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Macroscope
Opinion
Anthony Rowley
Anthony Rowley

In seeing China’s economic rise as a security threat, the US is undermining globalisation

  • The true reasons for China’s rise are obscured as analyses focused on ‘security’ threats often understate the complexities and mutual benefits of economic interaction

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A worker making manufacturing machinery at a factory in Nantong, in China's eastern Jiangsu province, on May 26. By inserting itself in global value chains, China gave multinational corporations a low-cost means to massively boost production and sales. Photo: AFP
Anthony Rowley
Last week, I wrote about Sinophobia in certain countries and one reader commented that if those countries were to exercise their foreign policy, towards China in particular, through their commerce or foreign ministries instead of their defence or intelligence departments, the result “may surprise”.

An interesting thought, when globalisation – which has brought many economic benefits (and admittedly some banes) in its train – is being eroded by national security concerns. This is nowhere more true than in the case of the United States and its allies vs China.

Analysis of the kind that commerce or foreign ministries of leading nations are capable of would reveal the surprisingly complex and often mutually beneficial nature of economic interactions among nations. Analyses that focus on “security” threats often understate the importance of economic factors.
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They tend to poison relations among nations and in the case of great powers, create tensions that can quickly pass from economic and sectoral to state level, and then threaten ideological or even physical confrontation. This is about where we are with relations between the US (plus allies) and China.

The most egregious manifestation of this in recent times occurred under the administration of former US president Donald Trump, whose trade and technology wars against China have since evolved under his successor Joe Biden into policies of entrenched distrust and competition.
Trump was not the first US political leader to resort to woefully simplistic remedies for perceived problems of trade imbalances. He applied punitive tariffs to imports of Chinese goods, a policy that economists now agree has hurt US consumers more than those in China.
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