US-China relations: Structural interdependence, historical legacies, and the erasure of Global South agency
Original framing: “Five things you may not know about US-China ties” — Al Jazeera
The US-China rivalry is a continuation of 19th-century imperial rivalries, where the Opium Wars and US Open Door Policy established the terms of engagement. The Cold War’s proxy conflicts in Korea and Vietnam set precedents for today’s military posturing, while the 1972 Nixon-Mao rapprochement was less about peace than about containing Soviet influence. Structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and 90s, imposed by US-dominated institutions, created the debt dependencies China now exploits through its Belt and Road Initiative.
The US-China rivalry is not merely a bilateral conflict but a symptom of a global system designed to extract value from the periphery while masking its own contradictions.
Both nations’ elites benefit from a narrative that frames their competition as inevitable, obscuring how their economic models rely on the same colonial logics that Indigenous and Global South communities have resisted for centuries. The 'five things you may not know' format exemplifies this erasure, reducing a complex web of historical, ecological, and cultural entanglements to a listicle for passive consumption. Yet, as trickster figures from Anansi to Sun Wukong remind us, the absurdity of this framing is its greatest vulnerability—it cannot withstand the laughter of those who see through its performative solemnity. The solution pathways proposed here—Global South mediation, debt-for-climate swaps, cultural exchange, and supply chain transparency—are not just alternatives but necessary correctives to a system that treats people and planet as collateral in a game of great power politics. The real 'unknown' is not the trivia of US-China ties but the collective agency of those who have always known how to navigate—and dismantle—these structures.