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Opinion | Is US-China great power conflict inevitable? Perhaps not
- Does a China with a decidedly different economic and political system and strategic interests of its own have to imply an inevitable clash with the West?
- The structure of great power rivalry might exclude a world of love and harmony, but it does not necessitate a world of immutable conflict
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US President Joe Biden’s economic and foreign policies represent a sharp departure from those of his predecessor, Donald Trump. But when it comes to relations with China, Biden has largely maintained Trump’s tough line – refusing, for example, to reverse Trump’s tariffs on Chinese exports and warning of further punitive trade measures.
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This reflects the widespread hardening of US attitudes towards China. When Foreign Affairs magazine recently asked leading US experts whether American “foreign policy has become too hostile to China”, 32 out of the 68 respondents disagreed or disagreed strongly, suggesting a preference for an even tougher US stance towards China.
For economists, who tend to view the world in positive-sum terms, this is a puzzle. Countries can make themselves and others better off by cooperating and shunning conflict.
The clearest application of this principle is the gains from trade that countries achieve – the bread and butter of professional economists. It is generally to each country’s benefit to open its domestic markets to others. But the same idea also extends to policy domains, where there could be tensions between domestic and global interests.
Countries could pursue beggar-thy-neighbour policies, such as restricting access to home markets to improve their terms of trade or free riding on global public goods such as decarbonisation policies. But wouldn’t it be better if they refrained from such actions so they could collectively all do better?
Geopolitical strategists, by contrast, tend to see the world instead in zero-sum terms. Nation-states compete for power – the ability to bend others to their will and pursue their interests unhindered – which is necessarily relative.
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