Thread by @prchovanec

The reality is that the US is not driving the push for decoupling and confrontation now. Beijing is.

Some are responding "for some time now". Not true, in my view. The 2008 crisis definitely altered Beijing's view of the US for the worse, but even during Trump's trade war, China was looking for ways to deescalate. This changed in 2019, and solidified in 2020.

You can say "deescalate on their own terms" and that's absolutely correct. But the shift towards China seeing decoupling as an objective is of much more recent vintage, the past two years or so. And I think it's a very alarming trend.

It's one reason I'm a lot more concerned over Taiwan than I would normally be. It's like Beijing is digging in financially and economically for a coming storm.

Yes, there are still people in the US pushing for confrontation/decoupling. There has been a bipartisan souring on China, extending into the corporate biz community as well. But the more aggressive versions of this (Navarro) are no longer in the driver seat, if they ever were.

And yet the greater flexibility (if not resolve) on the US side - perhaps accompanied by some hesitancy - have not been matched on the Chinese side; quite the opposite. Xi seems to be feeling his oats.

Some will argue that, in the South China Sea, for example, China has been "slicing the salami" for some time. That's true. But the strategy of "slicing the salami" itself is a recognition that seeking outright confrontation is risky and undesirable.

The question - raised by Hong Kong, by Didi, by the Anchorage summit, by Wolf Warriors - is whether China's days of "slicing the salami" - pushing but taking care not to push too far at once - are over, to be replaced by?

There seems to be - sometimes under the cover of COVID - an intentional cutting of ties of travel, finance, and business by China. The country has become more isolated over the past year than in a very long time.

That COVID-induced isolation, of course, is not unique to China. But Xi seems to be embracing it in a way other countries are not, and I find it worrying.

Someone might say "but you're not in China anymore, that's why you feel this sense of growing distance." Perhaps, but fewer and fewer foreigners - journalists, think-tankers, businesspeople, investors - have been able to spend time in China recently. It's a widespread thing.