented grave challenges to our nation’s development,” Xi said.

On Tuesday, China’s new foreign minister, Qin Gang, followed up with a warning that unless the U.S. changes course “there will surely be conflict and confrontation.”

“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing and there surely will be conflict and confrontation.”

Over the past year, the United States has initiated a multipronged campaign of stifling China’s economic growth through trade war, arming Taiwan as part of its military buildup in the Pacific, and whipping up a racist and xenophobic campaign to demonize China among the US population.

These actions of “soft” power turned kinetic last month, when the United States shot down what China claimed was a non-maneuverable research balloon that had been blown over the United States, against the backdrop of a nonstop media hysteria accusing China of spying.

Responding to the statements by Chinese officials, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied that “there is nothing about our approach to this most consequential bilateral relationship that should lead anybody to think that we want conflict.”

Kirby’s public statements are completely at odds with actual US military doctrine, which calls for the United States to prepare, in the words of the latest NATO strategy document, for full-scale war with nuclear-armed “peer competitors.”

“We will ... deliver the full range of forces ... for high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors,” declares NATO’s strategy document published on June 30.

Last October, Biden said that the United States is in the midst of a “decisive decade” in which the country must “win the competition for the 21st century.”

In March of last year, Biden declared that the world is on the brink of a “new world order” and that “we’ve got to lead it.”

In January, Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, sent a letter to his subordinates stating, “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” and urging them to get their “personal affairs” in order in preparation for a conflict with China.

While the doctrine of “great power conflict,” first initiated in 2018 with the Trump administration’s national defense strategy, has largely been put into practice without public knowledge, more and more the US media is beginning to speak openly of the potential of a “two-front war” between the US and NATO on one hand, and China and Russia on the other.

In a long article entitled “The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict With China and Russia,” Michael R. Gordon, the notorious propagandist who peddled false claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, documents the ongoing war games being played out by the US military in preparation for a war with China:

When the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a wargame last year that simulated a Chinese amphibious attack on Taiwan, the U.S. side ran out of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles within a week.

Godon’s article continued,

If a conflict with China gave Russia the confidence to take further action in Eastern Europe, the U.S. and its allies would need to fight a two-front war. China and Russia are both nuclear powers. Action could extend to the Arctic, where the U.S. lags behind Russia in icebreakers and ports as Moscow appears ready to welcome Beijing’s help in the region.

In his response to statements by Chinese officials, Kirby continued, “We do not support independence for Taiwan. We’ve been very clear about that. We also don’t want to see the status quo cross across that strait changed unilaterally.”

Kirby was very well aware of the fact that he spoke these words following the passage of last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which for the first time made provisions for the United States to directly arm Taiwan—which it had for decades treated as part of China—effectively ending the one-China policy.

In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States plans to quadruple the number of troops stationed on the island and to directly train Taiwanese troops on US territory.

Last week, the House of Representatives Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held its first hearing, in which committee Chairman Michael Gallagher declared, “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century—and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.”

On Wednesday morning, the committee will hold another hearing, this time aimed at promoting the false claim that COVID-19 was created by scientists in China. The hearing will invite as a star witness Nicholas Wade, a notorious advocate of racist pseudoscience, who claimed the genetic “adaptation of Jews to capitalism,” and whose work was hailed by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.