Exclusive | Worsening US-China conflict ‘poses a great danger’ to the world, former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach says
- ‘One of the big surprises to me and most is that things have got worse under Joe Biden than they were under Donald Trump,’ Roach says
- Roach calls for setting up a secretariat in a neutral jurisdiction like Switzerland for the US and China to manage their relationship
The US and China should rebuild trust and set up a secretariat in a neutral country like Switzerland to manage their relationship because their five-year-long conflict is getting worse and “poses a great danger” to themselves and the world, according to Stephen Roach.
Roach, a former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and a faculty member at Yale University, said both the US and China “are vulnerable for different reasons, and need scapegoats to blame others for a vulnerability of their own making that they are unable or unwilling to address”.
“We are on an ominous path that will only get worse, fuelled by the interplay between these false narratives that I would describe as the combustible high-octane fuel of conflict escalation,” he told the Post in an exclusive interview on Friday in Hong Kong. “When you have got combustible fuel, it does not take much of a spark to ignite it, especially if you see an accidental conflict.”
Roach, 77, visited the city for the first time in three years to speak at a client event of Morgan Stanley and to promote his new book, Accidental Conflict: America, China and the Clash of False Narratives.
“I wrote the book because of my own personal focus on this [US and China] relationship over the last 25 years and my growing concern that it poses a great danger for both countries and the world,” he said.
