In this episode, Sean Speer talks to Fred Bergsten, the founder of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, about his important new book, The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic Leadership.
The two discuss why it would be a mistake to get into another Cold War between America and China and why conditional, competitive cooperation between the two rivals is essential for mutual success.
You can listen to this episode of Hub Dialogues on Acast, Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify or YouTube. A transcript of the episode is available below.
SEAN SPEER: Welcome to Hub Dialogues. I’m your host, Sean Speer, Editor-in-Chief at The Hub. I am honored to be joined today by Fred Bergsten, the founder and director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and now director emeritus, and someone who has spent a lifetime in and around trade and foreign policy, including as economic deputy to Henry Kissinger at the National Security Council. He is also the author of the thought-provoking new book, The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Leadership. I am grateful to be able to talk to him about the book and its key insights and arguments.
Fred, thank you for joining Hub Dialogues, and congratulations on the book.
FRED BERGSTEN: Thank you very much. It is a great pleasure to be with you.
SEAN SPEER: In recent years there has been a policy narrative, especially in light of the pandemic, about the rise of a new Cold War between the United States and China. You think this framing is wrong and even dangerous. Why?
FRED BERGSTEN: The framing comes from the historical reality that an emerging power and a global incumbent, China and the United States, respectively, collide. And the question is whether they can resolve those clashes without crashing, and hopefully even in some cooperative mode. There is now a tendency in the United States, and to some extent in China, to view this confrontation as irrevocably moving towards conflict, towards a new Cold War, towards a decoupling of the two countries. That is, in my view, an extremely dangerous prospect. It is analytically wrong, because the two countries have every interest in working together, especially on economic issues such as global warming and pandemic responses, and trying to preserve the global trading system in an open way. to keep. But there is a clear trend in that direction.
The countries formulate the relationship in zero sum terms: if I win, you lose. If you win, I lose, which is why we must withhold every possible win from you. That is a very bad idea, because it would miss out on all possibilities for cooperation, both for the two countries and for the global system as a whole. And it’s totally unachievable. Donald Trump tried to contain China, and failed miserably. China continued to grow, the only major country to grow during the pandemic, and its share of world trade and investment soared despite the trade war with the United States. Despite Trump’s best efforts, no other country is joining the US efforts to contain China, and will not do so in the future. So I think containment is a dead end. It’s a big mistake. It would further the prospect of another Cold War and confrontation, and we’d better find a better way to handle it.
SEAN SPEER: Before we get to your alternative of what you call conditional competitive cooperation, let’s stick to the current situation. Where do you think the relationship between the US and China stands now, and what are the key factors that led to their growing technological and geopolitical rivalry?
FRED BERGSTEN: The relationship between the US and China is about to descend into the Cold War or worse. Confrontation is the order of the day. Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan highlighted China’s hostility to the United States and the US’s willingness to back down on all fours. In both countries, the relationship is encouraged to move in that direction. One major reason is that Americans feel they have been taken over by the Chinese. For 20 or 30 years, under seven or eight presidents, the US has offered to partner with China, in a policy of so-called commitment to try to bring China into the world economy and global security system, to become a full-fledged partner. become. The Chinese seemed to be heading in that direction, perhaps even opening up both politically and economically.
But over the past 10 years, it has become clear that this is not the case, that China is pursuing a more state-oriented economic policy and becoming increasingly confrontational and martial in its security efforts in the South China Sea and elsewhere. . . So the US feels let down. The US wanted to bring in China, but China has refused, and now the US largely believes that China is an irreconcilable enemy. That anything the US or the West in general does that allows China to further strengthen itself is a mistake and will simply dig our own grave in the future, because China will inevitably come after us, whether it be sooner or later, whether it is economic or military. , they’re coming at us. And that is increasingly the conventional view in the United States.
Now there’s a strong minority view, which I share and try to promote, that says, “No, no, their gain is not necessarily our loss.” The US supported economic growth in its previous rivals, Germany, Japan, countries we fought in the last great war, and it worked out really, really well. But people think that’s not possible with China, which it sees as an irreconcilable enemy, with a different ideology, with plans for global domination, which would oust the United States for the first time in 100 years. The US has a real rival for the first time in 100 years since it became the world’s dominant country. That has to be managed in a much more effective way than it is now, otherwise we will go to disastrous results.
SEAN SPEER: Your answer fits well with the next question I want to ask you, Fred. While you are critical of the Trump administration’s containment policy on China, it would be great to hear your thoughts on the West’s past policies of engagement.
In your estimation, were the results net positive? And in retrospect, what if certain aspects should have been conceived or implemented differently?
FRED BERGSTEN: I think the results of the engagement were undeniably positive. China became a fully-fledged member of the global economy, joining all global economic institutions and largely abide by the rules of those institutions. For example, it has become by far the fastest growing US export market. It has become a major source of profits and jobs for American companies. So the gain on that side was huge. And if you ask what the alternative was to confront China and try to stop their drive long ago, it would have simply encouraged and almost forced them to work even harder to go it alone. To become successful, to challenge American leadership. So I think engagement had great benefits and was the right policy at the time. And even most Chinese hawks who want to completely put engagement in the rear-view mirror agree that it was a reasonable gamble at the time, and they call it a gamble, and to some extent that’s true.
Now, what people look back on today when the big mistake was not being tough enough by forcing China to play by the rules of the game. China sometimes dismisses such criticism, saying that their negotiations to join the World Trade Organization took 16 years. They made more concessions than any other developing country had ever made. They open their markets in many meaningful ways. That’s all true. But it’s also true that they didn’t go far enough. They violated some of the principles they agreed to, many other issues that are central now were not addressed in those negotiations 20 to 25 years ago. The world has moved on.
So what is needed now is a good faith effort by China, and the United States, Canada and other allies, to renegotiate traffic rules in ways that accept that China has some differing views on some of these things. But they must have agreed on traffic rules if we are to tackle the critical issues of the day, especially the new ones like climate and pandemics. Only if we work with China to work out new traffic regulations that involve them in writing, I think we will be able to return to engagement and all the positives that come from that approach.
SEAN SPEER: That’s a fascinating answer, Fred, especially your comment about the counterfactual alternative to engagement over the decades. Even critics of engagement, as you say, rarely bring up what an alternate history might look like and what those consequences might ultimately be for the American political economy.
A premise of the book is that the US is no longer able to act as a unipolar power, because of its own domestic challenges, as well as China’s growing economic parity. In fact, as far back as 2008 in the State Department, you argued that America should pursue what the essay’s headline quoted, “A Partnership of Equals.” The book similarly argues that US-China cooperation is essential to, quote, “provide a foundation for a stable and successful international order.”
Let me put this to you. How much of your project is ultimately focused on supporting the liberal international order in a world of bipolarity or multipolarity?
FRED BERGSTEN: A very large part of the book focuses on that. The subtitle of the book is, as you said at the beginning, “The Quest for Global Economic Leadership.” And that’s because we know from history that leadership by one or a few top powers is essential for the smooth functioning of the global economy in an open manner, avoiding trade wars and avoiding global depressions and recessions. In short, keeping the global economy stable and prosperous. The United States was largely able to do this itself in the post-war period, during the first generation after and for several decades. Increasingly, his allies, Canada, Japan and the Europeans played a vital role in making that possible.
Now look at the underlying economic reality. You mentioned this, but China is, for all practical purposes, the equivalent of the United States in terms of economic power. On some stats, it is now even superior to the United States. I don’t think it matters much who has a few trillion or more of the GDP or who makes a few or fewer semiconductors. It is the raw equivalence that places China at the top of the scale with the United States. Again, to emphasize, for the first time in a century since the United States became the top economy more than 100 years ago. This is the first real competitor. And it is a real competitor. That means that the US, even with continued support from its traditional allies, is no longer able to set the tune, is no longer able to write all the rules and enforce all the rules in order to create a stable and prosperous world. to maintain.
When I wrote that in 2008, I had a fresh memory that it was China, along with the US, but even more than the US, that took the world out of the Great Recession and ended the global depression. That was very constructive, very positive, global economic leadership of China. And they have on other occasions. But as I said before, they also broke a lot of rules. And that has caused tremendous backlash against them, particularly in the United States, but also in other countries around the world.
So the Chinese are risking their own core interests. Of all countries, China has benefited the most from globalization. It has enabled them to have the most miraculous development story in human history, and it continues to this day, despite some recent delays. But China has benefited immensely from the open global economy. If that economy shut down with global trade wars and investment restrictions, and everything Trump tried, they would be in real trouble. And they need to realize that their own policies are generating backlash, particularly in the US, that could lead to that outcome. So I believe it’s in China’s own interest, not to do us good or to be nice to us, but very much in its own core interest in an open world economy, to keep its development going, to take steps that would result in partnership with the US as traditional allies in managing the global economy in the future.
But that, of course, means that the US and its traditional allies must accept China as a rough equal in structuring and managing the global economy. It’s done on an ad hoc basis, like the global financial crisis more than a decade ago. It was actually done just a few months ago, when the World Trade Organization, the US and China worked out a deal that basically saved the WTO’s major ministerial conference, and thus the trading system. So, it can be done even recently with all confrontations. But that must be the strategy the two countries are adapting.
SEAN SPEER: Which brings us to your idea of conditional, competitive cooperation. What do you mean? And how would this approach differ from the previous policy of engagement and the current policy of containment from a US perspective?
FRED BERGSTEN: What I’m proposing is an American policy that has three basic components. One of them is obvious: competition. The US and China will compete day by day in the economic and financial and trade markets, policies will compete for the affection of alliances of other countries, trading partners aligned. So there will be a continued high level of competitiveness in the relationship. There must also be, as I have already outlined, a cooperative element. Even if the US and China continue to confront each other on some security issues like Taiwan, some human rights and values issues like the Uyghurs, even as those conflicts continue, they must find a way to work together on the economic dimension and on global pragmatic issues. So that’s the cooperative extension.
To make it politically feasible in both countries, all this must be conditional. Both countries must make commitments and they must fulfill those commitments. One of the reasons for the US’s disillusionment with China is that the Chinese have arguably failed to live up to some of the commitments they made when they joined the World Trade Organization, when they took other steps that we in the West thought that they had started to behave in a different way, and they did not follow through. And the Chinese also believe that the US has undermined some of its own principles, as we do in some cases.
So there must be a conditional element. Each party must oversee enforcement mechanisms and tools and arrangements for constant negotiation and consultation to monitor each other’s performance in meeting its obligations to each other and the world at large. So, as you say, I’ve put that together in what I call conditional, competitive cooperation. It’s a mouthful, but I think all three elements are essential if we are to avoid entering another Cold War.
SEAN SPEER: Much of this approach, as you say, requires the cooperation and involvement of the Chinese government. What would you say to those who would argue that this is not a reliable assumption for policy making, given the lack of transparency about the pandemic, the growing assertiveness in Hong Kong and Taiwan, etc., etc.?
FRED BERGSTEN: Skepticism is certainly warranted because the Chinese have failed to accept some of the commitments they have made in previous international agreements and in some of the international institutions that we participate in – for example, the International Monetary Fund, which they joined very early. have been fulfilled. in the reform process. They have broken the most fundamental rule, which is not to competitively devalue your currency. They did that at a cost of 3 to $4 trillion over a period of 10 to 12 years at the turn of this century. Gross and egregious and very costly violation of fundamental rules.
More recently, in the commerce field, they need technology transfers to give companies access to the market. They provide huge subsidies to their state companies and some others. So there are very clear violations of both the explicit rules and the implicit norms of the trading and investment systems that the Chinese are guilty of. And as there are not many effective enforcement mechanisms these days, frustration has arisen and any new agreement should have mechanisms as well as agreed traffic rules to allow for oversight and enforcement of the new obligations.
As I said a minute ago, I think that’s very much in China’s interest, because whatever they may gain by subsidizing their semiconductors or forcing American companies to transfer technology is overwhelmed by the benefit to them of a economic open world system, which has allowed and stimulated their entire economic development miracle. So if the Chinese look closely, and if they realize that they are now big enough that their actions could lead to backlash with systemic repercussions that could undermine the openness that is so important to them, then I think we have a have a chance to do something positive. But it will require the US and its allies to go to China and propose that approach. And it will take enlightened leadership in China to pick it up.
It makes sense to reverse the trade war. The US, in my opinion, should offer the Chinese to abolish the tariffs Trump has introduced. In return, this is the conditional portion, in exchange for the Chinese lifting all the tariffs they have introduced in return and retaliation against the Trump tariffs. That would be a completely reciprocal deal. No one could say that the US Biden administration or whoever capitulated or took China was gentle with China. We have a fully conditional, fully reciprocal agreement, and it would be a dramatic step to move the world in the right direction and pave the way for broader economic cooperation.
SEAN SPEER: Let me pick up the competitive part of your wording. Is there an advantage here? Is growing scientific and technological competition with China a potential catalyst for greater progress in innovation and productivity? In other words, Fred, is your view of a US-China contest a potential means of getting out of the so-called Great Stagnation?
FRED BERGSTEN: It is and that’s a very good point, Sean. In fact, we’ve already seen it to some extent. The US Congress, and one of its rare steps of bipartisan action, has just passed important legislation that has really boosted US research and development in high-tech sectors, and in particular supports a semiconductor industry that will recover much of the lost US competitiveness in those critical areas. industry could recover. That legislation had many fathers and many purposes, and it goes way back to its origins. But I think the catalyst that probably brought it to a successful conclusion was the competition with China and the recognition, for which I give Congress credit, that the US needs to put on its own socks.
We can’t just say, “Well, China is cheating, and they’re terrible, and that’s why we have to hit them on the head.” Maybe we should do that sometimes. But we have to go our own way. We all know, you in Canada know very well that the US now has many, many flaws in its economic policies, its broader approach to society, its political dysfunction. We have a lot of problems in the United States and we have to put our own house in order if we want to compete effectively with China. And the rise of China is helping to stimulate that. So that would be the plus side.
When I say conditional, competitive cooperation, I am definitely thinking of competition to be successful. And R&D innovation, technological supremacy, that’s healthy competition. If it goes too far on the subsidy path, it raises another problem. But if you try to do it the traditional way, there is a lot of success to be had. Incidentally, that is a subject where the US and China should sit down to discuss what is acceptable. No sane American can try to deny China’s technological progress.
What we can do is say that some of the ways you are trying to achieve your technological advancements are against all international standards, rules and laws, so you shouldn’t go down those avenues like stealing technology. So that’s a very fertile area and I’d like to put that at the top of the list for this new partnership, to try and put some guardrails around the competition to limit how much it just goes back to zero. win, you lose” match round.
SEAN SPEER: On the domestic policy front, another major issue that has influenced thinking about the US-China relationship is the issue of the China shock and the concentrated effects of increased import penetration of Chinese goods in in general and manufactured products in particular.
To what extent, Fred, should the US reshape the way it supports the so-called losers of a globalized economy, to ensure that the costs and consequences are not disproportionately borne by certain regions, sectors or individuals?
FRED BERGSTEN: Yes, again, it’s a fundamental question. One of the greatest failures and inconsistencies of US policy in recent decades has been the failure to sustain the adjustment process necessary for the losers of globalization. This goes back way before the China shock and China’s competition with other countries – the Europeans, Canada itself, other Asian countries, Japan, in an earlier period was enemy number one. And during that period, the then US government always paid lip service to compensate the losers, the workers who lost their jobs or received much lower incomes, but never really did much of it.
No government, Democratic or Republican, has ever given serious priority to addressing those adjustment problems. And as a result, hostility to the process of globalization itself builds over the decades. Trade Adjustment Assistance, the specific policy promoted, came to be known as funeral insurance, because it only came after you had already lost your job and your skills, and it was too late anyway. There was no proactive preventive effort to maintain a political base in support of globalization.
So while the US on the one hand tried to lead the world towards more and more open markets, it didn’t do much at home to adapt to those open markets, which would inevitably hurt some people. No change in economic policy benefits everyone. On balance, there are some winners and some losers. The winners were much bigger than the losers. It was a huge net gain for the US economy. Calculations at my institute showed that we are gaining $2 trillion a year from globalization over the past 50 years. But there are about 50 billion to 100 billion losses, and those people are concentrated, and they have political influence, and eventually, from the 1990s or so, that started to erode the political foundations of globalization.
I was always afraid that the United States was the biggest threat to globalization, that internal rifts would develop that would undermine political support, and that’s what has happened over the past 20 to 25 years. Now Trump took that to the extreme: He completely abdicated from US leadership, alienated allies, as well as opponents, and took it to the extreme. But the underlying foundation has been seriously undermined, and that will take a while to rebuild. President Biden took office and said, “We would need to restore much of our domestic strength before we can negotiate new trade deals.” I think that’s a bit too pessimistic, but you should definitely do it at the same time. And you have to have that house to have a chance to return to any kind of American leadership in the global economy.
SEAN SPEER: As you say, Fred, your vision of globalized collaboration and exchange has encountered more resistance in recent years than ever before. But you get the feeling that maybe this changes a bit. The significant West’s support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, for example, shows that liberalism can be stronger than one might think. What is your feeling? What gives you optimism these days?
FRED BERGSTEN: I think while other countries have seen the results of the US pulling back from globalization and global leadership, as dramatized under Trump, they had to step back and say, “Hey, we may not always like everything that the US does… But we definitely need it up front.” And I think the willingness of the traditional allies, of course, including Canada, in the case of Ukraine, but now more broadly on a number of issues, is an indication that we may be starting to get a backlash against the resistance, and that is what we need.
The crucial question now, however, will be China’s attitude. Because for my vision a chance to take place, the Chinese and the other major Asian countries that will inevitably to some extent cluster around China – its largest trading partners, its neighbors with constant military capability overhanging. So it really is China and most of Asia, the most dynamic part of the global economy, and now, probably most of the global economy, it will be their attitude and their willingness to restore some version of globalization which I think will determine where this ends up. And that’s why I think it’s so important for the US and its traditional allies to reach out to China, to try to structure and conceptualize that together.
When Mr. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, my old boss, went to China in the early 1970s, they started on a conceptual level. They didn’t talk much about economics, but they talked about the global balance of power, the relationship with China and the USSR. Cold War of the day. They formulated it in conceptual terms before going into the details and operational aspects of the new US-China relationship. And that actually worked quite well and had a critical historical payout.
I think we need something like this now, given the deterioration of the relationship between the US and China and the crucial point on which China now rests, whether we continue on the Xi Jinping path of more state control of the economy, less democracy, more autocracy , more authoritarianism, or to return to the previously reformed path, where the Communist Party was still in charge, was still not a democracy, was still not a market economy of our style, but was much more compatible with the world we live in . They have to make some important choices in that area. But their choices will be influenced by how we approach them and how open we are to working with them. And that’s ultimately why I think it’s so crucial to do this.
SEAN SPEER: Let’s finish by moving the conversation closer to home if that’s all right. What should Canadian policymakers think in light of the issues we discussed? How can Canada navigate a world of contingent, competitive cooperation?
FRED BERGSTEN: I would first like to give a lot of credit to Canada, and to the Europeans and the Japanese, for providing a good chunk of the economic leadership that was gone when Trump renounced it for the US – and for that it took even off , under Bush 43 and Obama. The United States’ traditional allies have really stepped into that policy vacuum in a significant way, and Canada, particularly on trade but also on climate change, has really been a crucial player. So I share your compliments to Canada for doing that.
In the future I think it will be more of the same, but it really needs a two-track approach. One is to continue to fill the vacuum that remains to some extent, and may even worsen with the confrontation between the US and China, but also to work with the other traditional allies, especially the Europeans and Japan, to really pressure the United States to move with China in the direction we’re talking about today. “Okay, you’re going to disagree about the South China Sea, and the Uyghurs, and Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and a lot of things. And we, Canada and the Europeans, will probably agree with you. We don’t like those things either. But we have a global economy to run, we have pragmatic considerations to maintain and hopefully even improve the openness, stability and prosperity of the global economy. And we can only do this with China, not in confrontation with them, not in a reckless attempt to contain them.”
So I would like to say to Canada and other American friends, support the US in kind ways. We definitely need foreign pressure to make us do what we’re supposed to do anyway. Our friends, allies and colleagues must lean on us to move in the right direction. And I think that has a demonstrable effect over time. The Biden administration has not really changed Trump’s policy on China. But of course it has changed policy towards allies quite drastically, be it NATO or an economic dimension, and showed a much greater willingness to understand that allies are crucial to the United States.
In my book, I emphasize that if you look at the economies of the traditional US allies and add them up, they are bigger than the US economy. In other words, it more than doubles the West’s clout and can hold together against China and everyone else. I don’t think those allies are mobilized for containment or trying to keep an eye on China. But in terms of constructive relationships, try to steer China in constructive directions and work with them, I think those alliances can hold very well and bring a new dimension.
We know from China’s past behavior that it is willing to withstand bilateral or unilateral pressure from the United States. But it is much less likely to withstand truly multilateral pressure from the rest of the world. China does not want to be isolated in the world. It doesn’t want to be bundled. In fact, it hates that thought. And it would respond very well, I think, on a multilateral front to the issues we’re talking about today – the pandemic, whether it’s financial crises – where it’s absolutely essential to get results. If we had a multilateral approach to it, that could be very crucial. So I’d urge Canada and do that work with your other allies, set up some sort of non-US G7 that’s colluding to get the US along, and work on that in the most thoughtful way.
SEAN SPEER: The book is United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Leadership. Fred Bergsten, thank you so much for joining Hub Dialogues today.
In 1979, the US and China restored diplomatic relations and signed a bilateral trade agreement. This kick-started a rapid growth in trade between the two countries, from $4 billion (exports and imports) that year to more than $600 billion in 2017.
Who holds most U.S. debt?
Which Countries Have the Most U. To see also : Alopecia Areata Epidemiology Forecast to 2032: Focus on 7 Major Markets – United States, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, United Kingdom, and Japan – ResearchAndMarkets.com.S. Debt?
- Japan. $1,212.8. 17.01%
- China. $980.8. 13.76%
- United Kingdom. $634. 8.89%
- Switzerland. $294.1. 4.13%
- Cayman Islands. $293.2. 4.11%
Who Owns Most of the US Government Debt? At the end of July 2021, 53% of the federal debt was held by investors from the United States, including the Federal Reserve. The various trust funds administered by the United States government, such as the Social Security and Medicare trust fund accounts, held an additional 22% of the federal debt.
Does the US owe China money?
In line with a trend that started in early 2021, China’s portfolio of US government debt fell to $980.8 billion in May, according to data released by the Treasury Department on Monday. See the article : $775 Million in Additional US Military Assistance to Ukraine – US State Department. That’s down nearly $23 billion from April and down nearly $100 billion, or 9%, from a year earlier.
Is US and China still in trade war?
After the trade war escalated into 2019, the two sides reached a tense phase one agreement in January 2020; it expired in December 2021, with China failing by a wide margin to purchase US goods and services as agreed. On the same subject : Terrorist Attacks Outside Jerusalem’s Old City – US Department of State. Towards the end of the Trump presidency, the trade war was widely characterized as a failure.
What is the trade war between China and the US? In 2018, former President Donald Trump started a trade war with the world, involving multiple battles with China and US allies. Each battle has used a particular US legal rationale, such as calling foreign imports a threat to national security, followed by Trump imposing tariffs and/or quotas.
Has the US China trade war ended?
The tit for tat finally stopped in January 2020, when both sides signed the so-called Phase One trade agreement.
How does US-China trade war affect the world?
While the US and China largely taxed each other and suppressed their bilateral trade flows, the bystanders increased their exports to the US and the rest of the world and global trade increased in general. In 2018 and 2019, the US increased tariffs on imports from China.
How will a trade war affect you? A trade war occurs when countries take protectionist actions against each other as a result of trade barriers. Proponents say trade wars protect national interests and benefit domestic companies. Critics of trade wars argue that they ultimately harm local businesses, consumers and the economy.
How US China trade war affect US economy?
Their analysis found that a 10 percent hike in tariffs caused the value of U.S. exports to fall by $32 billion, costing U.S. companies about $2.4 billion a month in lost exports. Both the quantities and prices of exports fell as an analysis showed that export prices had fallen by almost 50 percent after one year.
How does US China trade war affect China?
Seventy percent of the Chinese population had a negligible amount of exposure to the tariffs, but the 2.5 percent of the population most exposed saw a major impact on their income (2.52% drop) and employment (1.62 % drop).
How much US debt does China own?
Japan held $1.23 trillion in US Treasury bonds in June 2022, making it the largest foreign holder of the government debt. The second largest holder is China, which holds $967.8 billion in US debt. Both Japan and China want to keep the value of the dollar higher than the value of their own currencies.
Does China Own Most of US Debt? China has steadily built up US Treasury bonds over the past few decades. As of October 2021, the Asian nation owns $1.065 trillion, or about 3.68%, of the $28.9 trillion US public debt, which is more than any other foreign country except Japan.
How much US debt does China own 2020?
How much money does the US owe to China? China owns about $1.08 trillion in US debt. 2 This amount is subject to market fluctuations. The value will change when China trades Treasuries or when the prices of those bonds change.
How much does China hold in US debt?
Of the total 7.42 trillion held abroad, Japan and mainland China had the largest share. China owned US$980.8 billion in US securities. Japan owned $1.21 trillion. Other foreign holders were oil exporting countries and Caribbean banking centers.
How much does China own of the US?
For its part, China owned 191,000 acres worth $1.9 billion as of 2019. This may not sound like much, but Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland has exploded dramatically in the past decade. In less than a decade, Chinese farmland ownership in the United States has increased tenfold.
