Opinion | US should answer China’s challenge by delivering economic prosperity to its periphery

America’s attempt to grapple with its illegal immigration problem may be less high-profile than Biden’s Europe tour, but it points to a better strategy for dealing with a rising China: focus on building decent lives for its people and others, as China has

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Published: 1:30am, 14 Jun 2021Updated: 1:30am, 14 Jun 2021

Joe Biden has travelled to Europe for his first international trip as US president, which besides the G7 meetings will include a high-profile US-Russia summit in Geneva on June 16. With China expected to be high on the agenda, some observers have come concluded that Washington is retrenching on all other fronts, almost in a whatever-it-takes manner, to focus on its confrontation with China.

I note, however, that US Vice-President Kamala Harris also just made her maiden visit abroad, to Guatemala and Mexico, to try to stem the influx of illegal immigrants from Latin America into the US. Last month, the number of undocumented migrants reaching America’s southern border was the highest in more than 20 years.

In the eyes of many, Biden’s visit to Europe, aimed at “rallying the world’s democracies” and seeking to smooth relations with Russia in America’s grand confrontation with China, carries a lot more geopolitical significance than Harris’s trip aimed at addressing a seemingly regional and domestic headache.

This is not the case, actually; the outcome of US-China rivalry could well be decided on just such an issue. Washington must make improvements in this area if it wants to win its high-stakes chess game with China: help sustain the livelihoods of the less-developed world, starting in its own neighbourhood.

Unidentified migrants cross the dammed Colorado River from Mexico as they approach a gap in the border wall in Yuma, Arizona, on June 9 to seek asylum in the United States. Photo: AP

Despite Washington’s moralising rhetoric depicting its rivalry with China as a battle of good vs evil, the contest is in fact a Huntingtonian “clash of civilisations”, with both caught in a Thucydides trap. All-out war is unlikely; rather, the outcome of their fight for supremacy will be settled by their ability to win over other civilisations by helping their people to prosper.