China still poring over little-noticed Pence speech weeks later

Bloomberg

In Washington, Vice President Mike Pence’s October 4 speech ripping China was largely lost amid the uproar over the midterms and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s
confirmation.
In Beijing, however, Pence’s address is still reverberating. Some in China’s foreign policy community continue to study it, comparing the rhetoric with Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, and trying to determine whether it, too, marks the start of a Cold War between two world powers.
Wang Wen, executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, was among those alarmed by how the vice president conflated trade grievances with spying allegations and longstanding security disputes such as Taiwan.
“We are at a very serious tipping point,” Wang told Bloomberg News.
In his remarks to the Hudson Institute in Washington, Pence accused China of waging a “whole-of-government” campaign to erode American industrial advantages and steer voters away from the Republican Party in the midterms. He accused Beijing of attempting to push the US military from the Western Pacific and buy off Latin American countries with “debt diplomacy.”
Viewed through the prism of the US election, the speech served to deflect Democratic criticism of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and response to allegations of Russian meddling. In China, however, it helped confirm fears that the two sides are heading towards a prolonged struggle, with the US using its economic and military might to contain its rival’s rise.