Xi Jinping and Joe Biden.Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Pictures

• China and the US are each placing national safety above the economy, Minxin Pei wrote in Bloomberg.

• But China’s economy will endure far more, thwarting Beijing’s work to catch up to the US, he mentioned.

• “A single of them has to be incorrect — and it is possibly China,” the Claremont McKenna College professor mentioned.

Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden are each placing national safety above the economy, but China will bear larger expenses in their game of financial attrition, Claremont McKenna College professor Minxin Pei wrote.

In a Bloomberg Opinion column on Wednesday, the scholar pointed to China’s current ban on the US semiconductor producer Micron and the US Inflation Reduction Act’s work to exclude some Chinese green power items.

Xi have to know that losing access to US technologies and markets will weigh on China’s development, but seems to be betting that US development will endure as well, Pei mentioned.

And with China’s price of development nonetheless anticipated to outpace the US, then the hope is that the world’s second-biggest economy will ultimately catch up to the world’s largest economy, he added.

“Having said that, the expenses of a safety-centered improvement tactic are probably to be a great deal larger for China than for the US,” Pei predicted.

Currently, earlier expectations of a robust Chinese post-Covid rebound look to have been misguided, as demand and manufacturing output fizzles out.

And with investors conscious that Beijing is placing safety above the economy, private investment has only risen .four% so far in 2023, Pei mentioned.

Meanwhile, he added that Xi’s “obsession with safety” will make it tougher for foreign organizations to do enterprise in China. That is as firms are becoming investigated for potentially breaking safety regulations, even though an updated espionage law tends to make operating in China a great deal far more intimidating.

“Chinese actions to strengthen its financial defenses will probably be far far more expensive than their US equivalents, hurting China substantially far more than the US. This will inevitably depress China’s development prospective and thwart its ambition to catch up to its rival,” Pei wrote.

“At the moment, each Beijing and Washington look confident that they can win with a tactic of financial attrition. A single of them has to be incorrect — and it is possibly China.”

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