The accelerating breakdown in relations between China and the US is the most significant current event. How is this to be managed, given today’s global interdependence?
Three recent pieces of evidence reveal alarm over the rise of China to its current status as the world’s “junior superpower”, in the words of Yan Xuetong of Tsinghua University. One is the campaign against Huawei, standard bearer for Chinese technological ambitions, which must be viewed in the context of the US trade war with China and its description of the latter as a “ strategic competitor”. Another is a paper from the free trade-oriented BDI, Germany’s leading industry association, which labels China a “partner and systemic competitor”. The last is the description of Xi Jinping’s China by George Soros as “the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society”.
This, then, is a point on which a nationalist US administration, German free-traders and a noteworthy proponent of liberal ideas agree: China is no friend. At best, it is an uncomfortable partner; at worst, it is a hostile power.