The University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) hosted British journalist David Rennie Thursday, who argued that the United States and China must remain economic allies, even as the Trump administration heightens ideological divides between the nations.
Rennie, the geopolitics editor at The Economist, has watched the economic boom in China first hand – from May 2018 to September 2024 he was the Beijing bureau chief, launching the Chaguan column on China in September 2018.
Rennie said the connection between China and the U.S. has ebbed and flowed for centuries, leading to a modern-day relationship characterized by shared economic involvement with stark ideological differences. While the United States and China are connected by a global market and consumer goods, the political differences between the democracy of the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have led to conflict.
“For more than a century, America's leaders have said — and I think they often meant it — that they welcomed China's rise. But that welcome of China's rise had an asterisk. It was a conditional welcome,” Rennie said.
Rennie said America historically sought to support China’s development in ways that align with American values and business interests. This outreach, he noted, was designed to shape China into a more “Western and liberal” nation — a recurring pattern in U.S. foreign policy.
After Deng Xiaoping opened the Chinese market, the world percieved the development of global connections with China as having great economic potential, Rennie said.
“You saw not just America, but all Western powers — the Japanese, Europeans — determined, eager to help China rise,” Rennie said.
Chinese production had a massive impact on the global economy, especially in the U.S. However, Rennie argued that the U.S. expected China’s success to carry the same conditional promises that its economic benefit should in turn strengthen the U.S.
But the relationship between the U.S. and China began to change in 2016, Rennie said, with the first Trump administration. He said the roots of distrust come from more than claims of racism and lack of acceptance by the U.S. of China's strength as a nation.
“There’s this backlash against globalization, and it’s grown because we've discovered that in politics, the concentrated losses of globalization have far more weight than the diffuse benefits of people getting cheap stuff at Walmart,” said Rennie.
However, Rennie argued that the role of technology in the relationship between the U.S. and China cannot be understated.
“The most advanced globalization in the 21st century involves a lifetime commitment of trust between a company and a consumer,” Rennie said. “China wants to dominate those sectors just as ideological trust is falling off a cliff, and that's a real problem.”
In the wake of the second Trump administration, Rennie is uncertain about the future of U.S. relations with China.
“[Trump’s] defenders in Washington will tell you to look at the policies, not what he says,” Rennie said. “He thinks that foreigners should pay rent to access the American economy, and China wasn't paying enough rent.”
In light of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, Rennie is uncertain about the path American leaders will take in terms of economic and diplomatic policy with China.
“We don't know what Donald Trump's plan is — I think we genuinely don't know. But China has a plan, and China plans to win,” he said.
