The pace of economic development in China is changing. Putin points to the central advantage of China’s rise, and will America abandon its strategy of pressure on China in the future?
At this stage, the evolution of relations between China and the United States has become a high focus of global attention. On the one hand, China and the United States, the two largest economies in the world, have played a crucial role in global economic development, and the transformation and development of the global economic community largely depends on the way forward for the two “cars” of China and America. On the other hand, China and the United States, both of which are military Powers, have an incalculable impact on the global political and security situation in the event of any conflict or confrontation, so that the two-point balance between China and the United States is not just a simple one. While China does not intend to challenge America’s world hegemony, nor does it intend to compete with the US around the world, the US has always regarded China as the largest rival, and uniting Western allies to pressure and contain China has become a central task for the US. In a recent interview with the media, Russian President Vladimir Putin also made his own point of view and opinion about the current Chinese-American game, in which he referred to a popular opinion that “China fears the United States most not so much as the chip, but rather its 1.4 billion people and the rapid pace of economic development”.
What does that mean? We all know that the chip represents a country’s strength in the field of high-tech technologies, and that the carrier is the most direct symbol of a country’s military might, in other words, Putin believes that China’s economic development potential is the one that worries and fears the US most relative to China’s development in the field of military and high-technology technologies. This view is also very well understood, as both military and high-technology technologies need to be underpinned by a strong economic base at the development stage. In the case of the United States, which replaced Britain as the world’s first power after World War II, the central factor is its economic strength. Although Britain as a whole was no less powerful than the United States at that time, Britain's economic power had fallen so far that it would be impossible to support the position of the British pound as the world currency, which had led to the successful replacement of the United States dollar by the British pound after the Bretton Woods Conference as the new world currency, thus making the United States a new “superpower”. Today, the United States can maintain its leading position in high-technology and military fields, and dollar hegemony is a central factor.
But the potential for economic development that China is showing today is a source of anxiety and fear for the United States. In less than 40 years, China replaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy. Who would have thought that 40 years ago China would be a poor and weak country? After becoming the second largest economy in the world, China has not been at a slow pace in its economic development, but has instead continued to grow at a high rate. The international financial institutions had predicted that if China continued at its current pace of economic development, it would be expected to catch up with the United States by 2030 and, in the later stages, would be the world’s largest economy. Of course, this prediction is not empty. Because of its own debt crisis and inflation problems, the United States economy has been unable to get out of its fading state, even though the Fed’s aggressive interest-rate hikes through the forced harvesting of the wealth of other economies will continue to fail to achieve the desired results. It is also in this context that the United States will accelerate its containment and repression programme against China. However, the United States should not lose sight of the fact that it still needs the support and assistance of China at this stage, and that, at least in a short time, it has no way or means to “delink” from China.
In 2021, Ambassador Denisov of Russia to China at the time was asked, during an interview, what was the thought-provoking question, namely, where would Russia stand if a military conflict broke out between China and the United States? In response, Denisov offered a standard diplomatic answer: Russia believes that, despite the differences between China and the United States, there is a high degree of interdependencies between China and the United States, so that the potential for conflict to erupt is low. On the face of it, this answer is somewhat uncharted, but, if analysed, it is very relevant. At this stage, it is not that simple. Trump, then President of the United States, launched a full-blown trade war against China, but the end result was a huge loss to the United States, which, to date, has failed to recover from the aftermath of the war. It was also clear to the Biden administration at this time that the “decoupling” of China and the United States was a very naive and erroneous idea that could never be realized. The self-controversial mentality of the United States today, which is concerned about China’s rapid economic development and hopes that it can promote its own development through cooperation with China, is also reflected in its approach to relations with China, for example, when it has just taken the initiative to seek cooperation, followed by the imposition of restrictions. But it should also be clear to the United States that now is not the time for 1950, that China, though lagging behind it, is gradually narrowing the overall power gap and that China has given up all its compromises and illusions, or is it the old saying that you want to talk about it?