Imagine a barbell. That is, in my mind, the future shape of the global economy. Two separate spheres, one the economies of the West and the other those centered on China, connected by a tube of undefined thickness.
I (along with a lot of other people) once thought the connecting cylinder would be thick, nearly as big as the two orbs it linked, allowing virtually all goods and services to pass from one side to the other. Only trade in sensitive high-end technologies would be restricted. Increasingly, though, connections between the halves of the global economy are dwindling and the tube is narrowing.
Traditionally, global economic exchange resembled two largely overlapping spheres, with only a small space of forbidden interactions, the result of export controls that banned trade that could improve military capability.
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