Chinese Media Discuss the West’s Drive To Economically Decouple from China

Aug. 15, 2022 (EIRNS)—Western financial interests are pushing forward in their campaign to decouple the economies of the U.S. and Europe from China, much as they are doing with Russia—which will lead to even worse physical economic devastation of the Western economies themselves than the Russian sanctions have produced.

The semi-official Chinese daily Global Times commented yesterday that the U.S. announcement of “new export controls on four emerging and foundational technologies that support the production of advanced semiconductors and gas turbine engines ... [is] mainly aimed at further decoupling semiconductor supply chains of China and the U.S., marking the first semiconductor-related move after U.S. President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law.”

Chips, however, “are the product of global collaboration, and the formation and development of the semiconductor industrial chain is the result of the interaction based on market rule,” Global Times argued.

“If the U.S. is intended to decouple itself from China in a ‘chip war,’ it will have to rope in other allies to form a technological iron curtain that effectively end up splitting the current global supply chain into two. Yet, it is highly questionable whether the U.S. has the ability to pull the whole world into its ‘chip war.’... It is actually sabotaging its own supply chain by inviting more risks. If Washington is determined to keep the so-called ‘chip war’ going, it must be ready for China to fight back. Given the scale and capacity of Chinese manufacturing, there is no other country that can replace China’s role, which is why a decoupling from China for U.S. semiconductor supply chain is impossible.”

On the delisting of Chinese companies on the U.S. stock exchanges, a prominent Global Times opinion column by Hu Xijin argues that “Chinese companies’ delisting is a response to U.S. coercion, not a choice of decoupling.” Although he does not think that “China and the U.S. are about to decouple completely,” he notes that the giant Alibaba may be the next Chinese company to depart the U.S. financial markets. “Alibaba Group announced last month that it was planning a dual primary listing in Hong Kong, getting ready to possibly delist from the U.S.”

In all of these cases,

“to delist from the U.S. is not a proactive choice by China, but a response to coercion from the new regulations in the U.S.... The delisting of many Chinese state-owned enterprises from the U.S. is our countermeasure to safeguard our security and development rights... Conflict is not China’s goal, and so-called decoupling from the U.S. is not China’s wish.... But of course, China will prepare various plans to deal with extreme actions by the U.S. and maintain the bottom line thinking.”