My take-aways from 2020 Munich Security Conference

2, The US is forcefully pressing Europe to take sides in an effort to promote a unified stand for competing with China

The US regarded the MSC as an important platform for promoting policies and coordinating trans-Atlantic positions. Its presence was quite eye-catching, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and 20 or so law-makers, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Permanent Representative to the UN Kelly Craft, former Secretary of State John Kerry, and other ranking officials and think tank experts. American representatives and their voices could be found everywhere. And the Americans seemed to take how to cope with China's rise and "China threat" as their main topic, with their core purpose being preventing European nations from taking 5G technologies of China's Huawei.

Pompeo's speech wasn't long, but he spent a third of his time lambasting China. Obviously not a fan of this year's MSC report, Pompeo proudly declared the West isn't in decline and Western values will win over Russia and China's empire dreams. He asked Europe to jointly cope with the increasing "aggressiveness" of the Communist Party of China. Esper in his speech also described Huawei and 5G as "poster child for this nefarious activity".

Such US fixation on China, and its persistent verbal attacks on Huawei as a private Chinese tech firm didn't go down too well. And the Americans saw limited support at this point. Indeed some people view the new round of disputes from the perspective of Cold War between the US and Soviet Union, and echoed the US' attacks on Chinese domestic and foreign policies. But many more who could observe the China-US wrangling with a cool head hoped to know more about the facts, and to find a basis for making judgments consistent with their own interests. US politicians' heavy-handed approach also inspired antipathy among some of the participants.