That guy was just ignorant, or maybe even stupid.
One look at a couple of charts, such as,
World's biggest trading nation
World's biggest manufacturing nation
World's biggest consumer market
World's fastest growing major economy (last 40+ years)
Decoupling from China, is a pipe dream for multinational corporations.
If there is going to be a decoupling of government to government level ties between China and the United States, that is remarkable because hardly anyone knew there was a coupling to begin with.
All this talk about coupling and decoupling, all rests on two main pillars, one is based on economics such as trade and business such as selling cars, and two is based on technology in terms of who manufactures what and the constant race to improve technology where this constant race is collaborative or sharply competitive.
Note that the coupling or decoupling between China and the United States will ultimately be done by corporations in the economic realm, and by corporations in the technology realm.
The government can tell the corporation what to do, but often the corporation has their own ideas.
My opinion is that the people who do not work with the economics or technology, most do not really understand all the permutations of all of this crap.
It is like space, time, mass!
Long story short, the Trump tariff kind of proves that economic decoupling is over, it cannot be done. Maybe in 10-20 years, but by then who cares.
The technology decoupling is more interesting. There are areas where there is a decoupling, such as 5G. China had no choice here as China had to decouple from the United States because the United States has no 5G gear manufacturer.
China got so far ahead with the 5G, there was an automatic decoupling.
If there is a technology decoupling, then so what?
The RCEP, that region has everything, high tech and resources. The RCEP does not need anyone else.
So that public intellectual in China, is clueless.
That is why there is a real bias against the Chinese educational system and these cadres. They have no clue. They just repeat what someone told them, and that someone may have no clue.
The people I always listen to in China, is the CCP. They know what is going on. If they decide not to talk about something, then that is a clue to go investigate, there is something going on there. It is a new age, but same old tactics for information gathering.
