The 'China dumping clean tech' argument is damaging the U.S.

Editor's note: Before going on her second trip to China, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen took a shot at China's clean energy exports. She "warned" that China is "dumping" cheap clean energy products on the world, depressing market prices and squeezing green manufacturing in the United States. On the sidelines of an event titled "Five countries think tank joint research report release and international symposium on China's 'Compounding Interest': High-Quality Development and Outlook for 2035" at Renmin University in China, we met up with John Ross, a former director of economic and business policy for the mayor of London, to get his take on Yellen's remarks. The views expressed in the video are his own and not necessarily those of CGTN.

John Ross: China has got the leading position in this (clean tech production). It supplies about 80 percent of the world's solar power, panels and products for solar power, about 60 percent for wind, about 30 percent for water power. This is what's making possible the transition on a global scale to renewable energy because many smaller countries can't produce such industries. That's just the truth. So, they're going to do it. 

What Yellen wants to do, she wants countries not to take the most cost-effective, the cheapest supplier, which is China, she wants them to take more expensive ones. Firstly, this is very damaging for the U.S. economy, because it means it's going to make the transition in the United States more expensive. Secondly, most countries in the world are not going to go along with it. Why should they pay more for having renewable energy because the United States wants them to pay more? They're not going to do it. That's why you've got, if you take, for example, China's success with things like the Belt and Road Initiative, this is not based upon similarities of political systems. If you look at the Belt and Road Initiative, you got every type of country. You can imagine you got socialist countries, China, Vietnam, you got monarchies, Thailand, you've got all sorts of republics. They want to get on with economic development. And Yellen is trying to advise the world to go down more expensive routes than the ones which are necessary. And most of the world are not going to do it, and it's damaging for the United States.

CGTN: Why does she want to make the world go down this more expensive road? Is it because China-U.S. relationship or economic competition?

John Ross: For economic competition, but she won't face up to the fact that the problems in the U.S. economy, in the U.S., they're not problems in China. Let's just look at the simple fact. Last year, China's economy grew by 5.2 percent. The U.S. economy grew by 2.5 percent. That means China's economy grew more than twice as fast as the United States'. If you take the last 4 years – because during the pandemic, countries went up and down a lot during one year to another - China's economy grew 20.1 percent, U.S. economy grew 8.1 percent. China's economy grew 2.5 times as fast as the United States'. The United States won't adjust its own economic policy, it tries to slow the rest of the world down. If the United States was concentrating on speeding up its own economy, firstly, nobody could complain about this; and secondly, nobody would be able to do anything about it anyway, right?

But it's not concentrating on trying to speed up its own economy, it's concentrating on trying to slow down other economies. In particular, it's trying to slow down China's economy. And this is very damaging, not for the whole world economy, because the whole world economy should grow as fast as possible. It's because the United States won't adjust its economic model.

CGTN: We thought that when Donald Trump was the President of the United States, he was quite aggressive with his China policy, especially on the economic front. We thought that when Biden came to power, things would change. But, basically, it didn't. Now with another U.S. presidential election in sight, do you see this non-peaceful competition going on becoming the major trend of U.S. policy?

John Ross: I'm afraid to say yes. I would really prefer to give you the opposite answer, but on serious matters, one's got to be realistic. I think the problem is, at the moment, the United States still thinks that it can use non-economic means to maintain its position. It can't. The United States is trying to do something which is impossible. Which is, China has more than four times the population of the United States. That means by a simple matter of arithmetic when China's GDP per capita becomes even one-quarter that of the United States, (China) becomes the largest economy in the world.

It will be a dangerous period while the United States makes this adjustment. Because China is not aiming to become the largest economy in the world. That's not what it's doing. That's not the aim of China to become a larger economy than the United States. What China wants to do is it wants to have the best possible living standard for its own population. Just because it's got more than four times the population of the United States, that's bound to be the result. But, it's not the aim. China is not trying to displace the United States. China is not trying to have a conflict with the United States. In fact, no sensible country in the world wants to have a conflict with the United States. Because even when the United States is no longer the most powerful country in the world, it is the third most populous country in the world. The United States will always be a very large, very powerful country. Nobody sensible wants to have a fight with such a country.

Therefore, it's the United States which is creating these problems. But I think it will take 10-20 years for the United States to psychologically adjust to this. So, I'd like to give you the good news that everything's going to be very smooth. But quite honestly, in the next 10-20 years, I don't think so. I think war can be avoided. I don't think some tensions can be avoided.

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