China's Window To Rebuild A Decent Working Relationship

It will be a new cool war, not a repeat of the Cold War of the 1945-1990 period.

- Hamish Mcrae

Viewed from here in Washington DC, the workmanlike relationship between President Biden and President Xi who met in Bali ahead of the G20 summit is the best model for the relationship between the world’s largest and second-largest economies for the next decade and more.

In areas where it is in their mutual self-interest, such as combatting the climate crisis, they will cooperate. In areas where it is not, they will compete. Both accept that the world economy is splitting into two areas of influence, and that is where the battle for dominance will be. But this battle will stop short of an economic war on the scale of the one now being led by the US against Russia. Each has too much at stake.

For people who bought the notion, popular a few years ago, that national boundary will fade and the world will be run by political and business elites' extreme globalisation this is one more nail in the coffin.

Remember the idea of Davos man”, shorthand for that elites view of the world, exemplified by the grandees who met every year at the Swiss ski resort of Davos? It shut down after the pandemic stuck but was revived in cutback form in May this year, with Sam Bankman-Fried among the headlined speakers. A couple of weeks earlier, he had shared a platform in the Bahamas with two Davos alumni, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.)