Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, warned at the consulting firm's annual GZERO Summit in Tokyo Monday that a rising "tech Cold War" between China and the West poses "the greatest threat to globalization since the end of World War II."
What he's saying: "Beijing is building a separate system of Chinese technology — its own standards, infrastructure, and supply chains — to compete with the West," Bremmer said. "Make no mistake: This is the single most consequential geopolitical decision taken in the last three decades."
Bremmer says these "parallel technology systems" are more worrisome than China's military threat, which is "smaller than many in Washington believe":
China has even less interest in going to war with the U.S. than the U.S. has in going to war with China. China is a regional, but not a global, military power. ...
The greatest source of U.S.-China conflict comes from technology. Here, China is, today, a true superpower. Here, the U.S. does have an interest in seeing China fail, because China's technological development poses a foundational challenge to the values on which global stability and prosperity depend.
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