Scholar: West's protectionism harms global economy

The US-led West is building protectionist "walls" one after another across the world, causing great damage to the global economy, a Chinese strategic scholar has said.

"More importantly, developing countries and emerging economies, as a result, have suffered great impact on their own development paths," said Yang Mingjie, president of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

In an interview with China Daily, Yang expressed concerns over the West's roles that are giving rise to fragmentation of the international economic landscape, making global security increasingly bloc-based and widening disparity in science and technology sectors.

Hence, the steady recovery of emerging market countries after the COVID-19 pandemic "has seen negative impact by the developed countries, adding to their hardship in the recovery process", he said.

Citing BRICS as an example, he said some Western countries had stepped up efforts to contain the grouping as "they view the development of BRICS countries as a challenge to their global economic hegemony".

Noting the buzzword "geopolitical distance", he said some major economies have begun shortening the distance of their own supply chain and taking businesses back to their homelands, relying more on outsourcing to trustworthy allies.

"This has posed greater challenges to developing countries, especially the less developed ones, and has been holding back efforts that serve globalization, such as the Belt and Road Initiative."

He said the trend of fragmentation is likely to persist in the short term, as "Western countries such as the United States still prefer basing their economic development on major countries' competition".

Speaking about the increasingly bloc-based security landscape, Yang warned Western countries against building their "arsenal of democracies".

China's neighborhood has seen a buildup of US-led trilateral alliances or similar arrangements, such as the ones among the US, Japan and South Korea, and among the US, Japan and the Philippines, he said, adding that the AUKUS bloc is also expanding its reach in military science and technology sectors.

"What is taking shape is a US-led bloc that is based on a wider range of areas and sectors, and is more live combat oriented. The military industries' share in the Western economy is on the rise, and the negative effect on the world is gradually unfolding."

Implementing consensus

When asked about China-US relations, Yang said the two countries are now working at all levels in implementing the consensus reached at the San Francisco summit, "but the biggest problem is the strategic perception of one another".

"Washington has regarded China as a major competitor," he said.

"If this perception is not fundamentally corrected, the US will remain self-contradictory on many specific issues, including those related to its strategies.

"Sino-US relations are still in a long-term, arduous phase of complexity."

As an expert on the Taiwan question, Yang had previously served as director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Taiwan Studies.

"There are always some people or groups in the US seeking to exploit the Taiwan question to contain and bargain with China," he said. "What will China do? We will not make concessions on the bottom line or the redline."

Despite the current turbulent cross-Strait relations, China is maintaining its strategic determination and the ties have shown some positive signs, he said about the recent policy dividends released by the Chinese mainland to the island, and increasing cultural exchanges.

While the majority across the Strait calls for dialogue and integration, the Democratic Progressive Party constantly creates obstacles and stirs up new troubles, he said.

Recently, the US publicly distorted the landmark Resolution 2758 adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1971 on the one-China principle, claiming the resolution does not preclude Taiwan's participation in the UN system and other multilateral forums, he said.

"The one-China principle is a universal consensus," Yang said. "There is little support from the international community to hollowing out or misinterpreting the resolution."