Grant Newsham — China-US trade: a long-term battle of system versus system ~ Mike Norman Economics

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Grant Newsham — China-US trade: a long-term battle of system versus system

It's not only a clash of systems, capitalism vs socialism, but also a clash of civilizations, Western bourgeois liberalism vs Chinese technocracy. S

Since the world's largest economy comes to dominate geopolitically, only one system is viable in the final analysis (although China claims that other systems can co-exist).

As China rises this clash will only intensify until one hegemon wins. The US sees the window of opportunity closing, while China realizes that time is on its side.

This leads to a Thucydides trap and potentially to war.

Although this post attempt to be objective and makes many good points, it is written by a Westerner from a Western worldview that does not completely elude the Western ideological biases he mentions that skew most Western thinking on China and the Chinese. Of course, the same goes for the Chinese. We are all prisoners of our worldview to one degree or other. It's possible to expand one's worldview but not to escape it. This is the difficulty that underlies Sino-American rivalry that is exacerbated by presumptions of cultural and national exceptionalism on both side.

Asia Times
China-US trade: a long-term battle of system versus system
Grant Newsham

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