‘Confrontation first before cooperation is reached’

BEIJING: China and the United States may be stuck in a cycle of “fighting and talking” until 2035, according to a senior Chinese government researcher, who said relations will get worse before they get better.

For the next few years, both sides would test each other’s strategic intentions and be prone to misjudgments that would make trade talks difficult, said Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges.

Zhang previously worked at the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner, and is now on their academic committee.

The most difficult period would be 2021 to 2025 and there could be friction in the areas of economy, trade, technology, and finance, he said at a briefing organised by the government on Wednesday.

From 2026 to 2035, China and the US might head towards “rational cooperation” from “irrational confrontation”, said Zhang.

China uses a series of five-year plans to organise its economic development and 2035 marks the year Beijing seeks to achieve “socialist modernisation” when the country will join the ranks of the world’s most innovative countries, a blueprint laid out by President Xi Jinping in 2017 showed.

Prospects for a quick trade deal with the US have dimmed after talks stalled earlier this month and President Donald Trump threatens to hobble Chinese technology firms.

The breakdown of the current talks was caused by the US demanding that China make sweeping changes immediately on the trade balance, structural reform and legal amendments, said Zhang.

That was too much too quickly, he said.

“None of these three topics can be realised in the short term,” he said, adding that the enforcement system required by the US was beyond China’s own capabilities and the demanded legal changes were “too high a technical bar”.

It would take time for China to improve its capacities nationwide, he said, citing the vast gap between the country’s metropolises and landlocked poor regions.

The US put forward a demanding package, told China to do it in one step, and threatened punishment if it didn’t happen, said Zhang.

For the Chinese, “this sounds like a return to 1840. Is that fair?” he asked, referring to the treaty the Qing Dynasty was forced to sign after losing the first Opium War.

Another academic said the “hostile assumptions” of the US were caused by a “trust deficit” that would worsen bilateral economic relations.