China Is Sabotaging the World That Enables Its Rise: Beijing’s Risky Bet Against the West

Foreign Affairs | Enrico Fardella, Sergey Radchenko

The United States and the European Union are implementing severe protectionist countermeasures against Chinese industrial overcapacity and aggressive export strategies. Beijing's state-subsidised manufacturing surplus threatens Western domestic industries, forcing Brussels and Washington to deploy stringent tariff barriers and investment screening mechanisms to protect their critical domestic supply chains and industrial bases.

This economic friction exposes a fundamental paradox where China's rise remains deeply dependent on the very Western-led liberal order it seeks to dismantle. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese Communist Party has attempted to construct an alternative, Beijing-centric economic network to bypass American primacy. However, the nation's investment-led growth model has generated chronic domestic demand deficiencies, forcing it to dump excess goods into foreign markets. Consequently, rising defensive trade policies from emerging economies like India, Brazil, and Turkey are accelerating global economic fragmentation, ultimately threatening the open international trading system that enabled Beijing's initial economic ascendance.

Comment

India's Directorate General of Trade Remedies must aggressively monitor Chinese dual-use component imports. Subsidised microelectronics from Beijing pose severe supply chain vulnerabilities for Indian defence production. Reliance on these foreign inputs undermines the indigenous Make in India initiative. Robust investment screening protocols will safeguard critical national security infrastructure.

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