Diplomatic tensions between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States (US) did not end when President Donald Trump, fervent advocate for a trade war with Beijing, left the White House in January 2021. On the contrary, tensions have continued into the first year of the Biden administration, through the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and will likely last until the end of Biden's mandate. Indeed, if Trump made China into an almost personal issue for him and his inner circle of advisors, Biden, with a more institutionally sensitive style, has sought to bring the most important agencies of his administration under a coordinated effort. A resolute and comprehensive stance towards China has now become a long-term policy of the US. Likewise, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean Xi Jinping, communist party high officials and foreign minister Wang Yi demonstrated little intention of making any meaningful progress in US–China relations by accommodating some of the long-standing American requests. The fallout between American and Chinese top diplomats at a summit held in Anchorage (Alaska) in March 2021, weeks after Biden was sworn in, signalled that the relationship has a long way to go before any positive developments are seen. The drama of the Ukraine war, furthermore, made it unpalatable for many countries to maintain normal relations with Russia. This put China's relationship with Russia under the spotlight and encouraged the US, the European Union (EU), and G7 members to exert pressure on Beijing for picking a side, the message being: you are either with the West or with the war criminals of the Kremlin.

The frenzy that the word “China” tends to provoke in Washington was captured in an opinion piece in The Atlantic by former national security advisor Herbert R. McMaster published at the end of 2020, a tense year in US–China relations. He emphasized that there had been a sort of revelation moment about China, stating that assumptions in the rest of the world about China's modernization “were proving to be wrong” (McMaster 2020). To McMaster, China is a threat because it is governed by an authoritarian model that it exports abroad; meanwhile, the PRC bends the rules of the international order and exerts military influence over the South China Sea, Taiwan and the East China Sea.