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Opinion | China and the US were never going to live happily ever after, so Donald Trump brokered the best divorce he could
- China’s world view is shaped by a desire for stability and its narrative of a ‘century of humiliation’ at the hands of foreign powers. It is unlikely to yield much to the US
- Trump and his team understand this, which is why they sought to extricate the US from a deep trading relationship with China
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Remember the good old days of happy, win-win trading between the US and China? Yeah, neither do I. But it seems like the vast majority of today’s pundits do, because they peg the end of those days – and the start of the trade war – to Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, three years ago this week.
A smaller number of realists peg the start to soon after Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping charmed Americans by donning a cowboy hat and promising to buy large quantities of American products.
But both dates are late by a couple of centuries. Today’s trade war began in the 1700s, if not earlier. So, we’ll come back to Trump in a little while.
I’m going to have to condense those two centuries, so forgive me if I miss some details. Today’s trade war has its roots in the growing arrival of European traders on China’s coast in the 1700s. The Industrial Revolution was under way in western Europe by mid-century, and governments there were in the process of transforming how states interacted, both diplomatically and with regard to trade.
Their vision was one of largely egalitarian relationships. The Europeans – including Britain – eventually sought this transformation with China.
Robert Boxwell has worked and lived in the Asia-Pacific region since the early 1990s. He is an occasional contributor on business and regional issues to the South China Morning Post, Reuters, Financial Times and Bloomberg, and is writing a book on the history of US-China trade. He lives in Kuala Lumpur, where he is director of the international consultancy Opera Advisors. Find him on Twitter: @RobertBoxwellJr.
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