I’m flagging the ‘paper’ this week despite it being poorly written, un-reviewed, lacking rigor and by somebody who’s claimed affiliation (London School of Economics) I have a question mark over.
Having said all that, Neha Baid in the monograph linked to below, makes such a startling, counterintuitive point about the state of relations between the U.S. and China I think the one point alone is worth highlighting.
It’s simply this: the U.S. and China trade war has now morphed into a fight for technology supremacy, and this was inevitable. Particularly as most advanced technologies have potential military/offensive capability.
If we take the last cold-war as a guide however this need not be a bad thing for the Rest of the World (ROW). Last time around the competition put burrs under the saddles of both parties and the world reaped the benefits of technologies developed faster than would have otherwise been the case.
This time around it looks we may be enjoying a similar acceleration of development. Moreover, as Ms. Baid points out although China isn’t opening its market to many U.S. companies they still have plenty of world to play in. Ditto China, cut out of the U.S. to sell their communications products and cheap EVs to, their domestic market is big enough to support independent development and they similarly have plenty of non-U.S. and U.S.-influenced world to sell surplus capacity into.
The elephant in the room of course was, and is now, potential military conflict. Last time around a series of rolling proxy wars took place but the world was a net beneficiary as direct Super Power conflict never broke out.
This time around we seem to be managing without even the proxy wars and so for ROW Inc. (and the Super Powers themselves) this new conflict is looking, surprisingly, like a net win. Long may the winning continue.
You can read the article in full via this link U.S.’s Tech War Against China.
Happy Sunday.