A top White House official said the U.S. is now entering a period of intense competition with China.
The official said engagement with China has come to an end and the U.S. needs to implement a "new set of strategic parameters."
The U.S. coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs on the National Security Council, Kurt Campbell, said at an event hosted by Stanford University that the U.S. had to have a different stance on China. Campbell said the new paradigm will be mostly focused on competition as China plays a more assertive role.
Campbell said the policies implemented by China under President Xi Jinping are largely responsible for the recent shift in U.S. policy. Campbell named the recent border dispute between China and India and its "economic campaign" against Australia as clear signs of Xi's intention to assert "hard power."
U.S. President Joe Biden has issued an order to the country's intelligence agencies to "redouble" efforts to investigate the true origins of the coronavirus and to determine if it had escaped from a China lab. On Thursday, Biden called on China to be more transparent and for it to join the "evidence-based international investigation."
China officials dismissed Biden's calls and described his statements as nothing more than a "smear campaign and blame-shifting." China officials also criticized the U.S.'s efforts to ease tensions and promote negotiations.
"The U.S. idea of engagement is one that has conditions and is about bringing China into its system, not only in economics but also in politics," former China diplomat and director of the Renmin University's Institute of International Affairs, Wang Yiwei, said.
China and U.S. officials previously stated that the two countries can still work together on issues such as climate change but many other issues will likely remain unresolved. Some of the issues that both countries are still locked in a dispute about include China's claims over the South China Sea, human rights issues in the Xinjiang region and Hong Kong's democratic freedoms.
