The Brookings Institute: Weighing the risks of US-China disengagement

The Belt and Road Advisory created a 25-minute podcast from the 12-page research paper from The Brookings Institute. For those that prefer listening versus reading in both English or Mandarin Chinese we bring this highly recommended report from the highly influential American Think Tank - The Brookings Institute direct to your earphones.

At the Belt and Road Advisory we find the report well-researched and balanced. In fact, Brookings states that its staff "represent diverse points of view" and describes itself as non-partisan. A recent study found Brookings to be the most frequently cited think tank by the U.S. media and politicians.

The topics covered in the report are important, “Should the Chinese elite and mass opinion concludes that the United States is intent on denying China its rightful place in global affairs, no one should expect Beijing to be compliant or submissive. At the same time, none of China’s neighbors, even those uneasy about the growth of Chinese power, want to be caught in a struggle between the U.S. and China.”

The United States seems to be on a path, whether by design or by accident, to recreate China’s “angry isolation” that Nixon decried. It openly seeks disengagement with the apparent hope the Chinese will find themselves without friends and fewer trading partners. This is an even more perilous path than the one that Nixon warned against, since we now face a powerful China that can do real damage to others."

For both Washington and Beijing, the patient rebuilding of a rules-based order, not the assertion of unilateral advantage by either, remains the only credible path forward. Rather than mirror-image Chinese xenophobic or paranoid behavior, the United States should insist on reciprocity in the relationship to promote openness, move aggressively to open China’s markets, welcome Chinese visitors and researchers, and defend our allies. The United States also needs to fix its own broken domestic politics and mitigate the downsides of globalization at home to diminish the gratuitous scapegoating of China. Without such efforts, the region and the world will inevitably move toward open-ended rivalry, or worse—from which no country, including the United States, can possibly benefit."

"Republicans and Democrats alike seem to be implying that they would prefer that China had never emerged as the world’s leading trading state. They contend that the cure for America’s diminished standing and for China’s enhanced power and stature is not to up our game but instead to drag China down. Taken to its logical conclusion, one that President Trump has suggested privately, the best trade relationship with China would be no trade at all, since there would no longer be a U.S. trade deficit."

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