The US is right to rethink its relationship with China

Anyone who has worked in an office has fantasised about destroying it. As someone who has taken a sledgehammer to his office and fire to his papers – leaving the Libyan embassy in 2011 – I experienced a twinge of nostalgia on seeing Chinese diplomats burning papers after being given 72 hours to leave their consulate in Houston in July. Inevitably, the inevitable tit for diplomatic tat came, and American officials were sent packing from their consulate in Chengdu. Since then, relations between the US and China have deteriorated further, with Donald Trump pledging this week to ban the Chinese video app TikTok for national security reasons.

This breakdown in relations looks like the confluence of two currents in US politics: electoral politics combining with an ideological hostility to China within the White House, which aims to stop China’s rise. But there are many other reasons for the US to have a wider rethink about its relationship with China, of which the consulate closure in Houston and the potential TikTok ban are but the latest symptoms.