Since the U.S. and China began to deteriorate significantly two years ago, the CCP has been backtracking on topics such as the Cold War and Sino-U.S. friendship, blaming Trump’s fault for the deterioration of Sino-U.S. relations, but there is only one topic that the CCP never mentions, and that is the dispute over U.S.-China technology secrets. Because this is the most reluctant topic in Sino-U.S. relations, in the words of the Chinese Communist Party’s official media, that is, “all people are thieves. It is precisely this issue that highlights the intricacies and confusion of the evolution of U.S.-China relations today.
First, China and the United States is not a trade war, the theft of technology secrets is the core problem
Up to now, the Biden administration and most U.S. experts on China, whether they are critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or disguised as helping the CCP, have been reluctant to positively review the panorama of the deterioration of U.S.-China relations. If one analyzes this panorama, it becomes clear that the origin of the deterioration of U.S.-China relations is not a dispute over values, as the Biden administration speaks, but a U.S. defensive war against the Chinese Communist Party’s operation of stealing technology secrets.
The Chinese Communist Party has been stealing U.S. technology secrets and intellectual property on a massive scale for a long time, and such infringement is certainly not a big power “competition” as Biden said, but a deliberate and serious infringement by the Chinese Communist Party on the United States. This phenomenon was already evident during the Obama era, and the damage to the U.S. has been increasing, but Obama has done nothing; this in turn has been a disguised encouragement of China’s massive theft of technology secrets, so much so that China has incorporated this activity into its economic “rise” and world “dominance” strategy. The Chinese have incorporated such activities into their strategic planning for economic “rise” and world “dominance” (e.g., the 1,000-member program).
President Trump signed a memorandum on March 22, 2018, accusing “China of stealing U.S. intellectual property and trade secrets” and imposing tariffs on imports from China under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to force China to change its “unfair trade practices “. President Trump then put the U.S.-China trade and economic dispute on the negotiating table between the two sides, dealing with each other on the subjects of trade deficits and intellectual property rights.
Such negotiations would have been a normal way to resolve economic disputes between countries, and the core issue considered by the White House in the economic and trade negotiations was not simply the trade deficit, but the desire to use the trade issue as leverage to force the Chinese Communist Party to stop infringing on U.S. intellectual property rights, and tariffs were only a means to complement the negotiations. At that time, the Trump administration still followed the framework of U.S.-China relations set by previous U.S. presidents, hoping to solve the two major problems of intellectual property infringement and trade deficit through economic and trade negotiations, and to continue to maintain normal cooperative relations between the two sides in the economic and technological fields. Therefore, President Trump did not pursue the state action of the CCP in stealing technology secrets in the U.S.-China negotiations, nor did he demand compensation for the loss of theft, but only asked China to take practical measures at the legislative, judicial, and administrative supervision levels to suspend activities that infringe intellectual property rights.
Secondly, the Chinese Communist Party threatened to use force and ignited the Cold War between China and the U.S. when the civilian talks were fruitless
At the beginning of the 2018 U.S.-China economic and trade negotiations, the CCP said that both trade and intellectual property rights could be negotiated; in fact, the CCP was unwilling to concede in both aspects, and Beijing has been at the negotiating table with the Trump administration in a false and soft manner. During the lengthy negotiations, the CCP initially denied any theft of technology secrets and infringement of intellectual property rights; then, in front of the facts of many cases, the CCP admitted the existence of infringement of intellectual property rights; but at the last minute of the negotiations, the whole thing was reversed. Apparently, China would rather bear high U.S. tariffs than effectively end its IPR infringement activities; at the same time, the CCP has been limiting the U.S.-China economic and trade negotiations to trade as much as possible, hoping to use trade concessions to divert U.S. attention from the CCP’s theft of technology secrets.
For the CCP, the U.S.-China trade talks can only be a “trade war,” and if the talks go beyond trade and investment issues, they will touch China’s “red line. This suggests that Beijing’s “red line” is not to touch the issue of technological espionage. For the Trump administration, intellectual property rights cannot be violated, and violations must be prosecuted. As a result, the two sides were unable to make progress in their negotiations.
In early 2019 the Chinese Communist Party found it difficult to win at the negotiating table and played the old Communist regime trick – the threat of force. As the economic and trade outlook between the United States and China was uncertain, some foreign companies began to withdraw, and China’s economic situation was deteriorating, the CCP, fearing that it would lose the initiative, took three military threats against the United States one after another. I have mentioned these three actions several times, namely, in January 2019, the Chinese naval fleet went to Midway Island for exercises, claiming to “point the sword at Pearl Harbor”; in March, the Chinese Communist Party announced the occupation of most of the international waters in the South China Sea and the establishment of a “deep sea fortress” of Chinese nuclear submarines threatening the United States; in June In June, it announced the completion of the deployment of Beidou satellites for nuclear missile navigation, allowing for precise nuclear bombardment of the entire United States. The Chinese Communist Party uses these military threats as a means to help resolve the U.S.-China trade and economic conflict, and wants to use the nuclear threat to pressure the U.S. into giving in to the Trump administration.
Regardless of the calculations of the Chinese Communist Party authorities, without considering whether it anticipated such an outcome as the outbreak of the U.S.-China Cold War, and without analyzing whether the Chinese Communist Party underestimated the Trump administration’s determination to defend U.S. national security, the Chinese Communist Party’s military threats have undoubtedly pushed U.S.-China relations into the abyss of deterioration, igniting the U.S.-China Cold War and, of course, changing the course of the U.S.-China trade and economic negotiations. The matter has come to this point, the bilateral relationship between China and the United States can no longer turn back, much less return to the old track of cooperation and development between the two countries.
Third, the official media claim themselves: “All people are thieves”
After the 1980s, the developed countries represented by the United States have gradually transformed into an intellectual property-supported economic structure. Under such circumstances, defending the country’s intellectual property from theft is not only the basic prerequisite for maintaining employment and corporate profits, but also the only way to safeguard the wealth of intellectual property. China’s attempts to “seize” the technological secrets and intellectual property of others are not only a hard grab of intellectual property gains (i.e., profits) from foreign companies, but also a takeover of intellectual property wealth from developed countries. This has led to economic and trade negotiations between the United States and China on the subject of theft of technology secrets.
China’s theft of technology secrets and intellectual property can be broadly divided into two parts: the bulk sale of counterfeit goods and the outright theft of technology secrets. If the former is blatantly stealing the brands of U.S. companies and encroaching on their markets with counterfeit products, the latter is technical espionage; the former steals profits from companies producing genuine products through frequent exports of counterfeit goods, while the latter belongs to permanently looting the intellectual property wealth of U.S. companies; if those involved are investigated, the former falls within the scope of civil litigation, while the latter involves criminal offenses. The former is a continuous infringement on U.S. companies, but the amount of each infringement is relatively limited, while the latter is a one-time cause of huge losses to U.S. companies, leaving the stolen U.S. companies to lose their years of investment in R&D, and may face long-term bankruptcy due to the squeeze of Chinese imitations.
According to a report published by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, Chinese counterfeiting, piracy and trade secret theft-related actions cost the U.S. economy between $225 billion and $600 billion annually. Of that amount, trade secret theft alone costs the U.S. economy between $180 billion and $540 billion.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has said, “China has pioneered a societal approach to stealing innovation, using any means possible to steal from businesses, universities and organizations of all kinds (“China has pioneered a societal approach to stealing innovation in any way it can from a wide array of businesses, universities and organizations”); China collects intelligence through intelligence agencies, through state-owned enterprises, through so-called private companies, through students and researchers, and through various subjects working overseas on behalf of China.” He mentioned that the FBI has 56 offices across the country and that almost all of these offices point to China when investigating cases of economic espionage.
Interestingly, the Chinese Communist Party’s official foreign propaganda media, Dovetail News, reported the FBI director’s aforementioned statement on April 26, 2019, under the headline “FBI Director: all Chinese are thieves, biggest threat to U.S. intelligence”. The director’s original English statement, which used the term “societal approach” in a non-derogatory sense, was exaggeratedly translated by the Chinese Communist Party’s official media as “all people are thieves. It is not clear whether the intention of the official media is to stir up anger among overseas Chinese against the U.S., or to be complacent about the success of the theft.
Fourth, plagiarism to establish a nation?
When the CCP demonstrates its military power, it constantly brags about how the naval fleet is growing. Can the CCP’s technological research and development capabilities really support the expansion of the Communist military and the rise of the economy?
One indicator to determine whether the current economic development of major international countries is based on science and technology is how much of the value of an enterprise’s own intellectual property and its revenues account for its assets and profits; the larger the percentage, the stronger the technological strength.
According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 10 years ago, the U.S. accounted for about 25% of the net profits of global enterprises, but now this proportion has risen significantly to 39%. The reason for this is that the U.S. has formed an industrial structure in which profits are generated by “intangible assets” such as intellectual property. A survey of the assets held by U.S. companies shows that intangible assets such as patents, which represent technological strength, and trademarks, which represent brand influence, have reached $4.4 trillion, surpassing tangible assets such as factories and stores; the proportion of intangible assets in U.S. companies’ total assets has reached 26%, more than twice that of 10 years ago, while the proportion in Japan is still only 6.4%. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun doesn’t say what the percentage is in China; most likely, it is at most a fraction of what it is in Japan.
So what does the Chinese Communist Party rely on to build its country and expand its military to prepare for war? To return to the subject of this article, the answer is clear: it relies on plagiarism; moreover, stealing the intellectual property of the United States, a major technological power, is more profitable than stealing money. What’s more, stealing technology secrets from the U.S. not only saves our own R&D investment, but also takes the U.S. technology secrets for ourselves; then we can use the stolen technology to make counterfeit products and make a fortune in the global market; what’s more, the U.S. technology secrets are the wealth accumulated by long-term R&D investment. The Chinese Communist Party’s technological wealth. Many people do not believe that the Chinese Communist Party steals everything. Perhaps, a special analysis of the spy war between China and the United States will illustrate the truth.
Can’t Chinese companies follow the path of independent research and development? How easy is it to talk about independent research and development of technology? The question is not whether the government puts forward this slogan, but whether there exists an original motivation for technology research and development in Chinese companies. The only reliable guarantee of intellectual property revenue is the system to maintain the original motivation; and the generation of original motivation requires innovation sensitivity and intuition in terms of technology availability, risk tolerance and the security of innovation results, of which the most critical is the security of innovation results. If there is no system to guarantee the safety of innovation results, any innovation may be plagiarized by other enterprises at will, which enterprise is still willing to invest a lot in R&D and “do the graft for others”? What China lacks is a system to guarantee the safety of innovation results, and it is a common practice in the Chinese business community to plagiarize for profit. So, plagiarism is not only a consistent practice of the Chinese Communist Party during its honeymoon with the United States, but also a consistent practice of Chinese companies at home.
Recently Biden has been seeking to meet with Xi Jinping, and for this reason the issue of the CCP’s theft of technology secrets has been squashed, as has the issue of the CCP’s military threat to the United States, in order to pave the way for the China-US tier summit talks. Although the CCP’s technology spies in the U.S. are not as active as they used to be, they have not ceased their activities, and U.S. technology secrets continue to be funneled into the hands of the CCP. This long-standing technology theft has created a “food chain” in the United States, and has even created vested interests associated with this “food chain,” which often criticize FBI investigations and court decisions in the name of academic freedom and international scientific cooperation. They often criticize FBI investigations and court decisions in the name of academic freedom and international scientific cooperation.
The sharp confrontation between the U.S. and China over technology theft and the Chinese Communist Party’s military threat to the U.S., which was the central issue in the U.S.-China relationship, has been marginalized by the Biden administration as a minor issue. The so-called “mainstream media” in the U.S., when talking about U.S.-China relations, are eager to talk about “human rights” and “values” and other empty words, while evasively When it comes to China-U.S. relations, they are eager to talk about “human rights” and “values” and other empty words, but at the same time, they avoid the two core issues of technology theft and military threats, pretending that they know nothing. Why are so many American media and scholars so careful to avoid stepping on the “red line” set by the Chinese Communist Party on the issue of technological espionage? This is certainly a matter of concern and alarm for the American public.
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