U.S. a stumbling block for global economic recovery

The world economy is struggling along as the COVID-19 epidemic continues spreading and has greatly impacted global production and demand.

At this point, it is needed more than ever for the international community to strengthen comprehensive cooperation to foster a strong force against the pandemic and to jointly roll out stronger macropolicy to hedge against the outbreak and reverse economic decline.

However, some U.S. politicians are obsessed with making troubles. Recently, they have wantonly stigmatized the international environment for economic cooperation and accused China of engaging in an “economic blitzkrieg” and attempting to raid the U.S. instead of trading with it.

They have also advocated U.S. economic and technological decoupling from China, trying to sabotage the global industrial chain and supply chain. Such ridiculous attempts seriously disobey the reality and will only set up a stumbling block for global economic recovery.

While the confirmed cases and fatalities of COVID-19 in America continue to rise, the real GDP of the U.S. contracted at an annualized rate of 32.9 percent in the second quarter, the worst decline since the government began keeping records in 1947.

Fitch Ratings downgraded its outlook on the U.S. credit rating from “stable” to “negative” in a recent report.

The U.S. economy cratered into a “very deep and dark hole” in Q2, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “We’re coming out of it, but it’s going to take a long time to get out,” Zandi added.

While most parts of the world are slowly climbing out of the “blockade”, the U.S. has remained an outsider among advanced economies because of its uneven management of the crisis, as pointed out by The Financial Times.

It is U.S. policy that threatens to pull the world under now as the country’s troubled response to the coronavirus pandemic emerges as a chief risk to any sustained global recovery, said an article published on Reuters.

Faced with such a severe situation, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other officials, however, seem bent on starting a new Cold War against China.

By stirring things up with ideologies and attempting to decouple from China, they fantasize about passing the buck on China and whitewashing the U.S. government’s inability to contain the epidemic and the economic downturn back home. But their trick will never work.

American economists have publicly pointed out that some U.S. politicians lack common sense of economics, and the international community is worried that the world economy will suffer even greater losses after the silly shows put on by Pompeo and other U.S. officials.

Some economists warn that decoupling would amount to building giant trade barriers between the world’s two largest economies, which could send the cost of goods up, reduce economic growth and set the table for an economic cold war, according to an article on American news website The Hill.

Former U.S. senior diplomat Charles Freeman noted that decoupling will injure and impoverish both countries as well as the rest of the world.

One of the keys to solving the current world economic crisis is to jointly maintain the stability of the global industrial chain and supply chain. China’s role in the global industrial and supply chains has been decided by both the law of markets and the choices of enterprises.

While preventing and controlling the epidemic, China has been promoting the resumption of work, production, business and market in an orderly manner.

China’s economy grew by 3.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter. Its manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) rose to 51.1 in July, expanding for the fifth consecutive month (a reading above 50 indicates expansion).

The hard-won economic performance of China counts as a precious sign of global economic recovery.

China will—more than ever—promote world economic growth once again, said an article published on German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

It should be noted that the U.S. has recently resorted to state power to suppress certain Chinese companies, which was outright hegemony and has posed a threat to the upgrade of the global industrial chain on the normal track.

Pompeo announced on August 2 that U.S. President Donald Trump would announce new action ”in the coming days” related to Chinese software companies that his administration views as a threat to U.S. national security.

Prior to this, the U.S. also went out of its ways to interfere in the 5G network construction in other countries and openly coerced some countries into excluding Chinese tech company Huawei in their 5G international cooperation.

It is evident that the U.S. is deliberately generalizing the concept of national security, making the threats against relevant companies based on the presumption of guilt and without any evidence.

Such moves run counter to the principles of a free-market economy, reveal the U.S. hypocrisy in so-called “upholding fairness and freedoms” and its typical double standards, and violate the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles of openness, transparency, and non-discrimination.

The basic theories of international economics show that no single country has all the resources, technologies and capabilities required for a new round of global technological and industrial upgrading.

China-U.S. decoupling in science and technology will only undermine the global scientific and technological innovation system and hinder the recovery of world economy.

Innovation is one of the most important drivers of world economic growth. The practices of some U.S. officials have clearly obstructed the long-term development of global economy.

Billions of dollars in tech revenue are at risk across Asia Pacific following the most recent U.S. restrictions on Huawei, according to a report by S&P Global Ratings, an American credit rating agency.

The practice of seeking decoupling of science and technology has seriously disrupted the order of globalization, said an article on Foreign Policy.

The world is witnessing a time with an overwhelming trend toward peace and cooperation, openness and connectivity, as well as reform and innovation.

Countries must have an opener mindset and take more open steps, and work together to make the pie of the global market even bigger. They need to strengthen the mechanisms for sharing benefits globally, and explore new ways of international cooperation. The goal is to give more impetus to economic globalization and remove impediments as much as possible.

Such a vision of development has been widely acknowledged by the international society. The world welcomes propellers for win-win cooperation, rather than stumbling blocks that do nothing but to cause troubles.

As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. is supposed to make more contributions to world economic recovery.

Some U.S. officials should heed the voices from the international community, provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for market entities of other countries to invest and operate in the U.S., stop politicizing trade and economic issues, and stop promoting discrimination and policies of exclusion through abusing the concept of national security.

Hopefully, they could make a right choice out of their responsibilities for both the American and world economy.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)