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Will the new Washington consensus work?
The new consensus is different to the old in three key respects
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The goal of integrating China has been replaced with a debate about how to disintegrate China.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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Edward Luce
If you like time warps, read former US president Bill Clinton’s 2000 speech urging Congress to admit China into the World Trade Organisation. China’s entry would enrich Americans and help convert China to freedom, he said. “There’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the Internet,” he conceded to laughter. “Good luck! That’s sort of like trying to nail jello to the wall.”
Less than a quarter of a century later, China lives behind a Great Firewall and the Washington consensus has long since been declared dead. That term, which was coined by a British economist in 1989, consisted of free market maxims. Its guarantor was the US, and its crack troops were the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The 10-point list was exclusively economic. Geopolitics had lost its relevance since the end of the Cold War.
