Atlantic Council posted statements by Gina Raimondo, US Commerce Secretary: US companies are increasingly considering relocating their operations from China, said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, after many had to close their Russian operations earlier this year amid Moscow’s war against Ukraine. “I’m hearing it from US CEOs, even from companies that have been manufacturing in China for decades,” Raimondo said Thursday in an Atlantic Council Front Page event. “The climate is getting tougher: uncertainty, [Chinese President Xi Jinping’s] increase toward autocracy. It’s hard to argue with them.”. Her comment came in a conversation with Keith Krach, co-chair of the Global Tech Security Commission—a joint initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University. It was one of many glimpses Raimondo offered into the high-stakes race between the United States and China to dominate tech and other sectors. Stability and security will increasingly be a linchpin of the American pitch to multinational companies.
If China is a ‘strategic competitor’, in the prevailing geostrategic climate it is considered an ‘enemy’. And this, if only for reasons of realism, is unacceptable.
Economic reasons, particularly those brought up by Raimondo and relating to the possible choices of American multinationals, cannot prevail in the complex construction of the US-China relationship. There is also a lot of rhetoric because in the globalised interrelationship it is quite impossible, and unthinkable, to move towards ‘strategic separations’.
We must persist with the diplomatic route. At stake, in fact, is the political sustainability of the planet. The path of realism requires us not to have antagonistic visions (which does not mean not having critical thinking) but to work outside the established patterns of the 20th century. Rather, we should look to new ‘glocal architectures’ in the construction of which everyone must play a role. Continuing on the path of ‘antagonistic competition’ will only lead to mutual radicalisation and increase systemic unsustainability.
