Tom Watson, in a recent speech at the Cooperative Conference to launch his new Future of Work Commission, suggested that it is imperative for Labour to keep an open mind about Trump. In doing so he seems to have taken on board some of the anti-globalisation sentiment of America’s protectionists, setting the Commission off on the wrong foot.

Firstly, he falls into the error of seeing America’s ‘left behind’ rust belt workers as victims of cheap imports from China. Yet study after study has shown that new technologies have had a far, far greater impact on US job loss than trade. If the problem is not identified correctly, how is it possible to develop a sensible strategy for future employment?

Watson then goes so far as to question the fundamental assumption that free trade benefits all countries. ‘Is this really true?’ he asks, ‘You can make a cogent case that the debt fuelled growth of China has given Chinese corporations who receive forms of hidden state subsidies an unfair advantage in Western markets’. Now this was exactly the point made by Wilbur Ross, Trump’s choice for commerce secretary, just days earlier.

China in fact should be given credit for contributing 30 percent to world economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis. Of course as a developing economy, China has so far controlled the pace of opening to global competition so as to catch up with the advanced economies. But precisely by opening gradually, its economy has maintained a fast pace of growth and this growth has been hugely beneficial. China has lifted some 700 million of its own people out of poverty. At the same time, for example, as trade between China and Latin America grew from $13bn in 2000 to $262bn in 2013, and left wing governments used the space to carry out radical social policies, poverty in Latin America fell from 44 per cent to 28 per cent. It is quite wrong to set the ‘win’ in falling poverty rates in developing countries against a ‘loss’ for blue collar workers in the West. It is surely contrary to Labour’s internationalism to do so. And of course, those same workers have benefitted as consumers of white goods, mobile phones and so on.

Speaking at Davos in January, President Xi articulated his win-win vision: ‘China will do well only when the world does well, and vice versa.’ China’s economy is now rising up the value chain, rebalancing trade away from exports as it does so. Production is orienting inward as the domestic market expands. There are huge opportunities here for other countries also which adapt to its demands. In the coming five years, Xi pledged, China will import $8 trillion of goods, attract $600 billion of foreign investment. In addition, it will make $750 billion of outbound investment. And Chinese tourists will make 700 million overseas visits.

Xi’s speech was an effort to present an alternative agenda for a fairer, more cooperative style of globalisation. In highlighting the contradictions of a system that on the one hand produces material wealth as never before, whilst on the other leading to increasing and socially destabilising inequalities, Xi characterises globalisation as a ‘double edged sword. Far from the untrammelled freedoms of TTIP and TPP, which aimed to strengthen the power of global business over governments, his idea puts governments in the driving seat in order to ‘adapt to and guide economic globalisation, cushion its negative impact, and deliver its benefits to all countries and all nations’.

The point is that today’s economic problems are way beyond the standard fix of monetary and fiscal policy. New technologies are now opening up exciting prospects for growth, but the danger is that job loss will exacerbate inequalities even further. So the fourth industrial revolution at its very nascence is held back from realising a huge leap in productive power by doubts and uncertainties. But just like climate change, the problems of growing inequalities and the disruptive effects to technology cannot be solved in isolation. These are grave threats but there are opportunities here to develop new industries and create new jobs. Also mentioned by Xi is the global problem of ageing populations. Altogether these demand that governments collectively take the bull by the horns. What Xi conceives is a world working together, innovating new ways of growing the global economy to meet the challenges ahead, managing change through economic coordination. Only in this way it would be possible to shape the way the world transitions to a new technological age in a more balanced, greener and inclusive way.

Xi’s speech also in effect gave notice that China aims to set the global pace of change in renewable energies and technologies of the future. Trump’s protectionism is simply a dead end – if advanced economies keep hanging on to the old traditional industries, they risk ending up in an economic backwater.

All this calls for new thinking on global industrial policy. Clearly, economies restructure at different paces giving rise to disputes, but these should be handled through negotiation. The important thing is to consider more positively the opportunities China offers. Rather than banging on so much about the disadvantages of technology transfer and cheap imports, we should instead be creatively searching out the synergies between our economies at national, regional and local levels.

Tom Watson’s new commission should look again at the broader global context. More than this, Labour needs to take up more vigorously its debate on China and it has to get beyond the interminable ‘commerce versus human rights’ cycle. Faced with the double uncertainties of Brexit and Trump’s isolationism, Britain needs to seriously consider its strategic choices. Trump is pulling towards confrontation with China whilst Europe is looking East to the Eurasian continent as China’s One Belt One Road project moves westward, leaving Britain’s transatlantic bridge collapsing in the middle. At the same time, not only is it the Paris climate change agreement and the Iran nuclear deal that are under threat from the Trump administration, but also the UN, and with it Britain’s claim to global status. What value for Labour then in looking to build a stronger relationship with China as a reliable partner, and not least on the UN Security Council, in working to uphold the multilateral order and to build a greener and more equitable world?

Dr Jenny Clegg is a former senior lecturer in Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Central Lancashire. She continues to write and research on China. She is a member of Withington CLP in Manchester.