A Conflictological Interpretation of the Concept of Derisking US-Chinese Trade Relations

In this article, authors critically analyze the concept of derisking. Derisking is actively promoted by the Western expert community as a new strategic basis for US-China trade relations. Derisking refers to the transition from the policy of radical breakdown from the trade partnership with China to the rhetoric of risk reduction, which implies limiting dependencies and risks arising from them. It does not imply a complete rupture with a partner. Based on the extensive historical material study, as well as applying modern conflictological methods of risk analysis, authors come to the conclusion that derisking management strategy does not have the conceptual optics necessary for analyzing political dimension of international economic relations and is unable to explain what is the source of risks in reality.

Conceptual non-viability of derisking is due to disregard for the uneven capital development regularity, which determines the interstate relations. Global economy is a space of unfading conflict within the economic competition, and therefore eternal risk activity. The constant presence of risks in international relations makes conflict either a source that generates risks, or their result. On the example of the US-China trade relations, authors demonstrate how an attempt to elevate a partner who was designated for the outsiders’ fate generates a response from the risk-beneficiary to return the outsider to his native bosom by minimizing the consequences of risk for himself at the expense of others.

In fact, behind the derisking strategy, lies desire to increase the intellectual rents’ price paid for Western patents and technologies. The reaction to the possibility of losing one’s monopoly position creates an impulse to shake up relations and change their dynamics in the right direction for oneself. These impulses expose inherent systematical contradictions and determine the outbreak of a new round of a hot trade war. While staying in the negative unity relations, participants have no other choice but to achieve the goals of enrichment, which are the same for all participants, through denying each other, and aspire every time to establish unequal economic exchange in their favor.

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