On 16 April 2020, the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT) hosted an online roundtable discussion with the title Epidemiological cold war – USA and China seeking positions in the post-covid world. Mr. Tamás Péter Baranyi, Deputy Director for Strategy of IFAT and Mr. Gergely Varga, senior researcher of IFAT were participating as panellists.
Regarding bilateral relations, Mr. Tamás Baranyi highlighted that tension intensifies as China is leaving behind the pandemic while the crisis is deepening in the USA. Besides both countries make every effort to present successful and false measures taken during the global pandemic from their own perspectives. Mr. Gergely Varga emphasised that both powers intend to secure a global publicity as wide as possible for their own narratives. In parallel, China tries to take advantage of every opportunity for presenting itself as a global leader. He underlined, that currently no topics of improving cooperation can be identified in the relationship of the two countries.
Tamás Baranyi underlined that the two countries are virtually iterating cold war narratives that will not disappear with the weakening of the pandemic. Gergely Varga pointed out that declarations of US politicians on China have a lot to do with homeland politics as they can mobilise people in the presidential election campaign. The researcher declared that in certain economic sectors the pandemic may speed up the decoupling and the evolving of parallel capacities in the USA and China.
According to Baranyi Tamás, from a political perspective only Russia can be the winner of the US-China trade war, beyond that it is a common interest that the conflict should be kept at a manageable level. Regarding the relations of Europe and China he anticipates that the increase of Chinese influence could be a result of the economic crisis management and not the direct consequence of the pandemic.
For the full recording (in Hungarian) please click on the link below or visit our YouTube channel!
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