The US, allies see opportunity and risk in China’s slowing economy
In China’s current economic travails, US and other Group of Seven nations increasingly see evidence of deep-seated structural problems that ultimately will strengthen the West’s hand against a weakening geopolitical competitor. The view emerging from officials in Washington, Rome, Tokyo and other capitals, who spoke with Bloomberg News mostly on condition of anonymity in recent days, is that the dominant economic narrative that has guided the flows of capital around the globe for decades is flipping fast.
If China once seemed on an inevitable path to overtaking a declining America as the world’s leading economic power, that’s no longer the case. The calculations in Washington and beyond are increasingly about how to deal with a China that, even if it is not yet in absolute decline, may well be approaching a peak in power.
President Joe Biden betrayed that growing sentiment at a campaign event earlier this summer when he called China’s economy a “ticking time bomb" because of long-term challenges from debt to demographics. Aboard a high-speed train from Beijing to Shanghai on Tuesday, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said American companies had told her China had become increasingly “uninvestible." “The conventional wisdom seems to be flipping from a concern with the unstoppable rise of Chinese power to a worry about the irrevocable decline of China’s economy and population," says Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
It’s a view that’s been quietly growing within the Biden administration. In a June interview with Bloomberg News on the eve of a trip to Beijing, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called China’s now-declining population “a challenge in terms of
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