Recent high-level meetings of the world’s key security protagonists have highlighted the need for dialogue. In the United States, key administration insiders signal a calming of the anti-China fervor that has taken over Washington.

As United States president Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sat together in the White House’s Oval Office last week, they may well have pondered whether either would still be in office after next year’s elections. The bookies have their doubts, but then the odds are hardly better for the war in Ukraine ending any time soon, or for a new United Nations regulatory regime for managing artificial intelligence (AI) being agreed. Both subjects were on their agenda.

AI technology may be a danger to humanity, according to 350 AI experts. Matt Clifford, who advises Sunak on AI, says policymakers must be prepared for casualties if mankind fails to control the technology.  However, not all experts believe it to be so. Arvind Narayanan, a professor of computer science at Princeton University, has said, “The history of technology to date suggests that the greatest risks come not from technology itself, but from the people who control the technology, using it to accumulate power and wealth.”

There is yet another question that may have featured in the White House discussions: Is the current American policy of containing China – particularly of restricting its access to technology – the right one?  And, is it reasonable for the Biden-Harris administration to expect America’s Western allies to slavishly follow its antagonism towards China?

But these were issues central to recent policy speeches by two of the most important U.S. administration officials, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. These were not political speeches to be discarded as empty rhetoric and unfulfillable promises; they contained information and observations that might lead an impartial observer to conclude that the United States should be seeking a much better long-term relationship with China.

Austin was speaking at the annual Asia-Pacific Security Dialogue in Singapore, an Institute of Strategic Studies event. He used the recent bout of incidents in the South China Sea involving the US Air Force and Navy to chafe China for responding with aerial intercepts. Washington would not be deterred by Beijing’s threatening behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly by the “alarming number of intercepts” by Chinese jets of US aircraft operating in the area, he said. One such incident involved a Chinese fighter jet flying “dangerously close” to a US spy plane. What would Washington do, one wonders, if a Chinese spy plane cruised up the Atlantic coast of America?  Meanwhile, Chinese representatives accused the US of provocation and preaching an Indo-Pacific strategy that “served the sole purpose of preserving its position as a hegemon.”

Despite his criticism of Beijing, the US defence chief directly called on China to engage with the Pentagon in a new round of talks. “The right time to talk is anytime, the right time to talk is every time, the right time to talk is now,” he said. China’s defence minister, Li Shangfu, also attended the meeting; he shook hands with Austin politely but declined an invitation for a face-to-face meeting. Austin made no mention of the fact, later revealed by the Financial Times, that CIA officials had visited China, apparently at the invitation of Beijing, for secret talks. Details have not been revealed.

Arguably, more significant was the speech to the Brookings Institute by U.S national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who went far beyond his brief to consider how America is reshaping the world economy. It makes compelling reading for those wanting to understand Biden’s new industrial policy, enshrined in the Inflation Reduction Act. The policy is nothing short of a fresh attempt to rebrand America’s world leadership credentials. At its heart, with the next presidential election in mind, is improving the conditions of the American middle and working classes, making the United States a leader in the fight against climate change and the transition to clean energy, repairing broken supply chains, and establishing a lead in key technologies that secure national security and boost economic growth.  Sullivan said the U.S. needed a new economic strategy to inject billions of dollars into selected sectors because America’s “industrial base has been hollowed out.” He argued that the vision of public investment that had energised the American project in the post-war years had faded, giving way “to a set of ideas that championed tax cutting and deregulation, privatization over public action, and trade liberalization as an end in itself.”

The pursuit of economic integration and liberalisation has cost America thousands of jobs, according to Sullivan. International economic policy in recent decades has been predicated on the belief that it would make nations more responsible and open, and that the global order would be more peaceful and cooperative—that bringing countries into the rules-based order would incentivise them to adhere to its rules. But, says Sullivan, “Economic integration didn’t stop China from expanding its military ambitions in the region or stop Russia from invading its democratic neighbours. Neither country had become more responsible or cooperative,” he pointed out, adding that dependencies and supply chain vulnerabilities in areas such as medical equipment, semiconductors, and critical minerals would be “exploited for economic or geopolitical leverage.”  While the People’s Republic of China had subsidised both traditional industrial sectors, like steel, and key industries of the future, like clean energy, digital infrastructure, and advanced biotechnologies, America had lost competitiveness in the critical technologies that would define the future.

The early results of the new strategy are already paying off. Large-scale investments in semiconductor and clean-energy production have already surged 20-fold since 2019, according to the Financial Times. But progress is from a low bar. America manufactures only around 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors, and production—especially of the most advanced chips—is geographically concentrated elsewhere. According to Sullivan, “This creates a critical economic risk and a national security vulnerability.”

When it comes to critical minerals—the backbone of the clean-energy future – the United States produces only 4 percent of the lithium, 13 percent of the cobalt, and none of the nickel or graphite required to meet current demand for electric vehicles; more than 80 percent of critical minerals are processed by one country, China.

The estimated public capital and private investment from President Biden’s agenda will amount to some US$3.5 trillion over the next decade. While the new American strategy got the nod from the European Union and Japan at last month’s G7 meeting in Hiroshima, there are many in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific who fear that investment and jobs will be lost to the United States as high-tech companies and green investors take advantage of the subsidies on offer from Washington. Sullivan insists that the US strategy is not “America alone, or America and the West to the exclusion of others,” but rather one that will build a fairer, more durable global economic order for the benefit of people everywhere. He tells us that creating a secure and sustainable economy in the face of the economic and geopolitical realities will require all our allies and partners to do more – and “there’s no time to lose.”

But it does not answer the question as to whether antagonism towards China is a wise idea. It seems to me very doubtful whether denying China access to important new technologies is going to work. Apart from the considerable European reservations about Washington’s anti-China policy, it is unlikely that many of the significant south-east Asian economies will want to join US actions. There must be a strong case for more genuine efforts to bring the world’s two largest economies closer together.

Colin Chapman FAIIA is a writer, broadcaster, public speaker, who specialises in geopolitics, international economics, and global media issues. He is a former president of AIIA NSW and was appointed a fellow of the AIIA in 2017. Colin is editor at large with Australian Outlook.

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