The Consequences of the US-China Blame Game Have Arrived

If it feels like the US relationship with China is a tinderbox waiting to explode, chalk some of it up to political expedience. Leaders on either side of the Pacific have played the blame game for years, faulting each other for their troubles while failing to enact necessary reforms at home, says economist and China scholar Stephen Roach. Meantime, these “false narratives” have built up so much animosity that a new Cold War has emerged, he says. The fight, as Senior Editor Chris Anstey explains, potentially spans everything from rules governing the internet to the most mundane facet of consumerism.

On this first Stephanomics episode of the new year, we feature a double shot of brewing economic and political conflict between the US and its Western allies on one side and China on the other. Host Stephanie Flanders talks with Roach about his new book, Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives. Things didn’t have to be this bad, says Roach, a former chief economist for Morgan Stanley and now senior fellow at Yale Law School. Years ago, the US and China regularly held big economic and strategic forums. Nowadays, Chinese officials have Zoom calls, or Joe Biden and Xi Jinping meet on the sidelines of a G20 summit, accomplishing “nothing,” Roach says.

What happened? Roach says the deterioration of US-China relations stems from a zeal for blaming the other side for one’s own shortcomings. US leaders routinely blame China for the large trade imbalance favoring the Chinese, Roach says. To be sure, China is the biggest source of the imbalance, but countries run trade deficits because they fail to save. “And when you don’t save and you want to grow, you import surplus savings from abroad, and you run massive current account or balance of payments deficits,” Roach says. In China, leaders know they need to rejigger their economy to reduce dependence on exports and investment while bolstering domestic consumer consumption. But it’s easier just to blame the US for constraining its growth, Roach says.

In a lighter segment, Anstey explains a growing rift between the US and China. He does so by way of the lowly desiccant, those small packets of silica gel that keep moisture out of everything from new sneakers to electronics. Last year, China decided the world needed a new production standard for desiccant packets, part of a much larger effort to influence standards on everything from desiccants to internet protocols. The latter would give Beijing a larger say in how things are made globally. Ultimately, US representatives helped kill the new desiccant standard, much to the delight of sneaker, textile and food companies who figure one desiccant is as good as the next. Still, the fight over production standards is heating up, and where moisture-reducing packets are low-risk, cybersecurity experts worry more about China’s efforts to influence internet standards.

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