Changing the rules of the game

Made in China. Five years ago, the innocuous tag attached to so many of our purchases, from toys and electronics to clothes and the idols one might worship, acquired an entirely new meaning.

- Prashant Jha

Made in China. Five years ago, the innocuous tag attached to so many of our purchases, from toys and electronics to clothes and the idols one might worship, acquired an entirely new meaning. And no, this wasn't about how the virus originated in China.

It was about how living through the pandemic, surviving it and overcoming it, required a high degree of Chinese commitment to abide by the rules of the game. It required China to be generous. At the very least, it required China to not leverage its centrality to the production of everything the world needed in that dark period (from pharmaceutical ingredients to masks, personal protective equipment and electronics), for political and strategic gain.

Guess what? China behaved as most nations might when armed with that power. It used the centrality it had acquired to hold global supply chains hostage. It used the moment of vulnerability to push territorial claims vis-a-vis its neighbours.

It used the moment to expand market access in the Global South. And to project itself, not fully accurately as it turned out, as the calm and competent power that could withstand the pandemic better than developed Western democracies.

All this would have repercussions, because in politics, all sides get a vote.

The 2016 US election had already reflected the growing angst in middle America over the loss of jobs to China. Donald Trump's win was driven as much by a yearning to bring manufacturing back to America as by factors such as cultural conservatism and racial resentments.

The US wasn't alone. As Made in China became ubiquitous around the world, populists and protectionists began to ring alarm bells. An inward economic turn was already visible across major economies before 2020.

What the pandemic did, particularly in the world's largest economy, was add to this constituency of populists and protectionists the entire apparatus of the American national security establishment.