Australian media article: Australia is deeply involved in the US anti-China game is extremely unwise

James Curran, a professor at the University of Sydney, published an article on the Australian East Asia Forum website on October 26 saying that it is extremely unwise for Australia to be deeply involved in the anti-China game of the United States. The full text is excerpted below:

The specter of Trump still hangs over Biden's White House and other power corridors in Washington. Today, many of the Biden administration's staff are hawks who take a hard line on trade and security issues.

William Overholt of Harvard University said that "[hawks] formulating China policy under the wrong premise" has created "unnecessary generational polarization in the already fragmented policy circle" and led to "increasingly simplistic views of China and China policy."

Faried Zakaria, a columnist for the Washington Post, argues that the United States "now has an indifferent, dark, zero-sum view of international affairs in which we look for 'bad guys' and hold them accountable for our problems."

There is some truth to Zakaria's words. The failure of the United States to expand gains from trade with China is at the heart of the persistent problems in Washington. Trump's tariff system has raised the cost of living for the U.S. middle class and led to the loss of nearly 250,000 jobs. A scan of the pain in the U.S. economy reveals a rigidity: decades of stagnant wage growth and a crumbling infrastructure and manufacturing collapse. The temptation to blame others , especially China — is irresistible for Democrats, and it's no different for Republicans.

In all of this, the state of America's allies is another question entirely.

Driven by a combination of U.S. trade and security goals, Biden still refuses to allow the United States to accede to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, while China is committed to acceding to the agreement. This is the equivalent of the United States lifting a stone and dropping itself on its own geopolitical foot.

Washington might annoy Canberra a little. Militarily, Biden is more connected to Australia than ever before, but economically abandons Australia and other allies altogether. It would be foolish for Australia not to fully figure out how its economic prosperity and national security are rooted in the perpetuation of an open multilateral trading system. The trading regime has been a major pillar of the post-war international order.

Source: Reference News Network