Opinion | Chimerica revisited: why the US and China should forge a new symbiotic relationship for peace

Under a grand interim arrangement, the US dollar could be anchored to China’s production prowess and growth for, say, 10 years

That would buy time for America to reinvigorate itself and allow China to make its own adjustments and show it doesn’t wish to challenge the international order

Reading Time:3 minutes

Published: 1:30am, 22 Dec 2021

These days, one rarely hears about “Chimerica”, the phrase coined by historian Niall Ferguson and economist Moritz Schularick in 2007 to describe the symbiotic relationship between China and the United States.

Back then, elites in Washington harboured hopes that a rising China would subject itself to a “rules-based” world order dictated by the US. How times have changed.

With China increasingly deemed a revisionist power threatening America’s supremacy and values, Ferguson has emphasised in recent years that Chimerica was a chimera. Instead, a second cold war was coming, he declared in 2019, amid the Trump administration’s China-bashing fervour.

Current US President Joe Biden’s approach to China is similar and has been described as “Trump lite”: just as confrontational, the only difference being that Biden’s team plays tough with more tact.

Of late, the rodeo has become frantic. The Taiwan issue has been fired up to the point of spurious speculation about Beijing’s imminent military action against the island. Former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby suggested that the US should ready itself to fight a “limited war”, and that, with China’s hegemonic ambitions, Taiwan could be a flash point.

And perhaps it is not inconceivable for some in Washington that Beijing could be baited into attacking Taiwan, giving America a chance to mould its rivalry with China back into all-out sanctions and decoupling – as was the case with the Soviet Union, in which case the hope is that the Cold War toolkit could be dusted off and put to victorious use again.

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