Former US envoy says Chinese officials anticipate ‘partial decoupling’ of the nations’ economies
- Susan Thornton, former Trump administration expert on Asia, discusses her recent conversations with Chinese
- ‘It seemed very much that the trade-negotiation moment may have passed,’ she says
China’s government assumes that the US-China trade war may drag on indefinitely and that the stand-off may lead to a “partial decoupling” of the two economies, a former high-ranking US State Department official said after returning from Beijing.
“We met with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the central party … and people at the National People's Congress in [China]. They were all pessimistic in the short to medium term about US-China relations,” Susan Thornton, a former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said.
“Almost all of them expect things to get worse.”
Thornton travelled to Beijing and Shanghai as part of a fact-finding trip for the National Committee of American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), an American non-profit organisation dedicated to the resolution of conflicts that threaten United States interests.
“It seemed very much that the trade-negotiation moment may have passed. At least that's the sense I got from the Chinese.”
