Some US-China decoupling is inevitable, senior China diplomat warns

Name: US ‘not seeking a new cold war’, Biden says in first UN address
Uploaded: 2021-10-30T04:00:32.000Z
Duration: 2 min 47 s
Description: US ‘not seeking a new cold war’, Biden says in first UN address

Article for Central Party School’s newspaper says technological rivalry will become a key battleground between China and the West

There have been some signs of a thaw recently, but Wang Xiaolong’s comments suggest Beijing has a gloomy view of the future of relations with US

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The article may signal that Beijing takes a gloomy view of future relations with the US. Photo: Reuters

Jun Mai

Published: 12:00pm, 30 Oct 2021Updated: 9:51pm, 30 Oct 2021

Some form of decoupling between the West and China is “inevitable”, a senior Chinese diplomat has warned.

In an article published on Friday, Wang Xiaolong, director general of the foreign ministry’s department of international economic affairs, said competition and confrontation over technology would become a key area of contention in global governance and rule-making.

“US-China relations will be in a state of instability and uncertainty for quite a long period, and it will become the norm,” he wrote in an article for Study Times, a newspaper affiliated with the Central Party School, where cadres are trained.

“It’s inevitable that Western society led by the United States will push for ‘decoupling’ to a certain extent,” Wang wrote, adding that the West would seek to “choke” off Chinese firms’ access to key technology.

The article was a brief analysis of the history of capitalism in the developed world and what recent economic trends in the West mean for China.

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US ‘not seeking a new cold war’, Biden says in first UN address

The article underlines Beijing’s grim assessment of the outlook for China’s relations with the United States and other developed countries, despite limited signs of a detente with Washington.