Obama and Xi walking White House Photo/Pete Souza

Rethinking the Sino-American Relationship

In early July, senior US and Chinese officials will gather in Beijing for the sixth Strategic and Economic Dialogue. With bilateral frictions mounting on a number of fronts, the summit offers an opportunity for a serious reconsideration of the relationship between the world’s two most powerful countries.

NEW HAVEN – In early July, senior US and Chinese officials will gather in Beijing for the sixth Strategic and Economic Dialogue. With bilateral frictions mounting on a number of fronts – including cyber security, territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas, and currency policy – the summit offers an opportunity for a serious reconsideration of the relationship between the world’s two most powerful countries.

The United States and China are locked in an uncomfortable embrace – the economic counterpart of what psychologists call “codependency.” The flirtation started in the late 1970s, when China was teetering in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and the US was mired in a wrenching stagflation. Desperate for economic growth, two needy countries entered into a marriage of convenience.

China was quick to benefit from an export-led economic model that was critically dependent on America as its largest source of demand. The US gained by turning to China for low-cost goods that helped income-constrained consumers make ends meet; it also imported surplus savings from China to fill the void of an unprecedented shortfall of domestic saving, with the deficit-prone US drawing freely on China’s voracious appetite for Treasury securities.

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