JANUARY 25 — The United States speaks increasingly of decoupling from China, as if economic interdependence were a switch that could simply be turned off. The language is seductive.
It promises sovereignty without sacrifice, security without cost, and strategic autonomy without disruption.
Yet this framing misunderstands the nature of the contemporary international system.
China is no longer merely a competitor to the United States.
It is already structurally embedded within American daily life, production systems, and technological ecosystems.
Decoupling, in its pure form, is not just unlikely. It is close to impossible.
This reality explains why the US–China Summit scheduled for April 2026 in Beijing matters far more than its ceremonial optics.
Held amid frenetic global economic activity — tight labour markets in parts of the West, industrial overcapacity anxieties, green-transition bottlenecks, and volatile capital flows — the summit will function as a benchmark of the state of the world to come. It will set the tone for how rivalry is managed in the months leading to the expiration of the China–US tariff truce in November 2026.
The summit will not end competition. But it will reveal whether both sides intend to stabilise interdependence or weaponise it.
Interdependence is no longer optional
The popular assumption behind decoupling is that economic ties are transactional and reversible.
But globalisation — particularly in its China-centric phase since the 1990s — has not produced shallow links. It has produced deep integration.
That is why the tariff truce exists at all. Tariffs have already demonstrated their limits.
They distort supply chains, raise costs for consumers, and generate inflationary pressure without dismantling China’s industrial base. Beijing, for its part, absorbed shocks, diversified markets, and doubled down on domestic capacity.
Washington, meanwhile, learned that punitive trade measures rebound through prices, inventories, and investor sentiment.
April 2026, therefore, is less about rapprochement than reckoning.
It is a moment of stock-taking — what worked, what failed, and what must be managed — before November’s deadline forces a decision.
Manufacturing, supply chains, and the myth of exit
Take manufacturing. The United States does not simply import finished goods from China. It imports processes, scale, logistics intelligence, and manufacturing ecosystems.
American consumer electronics, medical devices, renewable energy systems, and even defence-adjacent components rely on Chinese upstream inputs or downstream assembly. Tariffs did not change this structure; they re-routed it.
Production shifted to South-east Asia, South Asia, and Mexico — but Chinese firms, Chinese capital, and Chinese intermediate goods often followed.
What is advertised as “decoupling” is more accurately geographical diffusion within a China-anchored system.
This is why the April 2026 summit matters. It will clarify whether both sides accept this diffusion as the new normal — or attempt another round of blunt instruments before November.
Technology rivalry does not equal separation
Much has been made of technological separation — especially in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and telecommunications. Yet even here, separation is partial and uneven.
China dominates battery production, rare-earth processing, solar panel manufacturing, and electric-vehicle supply chains — the backbone of the green transition the United States itself seeks to accelerate.
One cannot electrify at speed while excising China from the equation.
The April 2026 meeting will test whether export controls and investment screening can coexist with tariff restraint — or whether technology competition will spill back into trade warfare as the truce deadline approaches.
Everyday American life already bears a Chinese signature
Decoupling rhetoric often ignores the mundane realities of daily life. Smartphones assembled in China.
Clothing produced through Chinese textile chains. Household appliances dependent on Chinese components.
Digital platforms shaped by Chinese app ecosystems, even when hosted elsewhere.
Tariffs did not erase these realities.
Consumers adapted, prices rose, dependence endured. The truce became a practical acknowledgment that everyday interdependence cannot be legislated away.
The illusion of strategic clean breaks
True decoupling would require rebuilding entire industrial ecosystems, accepting sustained inflation, persuading allies — many deeply tied to China — to absorb collateral damage, and preparing for retaliatory economic warfare.
April 2026 will expose the gap between rhetoric and readiness.
The months to November 2026 are not a runway to separation; they are a corridor of negotiation.
Asean reads the signals clearly
From an Asean perspective, the summit follows a familiar script. Great powers speak in absolutes; they act in gradients.
South-east Asia sits at the crossroads of US–China supply chains.
The region has benefited from diversification triggered by tariffs, yet none believe decoupling is real.
What Asean states are doing instead is to deepen and broaden economic, technological, and diplomatic engagement across multiple partners, recognising that resilience comes not from exclusion but from connectivity.
This is not indecision. It is strategic realism.
Asean countries understand that systems do not collapse on command.
They adapt, absorb shocks, and expand options. In an era of competing great powers, to deepen and broaden engagement is not a luxury — it is a necessity.
November 2026: A deadline, not a break
The expiration of the tariff truce in November 2026 will not determine whether the US and China decouple.
That question has already been answered by structure, scale, and reality.
What it will determine is the temperature of rivalry.
If the truce is extended or refined, it will signal acceptance of long-term coexistence under tension. If it collapses, the shock will be global — but decoupling will still remain elusive.
Decoupling as rhetoric, interdependence as fact
Decoupling is politically useful language. It reassures anxious electorates and projects resolve.
But policy is constrained by material conditions. China is not an external appendage that can be removed without consequence.
It is woven into the fabric of American economic life — through factories, supply chains, technologies, and consumption patterns.
The April 2026 Beijing summit will make this plain.
The months that follow will not lead to exit, but to another negotiation — because separation is not a strategy; it is a slogan.
The real challenge for the United States is not how to decouple from China.
It is how to compete without collapsing the system it helped build.
History suggests that great powers fail not when they recognise constraints, but when they deny them.
In this case, the constraint is unmistakable: China is already inside the system — and April 2026 is the benchmark that will reveal whether the world chooses managed rivalry or reckless rupture.
* Phar Kim Beng is professor of Asean Studies and director of the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University of Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
