A hegemon’s erroneous logic
Chunyi’s MA thesis Research Memo
FT’s Edward Luce writes:
“The US has endorsed a zero-sum metric in which China’s rise is seen as being at America’s expense.”
and
“There are two big risks to Biden’s gamble. The first is that America is now close to making regime change in China its implicit goal. The new restrictions are not confined to the export of high-end US semiconductor chips. They extend to any advanced chips made with US equipment. This incorporates almost every non-Chinese high-end exporter, whether based in Taiwan, South Korea or the Netherlands. The ban also extends to “US persons”, which includes green card holders as well as US citizens. That presents a binary choice between America or China. Most will choose the US. But there are tens of thousands of Chinese green card holders who will now be inclined to believe Beijing’s claim that there can be no such thing as divided loyalty.”
This type of “binary logic” is simply erroneous from the US side — why not “both-and” instead of the binary “either or”?
As I am viewing these developments from a climate perspective (topic of MA thesis “The future signals of Chinese green finance and the question of global multilevel climate innovation partnerships”), this escalation is highly worrisome. Hegemonic competition must be balanced with room for cooperation on behalf of climate. Why? Ultimately, because the science says it must.