China and the United States will enter an acrimonious struggle for economic “survival” after the coronavirus pandemic, according to an oil tycoon with close ties to Chinese Communist Party elites.
“We’ve smelled the odors, and new plots against China are in formation,” former China National Offshore Oil Corporation Chairman Fu Chengyu said this week. “After the epidemic, the external environment for our survival will be more severe.”
Those bellicose remarks amplify a warning from Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, who predicted “a protracted battle” at a Politburo Standing Committee meeting earlier this month. The Chinese autocrat, who took the rare step of publicizing his remarks from the meeting, foresees “prolonged external environment changes” that could complicate China’s economic and foreign policy ambitions.
“Fu is a very connected guy to the central leadership; what he says you can take to the bank is indicative of the attitudes of the senior leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,” former Australian defense ministry adviser Patrick Buchan, an expert at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, told the Washington Examiner.
Fu called for Beijing to establish a self-sufficient economy, on the theory that the U.S. might coordinate with allies to deprive China of energy resources and other essential goods.
“The U.S. will try various ways to thwart China’s rise, and energy is an important area,” he said. “China must be prepared for such a scenario, and even when supplies are cut off, we can have some basic self-protection.”
Senior U.S. officials and lawmakers likewise are trying to diminish American dependence on supplies manufactured in China. The shift was spurred by Beijing’s hoarding of hospital masks and medical supplies (including those made by American companies, which were prevented from sending their products out of China) even as the contagion spread in the U.S.
“China’s clearly positioning itself to more aggressively compete with the United States in the nonmilitary components of the competition, particularly around the energy sector and, most importantly, around the technology sector,” Buchan said.
