In his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on April 26th, Chinese President Xi Jinping encouraged a partnership between China and the United States, rather than rivalry. He promoted mutual respect and a win-win cooperation approach. However, he questioned the follow-through on verbal commitments from the US.
On the other hand, the US State Department underscored the continued use of diplomacy to deal with areas of disagreement and cooperation. Blinken also addressed the non-traditional business practises in China that disturb commerce and potentially threaten national security, expressing concern over the global economic impacts of China’s industrial overcapacity.
Blinken highlighted that China accounts for one-third of worldwide production, but only one-tenth of the global demand, indicating an obvious imbalance.
Prominent economic historian and analyst Adam Tooze weighed in on the Biden administration’s economic policies. He cited Daleep Singh’s stance on imposing targeted sanctions on China as a tactic for promoting US interests and maintaining competition. However, Tooze is worried that Blinken and Jake Sullivan might be compromising America’s middle class and inadvertently boosting China’s power by advocating global prosperity while behaving sceptically towards globalisation.
For Tooze, this signifies the paradox that Washington is trying to uphold what it calls a rules-based world order through chaotic and self-serving interventions, revealing that many of the US elite no longer have faith in the optimistic framework that underpinned these rules in the first place. This divergence can be considered a “bleaker side” of the Biden administration’s impact on the so-called US deep state, a trend that is expected to continue into a potential Trump administration.
Given the exchanges between the USA and China, it is essential for the remainder of the globe to heed these developments carefully. Regions across the world, including Europe and southeast Asia’s Asean, lack the USA’s determination to curtail China’s influence, even at the risk of unanticipated sanctions. This circumstance paves the way for the Global South, which comprises of confident state officials and ambitious civilians, to gain more influence by exploiting the US-China rivalry. Hence, it’s vital for us to consider the insights offered by outspoken critics of US and Global North policy, as they provide guidelines to leaders and audiences in the Global South.
A leading example of these critics is Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, author, journalist, Marxist activist and commentator. Among his many publications, the latest is “The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power,” co-authored with Noam Chomsky. Prashad presides over the Leftword books that are based in Delhi and operates the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, which provides a Global South-view of world politics. The institute recently introduced an in-depth study called “Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous Decadent New Stage,” assessing the association between US power, and the overall equilibrium of power spanning the Global North and South.
At the recent Roger Casement Summer School session held in Dún Laoghaire, Prashad discussed these findings centred on a multipolar world. He refutes the concept of multipolarity as a balanced restructuring of global power dynamics. Instead, he suggests a fresh challenge to US power across five primary elements, underlined by the US-China contention but amidst the continued overall US-level dominance of the Global North, encompassing Europe. It’s crucial that we perceive the ominous narrative of the west’s decline – a recurrent motif among right-wingers such as Steve Bannon and British Tories, along with related narratives of religious, racial and immigration conflicts – in this particular context.
The handling of raw materials, financial resources, as well as the progression of science and technology on a worldwide scale, has become highly disputed. This comes as nations from the Global South, inclusive of China, challenge American and European monopolies over access, knowledge, and authority, which are amplified in the current US-China rivalry. Nevertheless, information flows, communication systems, and narratives continue to be predominantly governed by the Global North. These authorities illustrate that the Global North, under US leadership through entities like the G7 and NATO, accounts for 75% of global military and arms budgets, in contrast with China’s 10% and Russia’s 3%. Prashad believes that radical measures should be based on such accurate and thorough analysis to transform this progressively corrupt and treacherous global power dynamic.