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China responds to US provocations: US/China relations further strained
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How will the US respond to China's saber-rattling?
Well, I mean, in part, China's saber-rattling is a response to what the United States has already been doing. In particular, significant export sanctions that are not really about competition. They're really about containment of China in some of the top areas of economic development, technological development that they are trying mightily to be world leaders at. There is a level of direct confrontation that the Americans are pushing on and the Chinese are now increasingly public. I thought that it was interesting that Xi Jinping decided to make those statements about the United States directly. He usually defers to the so-called wolf warriors, some of the members of the press so this is getting chippier and the ability to maintain and manage a calm and engaged, interdependent US- China relationship is getting harder. There's, as they say, downward pressure on that call going forward.
Is the US about to ban TikTok?
I don't think so. I mean, if by ban you mean that literally young people will no longer be able to access it, I would be surprised by that. I think it's possible that TikTok will be forced to either put in into a different management company, have different rules set, or maybe even spin off. It's American operations so that the data no longer can go to the Chinese government. I think that there might be a lot of pressure to do something like that, but I think the level of use and support in the United States for TikTok, just how insidious it is among young people just, as you know, other social media sites are for older Americans make it very hard to actually ban it in the United States. And I just don't think there's enough cohesion on that, even though generally there's a lot of bipartisan agreement in taking a tougher stand against China.
Will "Turkey's Gandhi", as they call them, be able to defeat Erdoğan?
Here we are talking about the head of this Republican People's Party, the CHP. It's taken them a long time for the opposition to agree to a single unified candidate to go after Erdoğan and Erdoğan is pushing up elections to May. The talk, of course, is still overwhelmingly about the earthquake and the cleanup and let's keep in mind, no free press anymore in Turkey. Turkish government has much more control over it, NGO's ditto. It is just a much more hybrid political system as opposed to a free and fair democracy and that includes the way that the election is run. I think that there is an actual chance that Erdoğan will be unseated, but it looks more like a Hungarian election than it does an American or Brazilian or Mexican election. What I mean by that is not just about fighting over the outcomes, but actually being able to subvert them and for that reason, I'd still be betting fairly heavily on Erdoğan being able to "win" in May.