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US-China relations
Opinion
Anthony Rowley
Anthony Rowley

Macroscope | Whether the US calls it ‘decoupling’ or ‘de-risking’ from China, the damage goes beyond trade

  • US-China tension is souring the atmosphere of international cooperation, complicating the management of currency reserves and raising war risks
  • In this context, arguing over whether the US is decoupling or de-risking is futile – to Beijing, it’s all the same

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) shakes hands with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi during their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Asean foreign ministers’ meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, on July 13. Photo: AP
Anthony Rowley

It was a tense time. Fearful of being usurped as the world’s No 1 economic power, the US was accusing an East Asian rival of unfair trade practices, running a huge trade surplus at America’s expense. The two nations seemed poised to go to war, or at least trade war.

But this was not 2018, when US president Donald Trump launched a trade war against China. It was some 30 years earlier, when Ronald Reagan launched a similar offensive against Japan. Both sets of combat failed in their objective of righting the trade imbalance by force.

Now, when the US’ battle with an East Asian contender – or pretender, depending on your opinion – is in full swing after decades, the Biden administration would have us believe that a kind of modus vivendi has been reached with China. This is not so.

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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent meetings in Beijing with senior Chinese officials, including Premier Li Qiang, served, she said, as a “step forward in our efforts to put the US-China relationship on a surer footing”. It would have been more accurate to say it marked only an uneasy truce.
Hung Tran, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Centre, noted in a commentary days after Yellen’s China visit, that “the most important communication between the United States and China is not happening: that between the two militaries”. Such communication is critical to “avoid an unwanted war in the Western Pacific that could be triggered by accidents, mistakes, miscommunications or misunderstandings”, Tran wrote.
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Presidents, prime ministers and defence officials can often, ironically, foster insecurity in the name of pursuing so-called national security. They can act like admirals, ordering what they regard as their ship (the state) into action, forgetting that they are commanding instead passenger vessels on which we are all sailing.
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