Subtitles section Play video
-
The dispute between the United States and China...
-
...is about much more than trade
-
For everything from blockbuster films...
-
...to lunar exploration...
-
...from semiconductors to submarines
-
In every domain, they're now rivals
-
Superpower relations have soured
-
America thinks that China is stealing secrets...
-
...stealing its way to dominance
-
And then it looks at Chinese behaviour in the South China sea...
-
...and bullying countries like Canada and Sweden...
-
...and it thinks that China's beginning to challenge global norms
-
But it looks very different from Beijing
-
From its point of view...
-
...America is trying to block its entirely justified rise
-
For everyone else it seems like the beginnings of a new kind of cold war
-
A cold war that everybody could lose
-
Of course America has fought a cold war before with the Soviet Union...
-
...and it won
-
So why not just do the same thing again and cut China off?
-
Isolate it economically
-
Well it's a bit more complicated than that
-
In the late 1980s the United States and the Soviet Union...
-
...did about $2bn-worth of trade a year
-
Today China and the United States do $2bn-worth of trade a day
-
And then there are the allies who helped America...
-
...in the first cold war with the Soviet Union
-
Well they do a lot of business with China...
-
...they want to be able to trade with it
-
It would cost them a lot to stop...
-
...so to persuade them that they must choose security...
-
...over their own prosperity...
-
...would be very hard indeed
-
The first thing is that the United States...
-
...needs to build on its strengths
-
These are often institutions and alliances...
-
...the institutions that the United States built after the second world war
-
The second thing the United States needs to do...
-
...is to shore up its defences
-
And that means defending itself militarily...
-
...through cyber and space...
-
...but also defending its technology
-
But the third thing is that the United States and China...
-
...need to learn how to live together...
-
...in a low-trust world
-
China and America don't have to agree about everything...
-
...in order to agree that they should live by some global norms
-
So you need to find ways to build trust
-
Over North Korea say...
-
...over rules for cyberwar or space war
-
China is challenging America in every domain
-
Business and a profit motive are no longer enough...
-
...to keep this relationship together
-
What the relationship desperately needs...
-
...is the building of trust and the building of rules
-
Unfortunately just now both sides see rules as something to break