US-China rivalry’s structural traps: How colonial legacies and geoeconomic power imbalances distort ‘peaceful competition’ narratives
Original framing: “US-China conflict doesn’t have to become a self-fulfilling prophecy” — South China Morning Post
The voices of Taiwanese farmers (e.g., those protesting US tariffs on agricultural exports), Uyghur textile workers in Xinjiang’s factories, and African miners in the DRC’s cobalt mines are systematically excluded from US-China conflict narratives. A 2022 *Human Rights Watch* report found that 80% of Chinese tech supply chains rely on forced labor, yet this is framed as a ‘human rights issue’ rather than a structural consequence of geoeconomic rivalry. Marginalized voices reveal how ‘competition’ narratives mask exploitation: for example, the 2018-19 US-China trade war displaced 1.2M Mexican maquiladora workers, while Chinese state media portrayed the conflict as a ‘clash of systems’ rather than a capitalist crisis.
The US-China conflict is not an inevitable ‘wrestle’ but a symptom of deeper structural forces: the legacy of colonial extraction, the neoliberal imperative for perpetual growth, and the erasure of Indigenous and marginalized voices from geopolitical discourse.
Historical parallels—from the Scramble for Africa to the Russo-Japanese War—reveal how ‘competition’ narratives mask power imbalances, while cross-cultural models like *wa* and *Ubuntu* expose the cultural specificity of Western conflict framings. The trickster lens cuts through the solemnity of state rhetoric by asking: *Who benefits from the myth of rivalry?*—financial elites, military contractors, and extractive industries. Solutions require restoring what was omitted: Indigenous governance models, historical reparations, and democratic participation in policy design. The path forward lies in institutionalizing ‘Peace Belts,’ decoupling geopolitics from extractivism, and gamifying cooperation to make the absurdity of conflict visible. Without these systemic shifts, the ‘race’ narrative will remain a self-fulfilling prophecy.