You can be sure that "war games" are being played out routinely.
The problem here is that this is an obvious escalation with US as the aggressor and not all US allies are willing to follow the US into war as the current administration is seen as unreliable.
You even had the former and current (!) prime ministers of Australia warning of high likelihood of a war between China and the US within the next 3 months. Where the next 3 months of course is the period of the US presidential election indicating that they clearly see a connection between the US elections and increased China tensions.
Is it really the US making the first move? Facebook is blocked in China as are several other big countries. Granted, this is a ban after the company made inroads, but it seems that China has been doing this for a long time now and in many industries.
Who made the first move is kind of a philosophical question. And the tech war is part of a bigger "war" that is currently unfolding going from rhetorics to trade to military maneuvers.
What is more important is how it is being perceived amongst other countries around the south china sea. And as far as I can tell the US does not have the support it normally would have. Even from surefire allies such as Australia.
China has been doing moves like this for a long time so I don’t know how the US is the first aggressor here. Several US tech companies have been banned in China for a while at this point.
So what are we China now? Also I'm not sure it's quite true those companies were banned. Google voluntarily pulled out of the Chinese market, and re-entered.
So how do you explain the re-entering the market by Google?
The "rules" were sovereign rules China applied and it's not as if other search engines or companies in China could get away without following those same rules... plus, such rules are now being applied to ByteDance and WeChat in the USA to make them "voluntarily" pull out as well and this of courses legitimizes China's past and present actions (which is fundamentally why I do not think we should be going down this route).
It's basically admitting defeat if we start using the same policies as China. China owns up to their policies of censorship and heavy-handed market control. They're not hiding that fact. If we start down that path too then we're just adopting their system and admitting we can't beat them with a free market and freedom of access to apps/information.
Keep in mind that Trump's rationale for blocking WeChat is that it is "allowing the Chinese Communist Party a mechanism for keeping tabs on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their lives." That's basically saying the people are too stupid and must have their information access controlled—which, as you may know, is exactly the communist part of China's modus operandi.
> The problem here is that this is an obvious escalation with US as the aggressor and not all US allies are willing to follow the US into war as the current administration is seen as unreliable.
I don't see how US is the aggressor. The kind of control CCP has over these companies is well known and as someone who is not an American, I was surprised why the US admin had not taken stern measures till now. This standoff was initiated when China decided to kick out American companies for not subscribing to their censorship policies. And the way companies like WeChat feed into CCP's censorship framework is well known.
The problem here is that this is an obvious escalation with US as the aggressor and not all US allies are willing to follow the US into war as the current administration is seen as unreliable.
You even had the former and current (!) prime ministers of Australia warning of high likelihood of a war between China and the US within the next 3 months. Where the next 3 months of course is the period of the US presidential election indicating that they clearly see a connection between the US elections and increased China tensions.