Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation
Published: May 28,2024
By Staff writer
File photo of Jeffrey Sachs. [Photo: AFP]
Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey D. Sachs refuted claims by American politicians that China is an enemy of the United States of America. In a recent media interview, Professor Sachs says that instead, China is rather a threat to US hegemony. “Basically, what’s happening is that China poses a threat to US hegemony. It’s not a threat to taking over the US, to you, or to me, but a threat to the claim that the US runs the world,” Prof. Sachs said.
The US authorities through publications like Foreign Affairs Magazine, spread propaganda about China and discuss how to maintain US superiority over China.
Sachs emphasized that China is not trying to take over the US and the reason why China is deemed as a threat by the US is because China is showing that it does not run the world the way the US likes to think it does.
In the US nowadays, various versions of “China threat” theories are rampant, revealing a neurotic sense of anxiety about China-related issues among US media and elites. From weather balloons to Chinese corn factories, garlic and cranes, and the recent hype about the so-called overcapacity brought by Chinese electric vehicles, US elites seem fixated on anything that could be perceived as a “China threat” and use this to justify their crackdown on China. This only reveals their anxiety about China’s rise and their fear of losing hegemony, analysts believe.
Sachs says China is not an enemy. It is a nation trying to raise its living standards through education, international trade, infrastructure investment, and improved technologies. It is doing in short what any country should do when confronted with the historical reality of being poor and far behind more powerful countries. Yet the Trump Administration is now aiming to stop China’s development. This could prove to be disastrous for the US and for the entire world.
Other foreign scholars have also expressed views similar to those of Sachs. “We should not underestimate just how important being No.1 is to America’s sense of identity,” wrote British scholar Martin Jacques in a column for the Global Times. Jacques argued that for sustaining US hegemony, rather than seeing China as a relatively benign partner, the US instead regards China as a threat to its global primacy and find ways to contain, weaken and undermine it.
“No one country should consider itself leader of the whole world, because we need a world that is diverse, multipolar, and governed not by decisions of one country or the primacy of one country but by international law, especially the UN Charter,” said Sachs in a previous interview with the Global Times, urging the US to develop a cooperative relationship with China.
“Right now, we are on a dangerous course. American foreign policy toward China is misguided and a serious mistake,” he warned, noting that US politicians have been on a campaign to discredit China and to build an alliance of nations against China, which is obviously a very misguided and dangerous idea.
Additional content by Global Times
