This “if we play tit for tat with CCP they win” logic applies to most subdomains in China policy. It’s why pressuring China on reciprocity for *good faith* actions tend to have upside even if not effective, while reciprocating *bad faith* tends to only yield significant downside. https://twitter.com/ericfish85/status/1234930931162656770

I’d wager, perhaps uncharitably, that this basic observation doesn’t seem to get a lot of recognition in the China policy community, especially amongst hardliners, because they view and frame strategy from a standpoint of power status competition, not effective outcomes.

Same above logic also applies to why decoupling with China is probably a poor strategic move for the US. Decoupling is what China has wanted because it erodes US leverage, but it’s also what China couldn’t afford to do. Forcing issue makes China’s strategic choices much easier.

It’s true that as China’s economy and political power rose they were already loosening restraints of integration with the US on their own, but between a world where US leverage shrank as China rose and where US leverage didn’t exist at all because there was no integration,

The former probably yields a far better outcome for the US than the latter, so when China behaves badly, pushing back against the US’s leverage created from integration, the proper strategic move is probably to find ways of creating *more* integration China can’t say no to.