I think there is currently a division within the American ruling class. The upper levels of US capital, who benefit most from the current global arrangement, are fighting to keep the 1990s-2000s economic and political system in place to whatever degree they can. This includes alternately threatening and cajoling China: they want China to remain industrialized, and part of the world economic system, but want also to keep it poor and at a relatively low level of development, so that it continues to be the “world’s factory.” The danger, as they see it, is not that China outstrips the west in industrial production, but that it becomes a market and a hub for innovation in its own right (this is happening already). In order to force China back into the 1990s, they are willing to use military force if necessary; but they would prefer to do it peacefully if possible. Probably their ideal course of action is to get economic “advisors” and hitmen into China, as happened in Russia after the Soviet collapse. This will of course be easier if tensions between the US and China are at a minimum.

The lower levels of US capital – people like Trump, the Koch brothers, Betsy DeVoss, and so on – feel shut out by the current global system, and so they want to sabotage US dependence on China. They are helped by the fact that there are basically two schools of thought in American foreign policy, that do not align clearly with any one party: the neocons (who want constant military and economic pressure on all America’s adversaries) and the Brzezinskyites (who favor a divide and conquer strategy). Hillary Clinton is one of the worst and bloodiest of the neocons, while Biden himself seems to lean more Brzezinskyite. Thus both low and high level capital can manipulate various elements within the US government in order to advance their particular interests vis-a-vis China. As a result, you find that the US government seems to vacillate in its position on China; but the final goal is always to destroy China, and force the Chinese people into economic subjugation. Fortunately, Xi and the Chinese government seem to have figured this out, and are not falling for any of America’s nonsense.