Having hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese investment in the United States was a powerful source of influence that is dwindling rapidly and is in fact shrinking more quickly than bilateral trade. Tariffs can be imposed or lifted almost at the whim of a presidential tweet, but creating a welcoming climate for inward investment takes longer to build.
Read moreA Cold War Is Coming, and It Isn’t China’s Fault
Relations between the United States and China, which had been slowly deteriorating for several years, have taken a decisive turn for the worse. With all indications pointing to things getting substantially more strained before they get better, talk of a new Cold War has become common. And if that happens, it will be because the United States.
Read more‘Authoritative’ Pessimism in China
China’s economy, long a source of global dynamism, is changing into a source of instability. Growth, still rapid by international standards, is gradually decelerating, as a nearly three-decade-old investment- and export-led strategy delivers diminishing returns. Yet the Communist Party, beholden to — or composed of — interest groups that benefit from the status quo, has not shifted decisively toward more reliance on consumer demand and investment by private firms. Instead, Beijing continues to goose short-term growth with loans to bloated state-owned banks and industries.
Read moreChina’s Buying Up Foreign Companies, So the U.S. Might Need to Rethink its Trade Strategy
Chinese President Xi Jinping has a problem related to his nation’s growing demand for high-quality food and other agricultural products. In December 2013, Mr. Xi declared a strategic goal for China: to seize “the commanding heights in biotechnology,” in areas such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It must “not let large foreign companies dominate the agricultural biotechnology product market,” he said. However, China is still years behind the United States and Europe in research and development.
Read moreDon't Worry About China
Over the past month, as Greece has occupied headlines, China has been rocked by a crashing stock market. The oscillations appear far from over, with the Shanghai exchange up 6 percent on Wednesday, having plummeted more than 30 percent in the weeks before, which still leaves the index up about 80 percent over the past 52 weeks. That amounts to trillions of dollars gained and then lost in a very short time.
Read moreLead, America, or Get Out of the World’s Way
The United States is doing a poor job of leading the global economy. But apparently we won’t let anyone else lead it either. In a world increasingly defined by the global flow of goods and services, Washington finds not just curiously adrift but actively at odds with itself and a coherent approach.
Read moreIn the Context of No Context
Twenty-five years ago, China made a choice. Rather than embrace the demands for greater political openness emanating from the students and protesters camped in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the leadership of the Communist Party decided to crush the protests with lethal force on June 4, 1989, leading to hundreds and perhaps thousands of deaths.
Read moreZachary Karabell: U.S. - China Relations
After more than a decade of intimate economic relations, China and the United States have become deeply intertwined. Historian Zachary Karabell maintains that while neither country is fully at ease with this partnership, the occasional tension over intellectual property, human rights, and regional strategy pales in comparison to the deepening and on-going economic bonds that tie the two countries together.
Read moreZachary Karabell on the Brave New World: Understanding the Impact of U.S. China Trade Relations
Zachary Karabell discusses the global trade relations and analyzes how China's economic success is inextricably linked to the buoyancy of the U.S. economy.
Read moreThe U.S. China Relationship
"The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship? China, the U.S. and the Future of the World's Most Important Bilateral Economic Relationship," February 6,2012. Featuring: Zachary Karabell, President of River Twice Research, award winning Portfolio Manager of the China-US Growth Fund, author of "Superfusion: How China and American Became One Economy and Why the World's Prosperity Depends on It."
Read moreMaking Sense of a Changing China (Highlights)
Robert D. Hormats of the U.S. Department of State, Zachary Karabell of River Twice Research, and Gary Rieschel of Qiming Venture Partners discuss the role of China in a technologized age at the Techonomy 2012 conference in Tucson, Ariz. Here are some highlights of the session.
Read moreMaking Sense of a Changing China
As China’s influence expands, how will it influence global innovation?
Read moreChina’s Not the Big Trade Cheat Harming America’s Domestic Economy
As in 2008, China has again emerged as a central campaign issue. On the stump, Mitt Romney has emphasized that if he is president, China will no longer run roughshod over the United States as he contends it has during the Obama administration. “On day one,” he thunders, “I will declare China a currency manipulator, allowing me to put tariffs on products where they are stealing American jobs unfairly. We can compete when there’s a level playing field, and we’d win.”
Read moreHard or Soft Landing for China? How About No Landing
The past few weeks in financial-land have been dominated by two combustible fears: 1.) that this time Greece really will default on its debts and plunge the Eurozone into chaos; and 2.) that this time China really will hit the brakes and bring much of global economic activity down with it. One of these fears alone would be enough to roil markets. Together they have been a potent and toxic mix.
Read moreHu’s on First — China and the United States
So Hu came to Washington, met with some CEOs, had a nice dinner and a 21-gun salute, and opened the Chinese purse to the tune of $45 billion in new business between China and the United States. The buzz was mostly positive, and the billions didn’t hurt. But it’s safe to say that most Americans are hardening into a view of China as a hostile competitive threat, and many Chinese have concluded that while the 20th century may have belonged to the United States, the 21st belongs to them.
Read moreThe China Blame Game
So bipartisanship isn’t dead. By a vote of 348-79, Democrats and Republicans alike put aside their acrimonious differences and agreed, at least for a moment, to stop blaming each other for the sad state of American economic life. Instead, they agreed to blame China.
Read moreThe U.S. and China: The Defining Issue of Our Day
In his current Asian trip, President Obama visits Japan, then addresses a forum of leaders in Singapore, and eventually ends up in Seoul to discuss nukes and North Korea. But make no mistake, the axis of this week is the time Obama will spend in China, which has catapulted to the forefront of international affairs and is on its way to joining the United States as the alpha and omega of the global economic system.
Read moreSuperfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It
The economic relationship between China and the United States is the defining issue of our day. While debates over health care are vital to American society, and while challenges ranging from Iran to Afghanistan to North Korea are real, nothing will determine the arc of the coming decades — or will shape domestic life and prosperity in the United States — more than the emergence of China as a global economic superpower unrivaled except by America.
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Krugman Is Wrong: Why China Won’t Revalue
For years, Americans have been fulminating about China and its policy toward currency. While many of the debates are technical and laden with econo-speak, they boil down to the simple conviction that China is unfairly manipulating its currency to keep it undervalued against the dollar. The result is to give China unfair advantages in trade - flooding the US with cheap goods, hurting labor wages world-wide, and accumulating massive surpluses in the process.
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Zachary Karabell: U.S.-China Trade
National trade statistics do a bad job of capturing the reality of U.S.-China economic relations, says Karabell.
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