Os americanos (Executivo e Legislativo) preparam um "descasamento" bilateral com a China: será possível? - Olivier Knox (WP)

Estranho que as duas maiores economias do mundo sejam "desconectadas" uma da outra. Ou melhor: não é a China que pretende "descasar", ou as grandes companhias americanas, que ganharam muito dinheiro com a China nas últimas três ou quatro décadas, mas sim os americanos, por razões não exatamente econômicas, e sim de competição estratégica.

Os grandes impérios em competição – como a Alemanha e a Grã-Bretanha imperiais, por exemplo, na época da belle époque – realizavam sua corrida armamentista, isto é naval, antes da Grande Guerra, mas mantinham uma interação econômica bastante intensa.

Até onde essa iniciativa de um "falcão" da House vai prosperar, e até que limites ela pode prejudicar os próprios EUA?

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

 

House committee on China starts two-year drive to ‘decouple’ By Olivier Knox with research by Caroline Anders The Washington Post, February 28, 2023

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is chair of the House select committee focusing on the U.S.-China relationship.. (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)

Rep. Mike Gallagher said he doesn’t blame past leaders for betting that inviting China into the global economy would induce Beijing to follow rules set by liberal industrial powers, notably the United States, and become a good global citizen, perhaps even embrace political reforms. But it’s time to cut our losses. “Everyone made the same basic bet on China,” Gallagher told The Daily 202 in a phone interview on Sunday. “That bet made sense. It was logical. But it failed. So now we’re trying to extricate ourselves.” The Wisconsin Republican, a former Marine counterintelligence officer, chairs the weeks-old House committee on China. The panel holds its first hearing Tuesday, kicking off what he says will be a two-year effort to map a way for America to “selectively decouple” the two economies. The committee will take a big-picture look at Beijing’s military rise, its threats to take over the democratically self-governed island of Taiwan by force, and its overt and covert efforts to influence public opinion by silencing critics and spreading propaganda.

THE FIRST HEARING LINEUP

Gallagher will set the tone with the first hearing, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. The unusual evening schedule could widen the audience: Most congressional hearings occur during the day, when working Americans have a harder time tuning in.

The witnesses will be:

Matthew Pottinger, a longtime China hawk who served as the top Asia policy official on former president Donald Trump’s National Security Council. H.R. McMaster, a retired U.S. Army Lt. General who served Trump as national security adviser. Tong Yi, a Chinese human rights advocate and former secretary to one of China’s most prominent dissidents, Wei Jingsheng. Gallagher said Tong was “about as credible as any human being” on the topic of China’s domestic repression of critics. Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Gallagher said Paul, added to the list by Democrats, would detail the economic damage to the United States from Chinese competition.

“Our hope is to come away from this with a better sense of why the CCP is a threat and why someone in Northeast Wisconsin or other parts of the country should care about that threat,” Gallagher said, using the abbreviation for the Chinese Communist Party.

WITH 2024 LOOMING, CAN THIS STAY BIPARTISAN?

As The Daily 202 chronicled back in December, Gallagher may have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to stitch Republicans and Democrats together on sweeping policy responses to the challenge of China. That doesn’t mean there won’t be disagreements, even profound ones. “We’re not going to agree on 100% of everything,” he said Sunday. “There may be times when I want to go further and more aggressively than the Democrats want to go, and vice versa. But we’re going to try to preserve the bipartisan center of gravity.” Gallagher said “there’s a lot of disagreement about how exactly” America limits its economic relationship with China, but pointed to “a recognition in both parties” that this must happen. “I think we can come up with a coherent framework for selective decoupling that has the buy-in of 70% of Congress,” he said.

A ‘TENSE DIALOGUE' WITH CORPORATE AMERICA

The committee will also look at the troubled and sometimes troubling relationship between corporate America and China, especially instances in which big firms, Hollywood, or the NBA have sometimes bent over backward to accommodate Beijing.

Gallagher said his panel “is going to be calling certain businesses, certain industries, to either testify before, or talk to behind closed doors, the committee, and explain what the trade-offs are to doing business” in China. It could be “a tense dialogue at times.” “I understand why major American companies have a massive presence in China — same reason John Dillinger robbed banks: That’s where the money is,” Gallagher said. “And I get that the ship of state is an aircraft carrier, it doesn’t turn on a dime, so we’re not going to selectively decouple overnight, and I’m not calling for a complete decoupling.” But American taxpayer dollars cannot be “unwittingly funding Communist genocide or PLA [People’s Liberation Army] modernization.”

IS BIDEN A PARTNER? OR SOMEONE TO PRESSURE?

“It depends on the issue,” according to Gallagher, who said he sees an administration “divided” along several lines. The National Security Council and the Pentagon seem more inclined to confront China, he said, while officials whose top priority is fighting climate change believe in “a more cooperative relationship with China.” But there’s room to work together on issues like high tech, clearing a backlog of U.S. weapons shipments to Taiwan, trade, and taxation, he said. And perhaps the committee can help “empower” more hawkish officials inside the executive branch. “The American system is premised on the idea you can have competing views,” Gallagher said. “We’ll preserve room for honest disagreement and debate. It doesn’t need to be holding hands and singing Kumbaya all the time.”