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US-China trade war
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Winston Mok
Winston Mok

The View | The US did not quite ‘rebuild China’. The facts show why

  • Winston Mok says US-China exchanges in trade, labour and knowledge are two-way streets – China is not the only party that benefited
  • Moreover, China’s own strengths in infrastructure building, human capital and high savings rates all played key roles in its development

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Workers climb scaffolding outside a building in Haikou, Hainan. While there is no doubt that the US has contributed to China’s economic development, the overstretched claim that America rebuilt China can be refuted on many fronts. Photo: AFP
Winston Mok
Did the US “rebuild China” over the past 25 years? Perhaps not in the same way that Germany and Japan were rebuilt with American aid after the second world war. Learning from the painful lessons of how the end of the first world war led to the beginning of the second, the US was a magnanimous victor, and helped to launch unparalleled prosperity in the post-war order.

For that, the world should be grateful, even if US actions were partly shaped by cold war considerations.

If the Chinese civil war had ended differently, the US might well have supported a Nationalist China with a massive reconstruction programme bigger than the Marshall Plan. But that was not meant to be – and what US aid there was went to its major foe, instead of its key ally, in the Pacific war.

Engagement by the US government and companies in China has been driven by political and economic calculations – containing the Soviet Union and exploiting China’s cost advantages. While there is no doubt that the US contributed to China’s economic development, the overstretched claim that it was the US which rebuilt China can be refuted on many fronts.

First, it’s important to note that the US-China relationship is mutually beneficial. Just as the US played a part in Chinese development, so China, too, helped boost US competitiveness. US companies could have stayed at home or gone elsewhere. They made China their key manufacturing location only after determining that no other country could offer the same benefits. Many US firms consolidated their supply chains from other Asian locations to China.

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