US-China Headed for Decoupling Despite Beijing’s Hopes Not to: Experts

Chinese leader Xi Jinping (R) speaks with the Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Wang Yang (L) during the opening of the second session of the 13th National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People on March 5, 2019 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

It would be unrealistic for the United States to completely decouple from China, a top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official said during a press conference on Oct. 30 following the end of a key political meeting in Beijing.

Executive deputy director of the Office of the Central Finance and Economic Commission Han Wenxiu said that China and the United States are the two largest economies in the world, so economic ties between the two countries would be beneficial.

Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat, told The Epoch Times that Beijing is sending out this message because of “its dependence on cooperation with the U.S.”

He noted, for example, that the Chinese regime allowed U.S. investment, only to encourage intellectual property theft and transfer of know-how through joint ventures with Chinese firms.

In addition, China is no longer the world’s manufacturing base. Some international firms have turned to other countries to set up factories, such as Vietnam, Chen added.

Feng Chongyi, a China expert at the University of Technology Sydney, expressed that the West, led by the United States, has essentially ended its 30 to 40 years of appeasement towards China. In the United States, policymakers are headed in the direction of decoupling from the CCP, according to Feng.

He also noted that with a worsening economic downturn, China’s growth rate will likely drop drastically. The Chinese regime thus needs all the business it can get from the United States and other markets, he said.

Yuan Hongbing, a jurist and China expert, said in an interview that the CCP’s “wolf-warrior diplomacy” and its aggressive influence campaigns worldwide has awakened the international community. Now, countries are increasingly advocating for a harsher China policy.

The U.S. administration has in recent months brought up the possibility of decoupling from China.

On June 23, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said a decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies would occur if U.S. companies were not allowed to compete on a fair and level basis in China’s economy.

On Aug. 23, U.S. President Donald Trump, in a Fox News interview, raised the possibility of decoupling the U.S. economy from China.

Two week later, on Labor Day, Trump again raised the prospect, urging manufacturing jobs and key supply chains to be brought back from China to the United States.