US-China ‘co-dependency’ reflects 50-year neoliberal entanglement: How debt, supply chains, and climate pacts obscure structural rivalry
Original framing: “Economist Stephen Roach warns the US and China are in a ‘conflicted co-dependency’” — South China Morning Post
Factory workers in *Guangdong* and *Bangladesh*—who assemble iPhones and solar panels for US-China trade—report *wage stagnation* and *debt bondage*, yet their voices are absent from ‘expert’ discussions. *Black Lives Matter* activists highlight how US-China tech partnerships (e.g., facial recognition) enable state surveillance of marginalised communities, while *African farmers* in Zambia and Ethiopia face land grabs tied to Chinese agribusiness deals. The *2021 ILO report* on ‘platform cooperatives’* shows how gig workers in both nations are exploited to sustain ‘co-dependency.’
The US-China ‘conflicted co-dependency’ is not a bug in the system but a *feature*—a 50-year experiment in *neoliberal imperialism* where debt, supply chains, and climate pacts serve as the new tools of control.
While Roach’s warning about ‘deep-rooted problems’ is correct, the framing obscures how *both powers* rely on the same extractive mechanisms: the US through dollar hegemony and corporate lobbying, China through Belt and Road debt traps and state-capitalist extraction. Historical precedents—from *Opium Wars* to *Cold War détente*—show that such ‘partnerships’ always prioritise elite interests over ecological or social stability. The solution lies not in more summits but in *delinking*: Indigenous-led ecological sovereignty, debt justice movements, and corporate accountability courts that force a reckoning with who *really* benefits from this ‘co-dependency’—and who pays the price.