SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: the U.S. now understands it cannot contain or suppress China anymore - that game is over. But the narrative remains enormously profitable

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2057668773658956278

Arnaud Bertrand

Another fascinating article by my friend @kejimao
, who remains one of the most thought-provoking geopolitical scholars in China: https://thewire.in/diplomacy/chess-piece-to-blood-bag-what-trump-xi-summit-could-spell-for-india

He tackles an apparent contradiction that I know many people are struggling with: if there is indeed some form of detente between the U.S. and China, why then is the U.S. still selling the "China threat" narrative to countries like India, Japan, and South Korea?

Mao's thesis: the U.S. now understands it cannot contain or suppress China anymore - that game is over. But the narrative remains enormously profitable. Keeping allies scared means keeping them buying US weapons, US energy, US technology. The China threat has gone from strategic doctrine to market preservation, or - as Mao puts it - from treating "allies" as "chess pieces" to treating them as "blood bags" (as in the medical bags you drain until it's empty and then discard).

Mao, being an India specialist and writing in an Indian paper, warns India it is particularly vulnerable to this because whatever leverage India once had over Washington has largely evaporated. The U.S. needed India when it believed it could contain China. It no longer believes that - which means India has gone from being courted to being invoiced.

There is, interestingly, a parallel to this around green energy that I myself highlighted in several of my articles (such as this one in Le Monde Diplomatique last December: https://mondediplo.com/2025/12/10china).  

Trump's anti-renewable rhetoric - "drill, baby, drill," calling green energy a "hoax" - functions exactly like this: it's not really about energy policy at home (renewables made up an extraordinary 88% of new US power generating capacity in 2025: https://electrek.co/2026/04/01/ferc-renewables-made-up-88-of-new-us-power-generating-capacity-in-2025/), it's about keeping others dependent on US fossil fuels.

In essence, as things stand, neither the "China threat" nor the "green energy hoax" are operative strategies. They're sales pitches. The U.S. doesn't act on either one - it installs renewables at home and pursues détente with Beijing. The narratives exist for the purpose of keeping invoices flowing to countries foolish enough to drink the Kool-Aid.