Manufacturing Might: Power in the Age of Decoupling

After a meeting between senior officials on the weekend on May 10th, China and the US have formally announced a 90-day truce in their trade war. Both sides have since drawn back some of the excessive tariffs that were imposed in early April. They’ve committed to establish a new mechanism for dialogue and keep talks going. The White House has called this a “historic deal”; Beijing has been much more cautious in its language. So where’s all this going?

On this episode of The Great Power Show, geopolitical analyst Yanmei Xie unpacks the essential aspects of Sino-US economic competition. She has previously worked with Gavekal Research, and as a journalist in Washington covering US national politics. Yanmei believes that decoupling between China and the US is an inevitable trend. She argues that Beijing believes that Washington is engaged in a strategy of “grand trade encirclement”; so decoupling will only intensify regardless of talks.

Beyond the US-China trade war, our conversation delves into how Xi Jinping’s policies are reshaping China’s economic development model. And what’s the model of China’s "venture capital state" which is directing strategic investment, building industrial ecosystems, and taking calculated risks to dominate future technologies.

Zooming out, we ask: Why is manufacturing back at the center of global strategy? Is it a product of a failure of imagination of future economies? Or is it simply about the realities of configuring national power in an age of geopolitical strife?

I hope you enjoy this conversation. Please make sure to like and share the episode. If you would like to support the show or the work I do, please do reach out to me.

About: The Great Power Show is a bi-weekly podcast featuring candid conversations and thought-provoking interviews with leading scholars, thinkers and practitioners on the geopolitical and geo-economic changes shaping our world.