Expert says US undermining globalization by seeing China as threat

HONG KONG - The United States is undermining globalization by seeing China's economic rise as a security threat, an expert has warned recently.

In a commentary published in the South China Morning Post on Sunday, Anthony Rowley, a veteran journalist specializing in Asian economic and financial affairs, expressed his opposition to "security"-focused analyses by the US, which understates the complexities and mutual benefits of economic interaction.

While globalization has brought many economic benefits, such analysis tends to poison relations among nations and creates tensions that can quickly pass from economic and sectoral to the state level, Rowley said, adding that such analysis also threatens ideological or even physical confrontation.

Rowley took the tensions between China and the US as an example and in particular cited trade and technology wars waged by former US President Donald Trump.

Trump's punitive tariffs to imports of Chinese goods are a policy that economists agree has hurt US consumers more than those in China, he said.

Rowley said China's foreign trade growth after it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 is often misunderstood.

Rowley cited a book of Xing Yuqing, an economics professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, saying China has become a global trading giant, rather than the often alleged "threat" by legitimate means.

By inserting itself in global value chains in manufacturing and assembly, China, through its competitive advantage in labor-intensive goods, gave multinational corporations a low-cost means to massively boost production and sales, according to the book.

But much of the benefit from this boost accrues to the global corporations, which "led to a significant exaggeration of China's exports to and trade surplus with the United States" and to "distortion by conventional trade statistics of the trade imbalance", Rowley said.

While lamenting that globalization will fall victim to the great power competition, Rowley said that China is trying to keep globalization alive with new trade agreements and international infrastructure building.

China's opening-up has benefited multinational corporations eager to enter the world's biggest consumer market, he added.