What informed your early views about China?
Go back all the way to 1973 when the Paracel Islands were taken over by China, then in 1988 the takeover of another little island from Vietnamese soldiers, then in 1995 the takeover of Mischief Reef, and then Scarborough Shoal. The US Navy never stopped China from doing this, even though it would have been easy to do and South Vietnam and the Philippines were our allies.
The more I did research into it, the more I started feeling like it was because of our trade relations with China. Business people had a lot of influence in DC to stop us from defending our interests in the South China Sea, which now is kind of obvious. But back then it really wasn't so obvious.
Where do believe we should be focused today?
China and Russia are linked in terms of their aggressive actions. Iran is also linked. I would argue Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Of course there's North Korea, which no one talks about anymore, which worries me, because I know those guys are bad. Why aren't they making any noise, why are they so quiet at this point now?
The US Navy is now getting involved in the Red Sea, which of course is far away from Taiwan, which also worries me. I think we need to start asking questions about what kind of links are there between all these bad actors.
I also think we need to rope in our allies, partners, and other democracies. For example, I think we need to demand that India be a team player. It wants to be part of the old non-aligned system and do business with Russia and even China. To be fair, their criticism of us when we say that is “oh, well you still trade with China so why can't we trade with Russia?” That's true.
That means we need to move forward on decoupling so that we're not being hypocritical.
I think if we're going to put a lot of investment into places like Vietnam and India, we need to demand that those countries be better team players in terms of China and Russia. We should be asking Vietnam to democratize before putting a lot of money in there. We should be asking them to make some progress, because we don't want to be in the same problem that we've been in with China, empowering them through trade, and then watching them turn against us. I worry about that with Vietnam.
What is your view on a doctrine of reciprocity with China?
It's a no brainer. I'm astonished that we haven't been following it for decades.
I would go back to it in the same way with my confusion about the South China Sea. Why weren't we taking action against China? The fact that our businesses are being hurt by a lack of reciprocity would indicate the CCP has us so far over a barrel that we're not even looking out for our own corporate interests in China.
To me it's just astonishing and surprising. I think it's a real indicator that the CCP influence in the US government is way too deep. It must be to explain the lack of reciprocity for decades.
How do we mange a process of de-risking or decoupling from China?
I think of de-risking as a step towards decoupling. When people make this distinction between de-risking and decoupling, I don't really see it.
No one is really proposing that we decouple tomorrow, which would mean that all of the ships that are headed here and vice versa turn around. No one's really seriously proposing that, so it's all about gradually increasing and decoupling. Decouple as a binary word. You're either coupled or you're not coupled, so it's really not a good word for it.
It's a gradual process, and I think the question is “how fast do you do it and is it an offramp?”
What do you see as steps to transition away from over dependence on China?
I think the China tariffs that the Trump administration put in were brilliant. They also surprised me in a very good way. I've never even thought about reimposing tariffs, and I think that surprised a lot of people.
Tariffs should be higher for countries that are not voting with the United States in the UN, or are not supporting democracy and human rights. They should not get a lot of foreign aid from the United States. And they should have their trade privileges revoked.
We need to start charging China for what they do to us. If they're stealing up to six hundred billion dollars a year in IP, there should be a charge for that. We need to get more aggressive with China economically.
Is this a matter of sending the right signals to deter bad actors?
That hits the nail on the head. It's our weakness with China, Russia, and Iran. That has actually been what gets them to escalate the conflicts.
They think they can walk over us. They think they can take Taiwan and we're not going to react. Part of that is because they walked on us in the past and we didn't react, whether it's Covid or IP. We don't actually take our money back.
The first step to deterring China from Taiwan is to say, “if you invade Taiwan we're going to charge you for any damages, and we're going to charge you for all the IP theft you've taken from us for decades, and all of the Covid damages.”
The Chinese Communist Party for decades has had a long-term goal of global hegemony. This is an incredibly globally expansive power. It's totalitarian, which only has recently been accepted as an adjective about China in the press. It's genocidal. So why would you give its GDP purchasing power parity?
You have argued that historically a shock is required for democracies to change gears into military mobilization. Is that what’s needed here?
The response to former Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan was an end to counternarcotics cooperation by the CCP, which basically means they're killing us on purpose. What's disappointing is that we have not made this clear to the American people.
Dr. Anders Corr is the publisher of the Journal of Political Risk.
