This is the Katori Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 8, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There are several factors that contribute to U.S. tensions with China, one that's perhaps not

appreciated so much is the massive U.S. military footprint across the globe.

Cato Stug Bandau discusses how Europe and the U. the US differ with respect to the risks and promise of engagement with China. The U.S. has had diplomatic visits in China recently.

The U.S. has had diplomatic visits in China recently.

She Xin Ping, the leader of the Chinese government, was in Europe recently.

So I wonder what is essentially the difference between U.S. engagement with China and European engagement

with China?

The fundamental challenge here is that the U.S US looks at China as both a security threat and an economic problem,

while Europe for the most part looks at China as an economic problem.

So even though they would hate to see a war against Taiwan,

that's a long way from Europe.

So they just have a different way of looking at things.

So for them, the economics looms larger and they care a lot more in many ways

about protecting their economic relationship with China than we do. So there's a real tension between the United States and China, you know, where the Europeans are upset with China, for example, for support for Europe, but they're also tend to be less willing to risk the economic relationship while the US just applied sanctions on China because of alleged support for Russia.

And that's kind of the kind of break where for Russia.

And that's kind of the kind of break where you see

that the US is willing to take a much more confrontational stance

towards China, while the Europeans remain much more reluctant

and that puts tension between Washington and Brussels.

Is there a clear explanation for why that is?

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