Trump needs to harness soft power resources more

Published Mon, May 18, 2020 · 09:50 PM

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump threatened last week to "cut off the whole relationship" with China, fuelling concerns of a new cold war. Yet, that historical analogy is far from perfect to describe the growing tensions between the two superpowers.

One key difference between the United States and the Soviet Union and today's relationship between Washington and Beijing is the extent of people-to-people interaction. Students from China are the largest single national group in the US, and their numbers have quadrupled in four years. Tourism is healthy, with more than two million visits a year in each direction, and labour migration from China to the US is near a historic high.

Another difference is trade. In the late 80s, the US was importing about US$200 million worth of goods from the Soviet Union; this has grown to more tha…