Former Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger warned in a March 26 Wall Street Journal article titled “Beijing Targets U.S. Businesses” that the Chinese Communist authorities are making every effort to woo U.S. companies because, as the U.S. and Chinese Communist governments compete fiercely over strategy and ideology, corporate The Chinese Communist government is making an all-out effort to woo U.S. businesses, because as the U.S. and Chinese Communist governments compete over strategy and ideology, corporate orientation will determine which side wins.
In the weeks leading up to and following President Biden‘s inauguration, Chinese Communist leaders launched a propaganda campaign against the United States,” writes Borming. Their flurry of speeches, letters and statements were not primarily aimed at the new administration, as the media initially believed. Rather, it was an effort to target the U.S. business community. Yang Jiechi, the Communist Party’s top diplomat, addressed an online audience of U.S. business leaders and former government officials in early February. He painted a rosy blueprint of investment and trade opportunities in China, then warned that Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan are ‘red lines’ that Americans would do well to keep quiet about. Mr. Young lambasted the Trump administration’s policies toward China and nakedly urged the audience to lobby the Biden Administration to reverse those policies.”
According to Booming, “In late January, General Secretary Xi Jinping sat in front of a mural of the Great Wall of China and addressed the business elite in Davos, Switzerland, urging them to resist efforts by European and American policymakers to ‘decouple’ parts of their economies from the Chinese economy. Mr. Xi also wrote personally to a prominent American businessman, urging him to ‘make positive efforts to promote economic and trade cooperation between China and the United States.’ To make clear that these were requests, not suggestions, Beijing announced sanctions against nearly 30 current or former U.S. government officials (I was among them). This follows sanctions imposed by Beijing last year on U.S. human rights activists, the Democracy Foundation and a number of U.S. senators.”
Bomen noted, “Beijing’s message is clear and unmistakable. You must make a choice, and if you want to do business in China, you must do so at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the ethnic cleansing of ethnic and religious minorities in China; you must ignore Beijing’s reneging on its major commitments, including international treaties guaranteeing Hong Kong a ‘high degree of autonomy’; and you must stop engaging with security-conscious officials in your own capital, unless you are lobbying them on Beijing’s behalf. “
At the same Time, Beijing wants the world to rely on China forever, and in doing so, achieve political goals,” argues Booming. Xi Jinping made it clear at this year’s National People’s Congress that he wants China to stop relying on developed countries for high-end products, and instead wants developed countries to rely heavily on China for high-tech products and raw materials. In other words, ‘decoupling’ is precisely Beijing’s strategy, as long as decoupling benefits Beijing. More importantly, the Chinese Communist government is no longer hiding this strategy.
Bo Ming said, “China’s trade with Australia hit record highs in previous years, but last year Beijing imposed restrictions on Australian wine, beef and barley imports for political reasons, and through an unnamed Chinese official released a file from the Chinese Embassy in Australia to the Australian media, listing 14 ‘anti-China crimes’ against Australia This is Beijing’s way of ‘forcing politics with economics’. “
U.S. entrepreneurs have always sought simple, profitable business relationships and resisted viewing U.S.-China relations as ideological bargaining, but Biden’s National Security Strategy Midterm Guidelines released this month lists China as ‘the only country capable of combining economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to challenge a stable and open international system. The strategy released by the two heads of state makes it clear that ideological competition is inevitable and even central. As a result, Beijing knows that it can no longer influence the Washington political establishment, and is instead targeting other levels of American society, with business being the bullseye.”
Booming suggests that “U.S. companies should first understand how the situation has evolved over the past few years and recognize that there is no way to change it, i.e., it is difficult to please both Washington and Beijing. Second, they should begin to analyze what happens when the supply chain is fragmented, because after all, the rush to focus production in authoritarian countries is not the right track.” He argued that “a full decoupling of the two economies is only Communist propaganda language and the claim of some U.S. alarmists, but a limited decoupling: especially in key technology areas is feasible and should be done, and business leaders must be aware of this.”
Bomen stressed that the U.S. and China are both “running a marathon where only one side can win. Assuming the U.S. can’t get things right in the next 4 years, it will lose this race, although it may be many years before it realizes it lost long ago.” He noted that “Beijing is trying to win with ‘the will of one man,’ while the strength of a free society lies in the human spirit. However, Beijing is correct in one observation, and that is that U.S. business leaders, boards of directors and investors, will be the key to determining who can get to the top in the U.S. and China.”
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