China is a competitor to the US, not an adversary, a professor agrees with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Anthony Arend of Georgetown University said that Biden is right about treating China as a competitor, and not as an "adversary" as what President Donald Trump said.
“I think Biden has it correct, it is much more of a competition rather than an adversarial relationship,” Arend said during an interview with CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia."
He pointed out that the US has to consider that, whether they like it or not, China is a “great power." However, he mentioned that China has human rights issues and is making “ridiculous assertions of jurisdictional claims” in the South China Sea.
“So you have to hold them to task for that, but respect the fact that they are a great power and that we can’t just ignore them or deal with them as if they were a minor actor in the international system,” said Arend.
He noted that the term “adversary” is not right because it suggests that China can be defeated.
“We can’t defeat China. We have to engage China,” he stressed. “We have to criticize where necessary, but we have to try to cooperate where possible.”
Arend also considers China as the “greatest” threat to the US where geopolitics is concerned.
“I would say China presents the broadest geopolitical threat because of their power, their influence and their ability to extend globally,” he said.
China as an economic competitor
China reported 4.9% GDP growth for the third quarter of 2020, according to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics.
The figure was up 4.9% from a year ago, making the growth for the first three quarters of 2020 to 0.7% from a year ago.
Economists predict that China GDP growth of 5.2% in the third quarter, based on an average of estimates gathered by Wind Information, a financial information database.
“Generally speaking, the overall national economy continued the steady recovery and significant results have been delivered in coordinating epidemic prevention and development,” the bureau announced in an English-language release.
“However, we should also be aware that the international environment is still complicated and severe with considerable instabilities and uncertainties, and that we are under great pressure of forestalling epidemic transmissions from abroad and its resurgence at home. The economy is still in the process of recovery and the foundation for sustained recovery needs to be consolidated,” the statement read.
Retail sales increased by 3.3% in September, for a 0.9% increase in the third quarter. Retail sales contracted 7.2% for the first nine months of the year. Meanwhile, fixed-asset investment grew 0.8% in the first three quarters of the year.
Industrial production saw a 6.9% increase in September from a year ago, bringing the total growth for the first nine months of the year to 1.2%.
Official estimates revealed that China’s gross domestic product contracted 6.8% in the first three months of the year. GDP rose by 3.2% in the second quarter. According to the International Monetary Fund, China will be the only major world economy to grow this year, at 1.9%.
