Rana Mitter, S.T. Lee Chair Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Meg Rithmire, F. Warren McFarlan Associate Professor of Business, Government, and International Economy at the Harvard Business School, recently dissected policy responses to China’s slowing economy on the Harvard Kennedy School’s PolicyCast.
Professor Mitter argued that, alongside a realistic approach to safeguarding American security, Western nations must maintain win-win cultural and scientific exchanges critical to bridging both countries in the long term.
“A great deal of what is going to drive economic growth in the next decade or two is high level knowledge,” Professor Mitter said. “We are in danger, partly because of the understandable politics of security in both countries, of being [in] a situation where essentially the next generation of Chinese thinkers only are in China and the next generation of Westerners only in the West.”
Professor Rithmire argued that the U.S. must stay the course of “de-risking” policies and avoid framing U.S. economic interests as fundamentally at odds with Chinese interests, so long as China takes care to temper its geopolitical and trade interests.
“I really think it’s time for the Democratic Party in the United States to acknowledge that trade is a fact,” Professor Rithmire said, referencing Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown. “I personally welcome a lot of the industrial policy that has been made possible, I think, by the commercial and strategic [challenge] that China has provided to the United States.”
Find their full interview on the Harvard Kennedy School website.