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Open Questions | Why US moves have failed to ‘contain’ China and instead ‘bring us close to war’
- American economist Jeffrey Sachs on the US deep state’s reaction to China’s success, and why we’re not seeing the end of globalisation
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Jeffrey Sachs is an economics professor and director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.
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You were part of a high-level US business and academic delegation to China in March. What are your thoughts about the trip and the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping? What has been achieved and what has yet to be done?
The China Development Forum was an excellent opportunity, as usual, for an update on China’s economy and foreign policy outlook. Chinese leaders have a very realistic view of the domestic and also the global situation, notably regarding the tensions with the US.
In my own view, the US-China tensions are overwhelmingly caused by the American anxiety that US power is waning around the world. US policymakers are reacting defensively and fearfully, and often very unwisely.
I wonder if you could elaborate more about the unwise China policies made by the US? Can you give us some examples, and why were they unwise?
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The US launched a policy around 2015 to “contain” China, including several components. These policies – spelled out in a 2015 article for the Council on Foreign Relations by Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis – included the attempt to create trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) designed to exclude China, increased export bans on hi-tech products such as advanced semiconductors, increased trade barriers to China’s exports to the US (and Europe), increased militarisation of the South China Sea, new military alignments such as Aukus, and opposition to Chinese initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative.
I believe that every one of these approaches is a failure. They do not “contain” China, but they raise tensions, lower economic well-being and global economic efficiency, divide the world economy, and bring us close to war.
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