A manage decline and settlement into a much reduced, but still comfortable position was China’s preferred solution to dealing with America, but that went out the window when Trump tried to destroy China’s economic future.
You can’t start a fight to the death and then call time out when it looks like you are the one who is going to die. Some moves can’t be walked back, because at its core, the total breakdown of trust is irrevocable. Just what assurances can Trump and America give China that it won’t try to kill China’s economy ever again that China can believe them? And this goes beyond just Trump, because the silence across the American political spectrum about him crossing this most fundamental of red lines is deafening and speaks all that needs to be said. No one in power in America sees Trump’s attempt to destroy China’s economic future as wrong. They just didn’t think the way he went about that is best. How can you have any trust with someone who wants you dead? Without that most bare minimum of trust, what relationships can you have with them?
The economic relationship between China and America is irrevocably destroyed now. Full decoupling is in full swing, and China is driving that as much as America with Boeing delivery refusals and rare earth bans. I would go as far as to say that China is swinging into full war prep now, although there will be much deliberate concealment of that decision and the nature of arms procurement means that definitive proof probably won’t be seen for years. Much of the war prep will probably be disguised as economic stimulus to mitigate the economic impacted of the decoupling.
I think a countdown is now underway in Beijing. The key question of whether that is for the economic death blow to America, or for full kinetic warfare is probably irrelevant and academic at this point, as I think China will feel it needs to be fully prepared for the later even if it only intends the former, and if it is prepared for the later, when the time comes, will it even bother to limit itself just to the former?
