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US-China relations
OpinionChina Opinion
Alex Lo
Alex Lo

As I see it | US threats to decouple from China only expose its own vulnerability

Washington blames Beijing for being unreliable but, for Chinese policymakers, export controls are merely a response to US trade provocations

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A container ship arrives at the Port of Oakland, in California, on October 10. Photo: Getty Images via AFP
Alex Loin Toronto
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. After Beijing announced sweeping export controls last week on rare earths and other critical minerals, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went ballistic.

“Maybe there is some Leninist business model where hurting your customers is a good idea, but they are the largest supplier to the world,” he said.

Someone from Beijing might have retorted that Washington has been running on some fascist business model whereby it is upending the entire global trade system with almost universal tariffs. And then, for years, it has relentlessly targeted and tried to undermine Chinese companies and multiple industries, including hi-tech fields and sectors based in Xinjiang. They have done so with sanctions, blacklisting and dodgy prosecutions, and pushing for allied countries to join its containment of China.
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This week, Bessent has threatened decoupling with China, not only from the United States but the world. “If China wants to be an unreliable partner to the world, then the world will have to decouple,” he said. “The world does not want to decouple. We want to de-risk. But signals like [export controls] are signs of decoupling, which we don’t believe China wants.”

How does Washington plan on accomplishing that for the whole world? The 63-year-old Treasury secretary is sounding a bit like the line from William Shakespeare’s King Lear: “I will have such revenges on you both / That all the world shall – I will do such things – / What they are yet I know not, but they shall be / The terrors of the Earth!”

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Somehow, I doubt Beijing will be especially terrified. For one thing, if you substitute China with the US in the above quote from Bessent, it would be even more appropriate: The US is the real “unreliable partner to the world”. China’s latest action is a direct response to Washington’s multi-year tech and trade war against it.

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