Xi Jinping and Joe Biden. Saul Loeb/AFP through 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 extra, thwarting Beijing’s work to catch up to the US, he stated.
• “A single of them has to be incorrect — and it is possibly China,” the Claremont McKenna College professor stated.

Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden are each placing national safety above the economy, but China will bear greater fees 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 goods.

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 also, Pei stated.

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 most significant economy, he added.

“On the other hand, the fees of a safety-centered improvement method are most likely to be substantially greater for China than for the US,” Pei predicted.

Currently, earlier expectations of a sturdy 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 stated.

Meanwhile, he added that Xi’s “obsession with safety” will make it tougher for foreign firms to do company in China. That is as firms are getting investigated for potentially breaking safety regulations, even though an updated espionage law tends to make operating in China substantially extra intimidating.

“Chinese actions to strengthen its financial defenses will most likely be far extra expensive than their US equivalents, hurting China substantially extra 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 method of financial attrition. A single of them has to be incorrect — and it is possibly China.”

NOW WATCH: Common Videos from Insider Inc.

Loading…