Containment policy in the context of U.S.-China rivalry: historical parallels in the transformation of the shadow dimensions of economic diplomacy

Abstract

The aim of this article is to substantiate a conceptual framework for the contemporary politics of containment in the rivalry between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, understood not as a trade policy but as a security policy realized by economic means. The hypothesis is that modern containment is implemented primarily through the governance of global production networks and global value chains rather than through classical tariff barriers, and that this transformation gives rise to the phenomenon of coercive coupling and decoupling, within which middle powers are compelled to balance between the security pressure of the hegemon and their own economic interests. The study demonstrates that the rhetorical shift from decoupling to de-risking reflects the objective impossibility of a complete rupture with China and the recognition of its costs, so that the present phase of containment is not a blockade but a selective restraint on critical technologies. Attention is devoted to the category of the economics of sanctions and to its place within the system of economic containment, since sanctions, export controls, and conditional access to technology and capital constitute the coercive pole of a single continuum of economic statecraft. The article also shows that the geopolitical context legitimizes the return of the developmental state and of active industrial policy, so that the very liberal model of the United States is being transformed toward state interventionism.