Open questions | This China watcher says a ‘big bang approach’ is needed to revive the economy

Political scientist Scott Kennedy also discusses the state of relations with the US, and why it’s a challenge getting more Americans to study in China

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Published: 6:00am, 24 Jun 2024Updated: 1:25pm, 24 Jun 2024

Scott Kennedy is a senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at Washington-based think tank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.

I’ll start by asking more broadly about the health of US-China relations. You have on previous occasions attributed deteriorating ties in part to a lack of extensive in-person communication. There has been a return of such engagements, including at the highest levels, but how should we make sense of them? Are they just necessary stopgap measures or could they have a bigger effect on the trajectory of ties?

The United States and Chinese governments are now firmly ensconced in a long-term rivalry with each other. Despite whatever differences in language they use – whether they stress “cooperation” or “competition” – both are committed in reality to a rivalry of systems as well as a bilateral competition. I think what we’ve seen over the past year and three quarters, since the fall of 2022, is an effort to try and keep this rivalry from tumbling over into outright conflict and economic decoupling.

It took about eight months from the time the two governments started talking, in the fall of 2022, about resuming meetings that they achieved some semblance of stabilisation in the relationship. Certainly, the lack of direct communication was not the primary cause of the collapse in the relationship. But the resumption of dialogue by government officials – from the presidents and top leaders down to junior staff – and by people in business and the scholarly communities, has been essential for providing any hope that the relationship will maintain some level of stability. And that in some areas of the relationship they may even find an ability to cooperate.

We’ve seen this over the last year with visits amongst cabinet-level officials and their working-level staff as well as by scholars and others. The communications don’t necessarily yield common ground but they at least more clearly identify where there are differences.

Xi Jinping emphasised cooperation during his meeting with Joe Biden in November. Photo: AP

Particularly on the Xi-Biden meeting [in November], you suggested that the two countries went into the meeting on different grounds. President Biden, on one hand, was coming in with a recovering US economy and slowing inflation. President Xi, on the other, was facing some domestic and international headwinds.

You argued that Xi needed to stabilise relations with the US not only for foreign policy reasons but to rebuild confidence at home. Considering these conditions, are you saying that the US has some sort of bargaining power when engaging with China? How will China’s domestic issues like its slowing economy affect the way it deals with the US?

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