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| Image: Flickr User - jan buchholtz |
By Benjamin CARLSON
As the biggest beneficiary of globalisation, China stands ready to proclaim itself the champion of free trade in the face of a more protectionist US, but analysts say Beijing's attitude is much more one of pick and choose.
Since Donald Trump was elected on a platform of tearing up trade pacts that he says have drained American jobs, China has embraced its role as a defender of globalisation and multilateral economic arrangements.
At next week's World Economic Forum in Davos -- to many the unparallelled symbol of globalisation -- President Xi Jinping will make a keynote speech to "contribute China's wisdom" and "encourage all parties to put economic globalisation in the right perspective", according to vice foreign minister Li Baodong.
China always seeks to "advance the well-being of mankind", he added.
But the idea that Beijing could fill the vacancy and lead international trade if the US gives up the job, is a non-starter, say analysts.
The global trade regime has been built around US demand and its large deficits with trade partners; China consistently runs huge trade surpluses with the US and other countries as the workshop of the world -- a mainstay of the decades-long boom that has propelled it to become the world's second-largest economy.
It would be "virtually impossible" for China to lead a global trade regime, said Michael Pettis, professor at Peking University, in a recent analysis, and its partners would be hit by lower demand if it did.
"The consequence of a US withdrawal from global governance, in other words, is unlikely to be an orderly, rules-based global trading system in which leadership has shifted from Washington to Beijing," he said.
Rather, it will be a return to the pre-Bretton Woods days of "trade conflict and beggar-thy-neighbour policies", he said.
Read the full story at TerraDaily