 The aftershocks of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan continued. Another team of US lawmakers landed in Taiwan and met its authorities on August 15th. Subsequently, China announced fresh military drills. Just a few weeks before, Pelosi's visit had led to heightened tensions between the US and China, which are two nuclear powers. Pelosi's visit was also marked by contradictory reports in the US media about the position of the administration. What does the US establishment seek to achieve with its confrontational attitude towards China? Eugene Purir of Breakthrough News explains. You know, it's very interesting to see what's happening with Taiwan, especially with the additional congressional delegation coming after Nancy Pelosi. And from my point of view, the easiest way to view this is really as a piece with what we've seen, certainly since the Biden administration, to some degree with the Trump administration, of trying to really increase the ambiguous part of the so-called strategic ambiguity that has governed Taiwan-U.S. relations since the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979. And in the Biden administration, we've seen Biden three different times say that U.S. would defend Taiwan in a war, which of course is not a treaty obligation of the United States, but he almost was basically insisting it was. But then each time, his age trying to walk it back. And you can see the same thing I think with Pelosi where it looked like she had this difference of opinion with Biden and the Pentagon. But I'm honestly not so sure because then as soon as she gets there or as soon as she leaves rather, there is a prepared G7 statement that is supporting her 100%. You had the very large number of Republican senators sign a letter and support of her. So it feels to me like it was maybe a little bit more of a theater type perspective. And that part of what is happening is the U.S. and their attempt to isolate, contain China, and the new Cold War mentality is trying to throw China off balance, to be as provocative as possible, to try to essentially provoke China perhaps into some sort of blunder that will help the United States reach their strategic goals, which is both ideologically and physically, of course, to isolate China, and especially on the island of Taiwan to try to spoil the possibility of any peaceful reunification by raising tensions to such a degree that that becomes less and less of a factor. I think that whether we're talking about the brief deletion of a few paragraphs from the description of U.S.-Taiwan relations on official State Department websites, Biden's statement, Pelosi's visit, the follow-on visits, the support from the G7, the support from the Republican leadership, I think they're trying to create this strategic ambiguity at a higher level in order to really sort of push and provoke China to a large degree. The visit of Nancy Pelosi came at a time when China baiting is at its height by politicians across the spectrum. Aided by the media, they have painted a picture of China as a threat to almost every aspect of life in the U.S. While the general public has been influenced by it, there is also a great aversion to any kind of conflict with China. What has been the impact of this demonization campaign on people in the U.S.? You know, it's interesting to note the U.S. propaganda campaign with China in the way that it's working and not working. In terms of demonizing China, it's certainly working. I mean, in the context of what you see with the United States, you see, you know, for the past several years now, really since the Trump administration and continuing, between 70-some percent, 80-some percent of people who will say they view China as an enemy or an adversary or unfriendly or, you know, some other kind of pejorative terminology that China is bad. So sort of on that surface level, sort of skin-deep level element of it, really a little bit deeper than skin-deep in terms of defining China as a negative force, defining China as somehow against the interests of the average American. Just defining them as something that's sort of maligned. That is succeeding relatively well, I would say, very unfortunately. But what you really start to see is, and you see this with Russia as well, you know, people oftentimes are very willing to buy into the broader demonization campaign. It's obviously very slick. It's sophisticated. It's multi-layered. But when it comes down to the issue of real confrontation, people pull way back. Now, I certainly saw that with Russia at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Everyone's saying, support Ukraine, support Ukraine. But then when you'd say, well, should we go to war with Russia? It's like no one's for it. And when you look at what's happening with Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, the recent, the most recent economist, Yugov Pol, which is the most recent poll I've seen that talks about this, you had the plurality of people saying that Nancy Pelosi should not have gone. 39 percent of people. 27 percent of people said they weren't sure one way or the other. 33 percent of people said she should have gone. There's a few other interesting pieces there. For instance, people making under $50,000 a year, 41 percent said she should not have gone. Look at the black community. 39 percent said that they were unsure. So you can see that there's a plurality of people who, when having to say should she have gone, should she have not gone, she shouldn't have gone. Why? Because obviously the danger of war is very heavy there. You have a lot of people not sure. Obviously there's a lot of competing information. People don't know really who to believe. But at the end of the day, it wasn't like it was some gang busters, reception, like check Nancy out. She's so tough. You know, gunmen shoot out at the okay corral, kind of American Western sort of reality, which obviously is the type of imagery she was trying to build up around her trip that this is one of these Maverick American things that's so awesome about the United States. But I think most people are like this, a plurality of people clearly sought for what it was, which was a very dangerous war like attempt. So in a way you see the sort of the dichotomy that's at play here with the new Cold War in China and the confrontation with Russia that's obviously sort of a part and parcel of the same thing, that people are very much affected by these massive demonization campaigns. But they don't want to actually go to war with another nuclear power and have World War III. And so when these provocative events happen, people become much less supportive because they understand what it means. So it's an interesting dichotomy that people don't really want to have a World War III but are to some degree buying into the propaganda that's trying to lead us there. But I think it does create some interesting potential wedge issues for those who don't want to see a new Cold War, who know that that will lead to World War III or at least the potential of it to really help explain to people the reality of this propaganda deluge. And finally, no discussion on US-China ties can exclude the economy. The two countries are very closely interlinked. In recent times, decoupling has become a widely discussed concept. The US has adopted a host of sanctions to target Chinese firms. Meanwhile, Chinese businesses are taking their own steps to protect themselves. What is the state of US-China economic relations at this point? You know, the decoupling issue with China is very interesting in the way that it's playing out. I mean, obviously the two countries are, I think, definitely both of each other's largest trading partner. I mean, certainly you see with the Inflation Reduction Act, you know, one element to the billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars to the auto industry to make clean electric vehicles is that all of the parts have to be produced with US allies. That's obviously a bigger part of the decoupling aspect to the whole thing. It's obviously designed, I think, at companies like Tesla and others that have significant production capability in China. Now, most of that's aimed towards the Chinese market in a way, but I think you can obviously see that they're trying to use these subsidies around clean electric vehicles to try to push forward this issue, not just of decoupling from China, but trying to send the various things that do leave to countries that are basically totally subordinated from the United States. On the other hand, you know, we had a recent letter in the Wall Street Journal editorial page from Maurice Greenberg, big-time corporate leader in America, saying that there needs to be more business-to-business contact because that can help repair the relationship because so many businesses are deep in with China because of the production supply chains. Money market funds. That's basically where middle-class people in the United States are investing their retirement are very heavily invested in China because that's where they're getting the best returns. So ultimately a huge amount of Americans' actual ability to retire once they reach retirement age is based on the success of the Chinese economy. So you've got this aggressive drive. You've got the CHIPS Act, which is supposed to help build more chip-fabricating plants here in the United States. We'll see what happens with that. So you've got maybe, let's say, $100 billion over the next 10 years in subsidies that are going to various industries in order to try to push this decoupling. But the actual reality on a financial and a manufacturing level is difficult. The US still imports most of its capital goods from China. So even for the US to decouple from China, it would have to import most of the things it would need to do that from China. So it gives you a sense of how difficult it is and how challenging it is and how, really, this new Cold War is a road to ruin for both countries and that both countries really need to cooperate around the major challenges for the world and for one another because this entire attempt to try to separate the United States from China at this point in time really is going to only lead to economic ruin and not the millions of new jobs that they're promising.