The United States has settled on a multi-pronged strategy to thwart China’s development and preserve America’s premier position in the global order. The economic part of the plan is called “decoupling”, which refers to the selective blocking of China’s access to critical technology (particularly advanced semiconductors). The strategy has garnered nearly-universal support among America’s foreign policy elites who believe that steps must be taken immediately to curtail China’s explosive technological development. There are, however, considerable downside risks to implementing a plan that essentially erects a “Digital Iron Curtain” between China and the rest of the world. Should China respond tit-for-tat to Washington’s aggression, then supply-lines would be severely disrupted increasing the probability of another global recession.

It’s worth noting, that the term “decoupling” obscures how the policy is designed to work. The word itself—according to the Cambridge Dictionary means—“a situation in which two or more activities are separated…” Regrettably, Washington’s decoupling strategy is not an attempt to achieve a benign ‘parting of the ways’, but to identify China’s main technological vulnerabilities in order to inflict maximum damage on the Chinese economy. In other words, decoupling—as it is presented in the media and in think-tank analysis—is largely a public relations fabrication that is intended to conceal Washington’s economic war on China. Here’s a bit of background on decoupling from an article by Michael Spence at the Council on Foreign Relations: