Don’t be fooled by the underwhelming phase-one trade deal between the United State and China, the planet’s biggest and most consequential break-up is underway.
The roots of the superpower split go back 20 years and have only been building with nationalistic tendencies growing on both sides of the Pacific.
When China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001 reformers in Beijing and friends abroad dreamed that it would liberalize its economy and, perhaps, its politics too, smoothing its integration into a Western-led world order.
As The Economist reports, “that vision has died.”
The 2008 financial crisis forced America to turn inward and freaked out the stability at all costs Chinese Communist Party.
In recent years China views America with growing distrust and scorn.
-Marc
