Study On The Power And Constraints Of The U.S.Strategic Game Against China In The Era Of Global Value Chains

Since 2017,Trump has governed the United States against the international macro background of the rise of anti-globalization thinking and intensively launched a strategic game against China starting with a tariff and trade war,bringing a huge impact to the international relations landscape.The study of international power game and China-US relations urgently needs to explore the theoretical explanation path of economic foundation hidden behind this change on the basis of the basic principles of Marxist political economy.As a typical manifestation of international economy in the era of globalization,global value chain(GVCs)integrates the most extensive processes of the flow and value-added exchange and distribution of factors such as commodities,capital,technology and labor between countries,and naturally become a new economic basis for international relations.At the same time,the nodes,links,interdependence,direction of factor flows,structural resilience and other characteristics of global value chains are greatly in line with the model of directional weighted non-random network structure under the vision of network science thinking.In this network structure,the mechanism of power generation exists in the asymmetric distribution of the degree of sensitivity,vulnerability interdependence among national actors caused by the advantages of three aspects of material endowments,as well as structural and positional relations.Under the theoretical path of explaining the correlation structure of global value chain networks,the strategic game process launched by the United States against China after the Trump administration can be seen as using its own physical endowment,structural and relational power advantages,which acquired in the global value chain network system to physically cut,structurally block and reconfigure the global value chain network against the strategic rival represented by China,which is subjectively constructed.and positional blocking and deterrence.Among them,the physical cut is manifested in the trade war launched by the U.S.against China with tariffs as the main means,weakening or even cutting off the economic and trade exchanges that are the "ballast" of bilateral relations between the U.S.and China.The structural blocking and reconfiguration is manifested in the targeted "decoupling" and "dismantling" of China's embedding and participation in the global value chain network through the alliance system,with the intention to exclude China from the U.S.-led global and regional value chain network system.The blocking and deterrence of the location relationship and the application of the global value chain network power means are manifested in the U.S.in the field of artificial intelligence,digital economy and other frontier technologies of the fourth technological industrial transformation.Seeking to enhance its own high-end positional advantage in the global value chain network system by curbing China's access to core technologies,key components and strategic materials in frontier areas,so as to achieve the maintenance of hegemony.However,an assessment of the effectiveness of the U.S.strategic game of power instruments,as reflected in objective economic data,reveals that the U.S.has not been able to achieve its strategic goal of cutting,decoupling,and dismantling the value chain with China at a significant cost to the U.S.in terms of time and economic costs.On the contrary,in the process,the U.S.has further widened its own current account imbalance due to its share of imports from China and raised the economic costs for domestic producers and consumers.Moreover,the U.S.hegemonic exploitation and reconfiguration of global value chain networks,overlaid with complex interdependencies and the extensive constraining effects therein,has triggered divergent and conflicting orientations of development interests within the Western alliance.The deeper reasons for this result are,on the one hand,objectively,the highly complex network connections of global value chains make network relational power connected and shared,meaning that this new power pattern makes the intention of controlling the whole situation of the network impossible to achieve.On the other hand,subjectively,whether intentionally or unintentionally,the U.S.has misperceptions of the historical situation,that is,it does not know enough about the essential differences between playing the great power game in the era of global value chains and the historical experience of the Cold War.Ultimately,this has led the United States to ignore and fail to control the interdependence and its limiting role in the global value chain network linkage as a new economic basis for international relations in its strategic game against China,and to fail to achieve its strategic goal of maintaining hegemony by means of the power of the global value chain network,thus resulting in the blind use of hegemonic means in the process of the decline cycle to bring about the original international order "The hegemonic destabilization" is a great confusion and uncertainty.The path of the overall analysis can be considered that the construction of a new type of major power relationship with benign competition and cooperation around the global value chain network mechanism,rather than the continuation of Cold War thinking and hegemonic strategic concepts,is the effective path to avoid falling into the "Thucydides' Trap" and other historical patterns between China and the United States.