Secretary Blinken played some word games during his visit to Beijing:
So, on the first part of the question, one of the important things for me to do on this trip was to disabuse our Chinese hosts of the notion that we are seeking to economically contain them. We’re not. And as I’ve said, we are not about decoupling; we’re about de-risking and diversifying.
De-risking has become the preferred term for Western governments to use to describe how they want to manage their economic ties with China. The distinction between de-risking and decoupling is evidently lost on the Chinese government, which sees the new term as nothing more than a euphemism for the same policy of containment. According to some observers, both terms are so poorly-defined that they can be used however government officials see fit. As SCMP columnist Alex Lo put it a few weeks ago, “So far as I can tell, if a Western politician wants to push for a hard line against China, she says “decoupling”. If she wants to sound more moderate, it’s “de-risking”.” Another way that it can be used is when politicians and officials want to dress up a hardline policy with moderate-sounding rhetoric.
It is hard to believe the administration’s claim that it is not pursuing economic containment when one of its signature initiatives has been to target China’s technology sector with export controls with the obvious purpose of hampering future growth and development. Patrick Porter wasn’t buying it:
If trying to kneecap China's chip industry is not containment, what is? Another case of his false consciousness. And the unipolar hangover, waging a cold war while being determined to call it other names.
Under the circumstances, Blinken’s denial that the U.S. is trying to contain China economically is not going to reassure the Chinese government. It will almost certainly cause Chinese officials to discount such rhetoric as a smokescreen. The U.S. and its allies can call their policy whatever they like, but they shouldn’t expect their exercise in rebranding to be taken seriously by the people being targeted by it.
One of the Chinese government’s big complaints about the Biden administration is that it has tended to say one thing about the relationship while it does something very different. The U.S. really has been pursuing a containment policy for the last several years, but it prefers to call this by the less aggressive-sounding name of “competition.” The administration repeatedly denies wanting a new Cold War, but then takes actions that are reminiscent of the Cold War. Blinken’s remarks seem to fit that same pattern. If the U.S. wants to have a more stable relationship with China, it has to make a much better effort at matching its words and actions.
De-risking can be quite severe, depending on how one defines it and how far one is willing to take it. As this New York Times analysis pointed out, de-risking has often referred to the way that financial institutions respond to broad sanctions by halting business with anyone that might expose them to the risk of sanctions violations. We have seen this with broad sanctions on entire economies as banks and firms choose not to do business with anyone in a targeted country for fear of getting on the wrong side of the U.S. government. Thus, the analysis concludes, “de-risking — in its common usage, pre-April — carries negative connotations of unnecessary exclusion.”
The U.S. has been pursuing a China containment policy in all but name, and we need to start calling it by its proper name if we are to weigh the costs and risks of the policy accurately. As long as the U.S. can hide behind euphemisms and pretend that it is doing something else, that will make it harder to identify the failings of the current policy and to make the needed course corrections later.