ACCIDENTAL CONFLICT

Thorough analysis of the current uneasy relationship between the U.S. and China.

Roach, a senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and author of the prescient book Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China (2014), finds the two largest world economies in a clash of dueling and incorrect narratives each holds about the other. Not so long ago, the U.S. and China needed each other to prop up their own flagging economies—China required external demand to support its “export-led” development strategy, while Americans relied on low-cost goods from China—but in recent years, they have undergone a trade war and a tech war. Now, argues the author, they face a new cold war. Both countries constantly seek economic growth, but they both have a savings problem: The Chinese have excessively high savings and low internal consumption, while Americans have little savings and high debt. In illustrating his theme of codependency, Roach breaks down the reasons behind this disparity, fed by the different “national dreams” of the two countries and the persistent “false narratives” they entertain about each other. Harkening back to the mid-1980s, U.S. officials have, for purposes of “political expediency,” often blamed China for many economic problems in the form of intellectual theft, predatory tech practices, and cyberhacking. The author stresses that many of these issues are overblown, and he suggests three areas of focus for conflict resolution: climate change, global health, and cybersecurity. He also suggests “re-opening foreign consulates in both countries…loosening visa restrictions for students and journalists, and restarting educational exchanges like the US Fulbright Program.” Finally, Roach delivers a thoughtful framework for moving from codependency to interdependency, involving a bilateral investment treaty and the establishment of a U.S.–China Secretariat. He concludes that “there is ample opportunity to exercise good faith.”

A timely, fluid, readable assessment of a testy and rapidly changing global relationship.