Commentary
US President Donald Trump’s remark in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that the United States would completely decouple from China has been overblown and taken out of context by some Western media outlets, which have reported what was essentially a restatement of his June 19 tweet that “the US certainly does maintain a policy option, under various conditions, of a complete decoupling from China”, as though such a scenario is imminent.
But contrary to the media reports sensationalizing his remarks, the reality is the decoupling of the world’s two largest economies is neither reasonable nor feasible. The reality is that while the US is trying to decouple to some extent in areas such as science and technology, coupling is intensifying in other areas, such as the financial and agricultural sectors.
As shown by the telephone conversation between Vice-Premier Liu He and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer on Tuesday, the two countries may be willing to carry on from where they left off.
This was their first official dialogue since early May and came amid growing concerns the so-called phase one deal could be on shaky ground because of the economic impacts of the novel coronavirus outbreak and the increasingly confrontational approach the US administration has publicly taken toward China ahead of the upcoming presidential election in the US.
But the heads of the two sides’ respective trade negotiation teams agreed to continue to promote the implementation of the deal signed in January.
And the US Trade Representative’s office said in a statement afterward that “both sides see progress and are committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure the success of the agreement”.
The Ministry of Commerce (MOC), on its part, said that the two sides had “a constructive dialogue” not only on implementation of the deal but also on strengthening the coordination of their macroeconomic policies.
Such positive assessments belie the notion that a complete decoupling between the two economies is in the cards, particularly since it is the sensitive areas of technology, data security and market access, all pain spots in the current Sino-US relationship, that the two sides have agreed to discuss in following talks.
As Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed on Monday, the more than 40 years of interaction between China and the US indicates that the two countries should further tap their complementarity and strengthen their cooperation to improve their peoples’ well-being, rather than severing their already entrenched connections.
That being said, no matter what performance Washington stages for the media and whatever the speculation about it, Beijing will continue to maintain consistency in its US policies. Which means that China remains willing to work with the US to not only weather the storms of the moment, but also seek ways to resolve the outstanding issues between them.
It is to be hoped that despite the media reports suggesting otherwise, the US is willing to do the same.
– Courtesy China Daily
