The United States should further reduce its dependence on China for trade, commerce and products if it is to enable U.S. companies and businesses to win the fierce competition that will allow Washington to win the strategic race with Beijing, as China is no longer a friend of the United States but a real and long-term threat to the United States, members of the U.S. House of Representatives called Thursday (Sept. 10) in Washington.
There are many in the United States who believe that the underlying driver of the trade war between the two world’s largest economies, the United States and China, is the ongoing struggle for global technology and innovation dominance. Against this backdrop, President Trump began his term by raising a number of tough questions about U.S.-China trade: In addition to the U.S. trade deficit with China and the labeling of China as a currency manipulator, the core issues that led to the subsequent escalation of the ongoing tariffs imposed on China are China’s policies and practices regarding forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and non-market manipulation.
The Trump administration has introduced a series of policies and regulations that restrict the entry of Chinese high-tech companies into the U.S. market, identifying many Chinese technology companies, such as Huawei, ZTE, and DJI drones, as a threat to U.S. national security. The United States has banned Huawei from participating in the construction of 5G networks and lobbied its allies to exclude Huawei from building 5G networks. In his Labor Day speech recently, President Trump even proposed the idea of “decoupling” the U.S. and China economies.
Speaking at the Export-Import Bank’s annual meeting on the issue of U.S.-China strategic competition, Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, noted that it is critical for the U.S. to compete with China not only in the Belt and Road sector, but also in the technology sector.
“China’s actions have awakened the American people to the fact that China is no longer our friend and that the Chinese Communist Party is oppressing its own people. We need to become less dependent on China, because the more we become dependent on China, the more vulnerable we become,” said Senator McCaul.
In McCaul’s judgment, the United States has lost the ability to compete with China in Africa and Latin America. Therefore, the U.S. must catch up, and the U.S. must win. Not only “in Huawei’s 5G, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, but we have to beat them in other technologies as well,” he said.
Some political circles and think tanks in Washington argue that as China’s international influence expands, Beijing will never be able to continue accepting existing global standards and institutions established and widely implemented by developed countries on the basis of the Washington Consensus. Beijing has always strived to be a leader in the development of global technology standards, as exemplified by its “One Belt, One Road” and “Made in China 2025” initiatives.
Critics argue that while China’s wealth of innovative talent provides a solid foundation for its quest for a global technological pinnacle, Beijing’s control of its people’s individual freedoms hinders and undermines its own goals and scares away many potential global partners.
Congressman Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, a Republican member of the U.S. Congress, said the Chinese Communist Party authorities are a totalitarian system that wants to do nothing more than imprison people’s freedoms and violate human rights.
“What they want is to dominate the future of the world in all walks of life, so that they can replace the United States, so that they can export the values of the Chinese Communist Party for the People’s Republic of China. That’s why I believe that they are, in fact, a permanent and real threat to our country,” said Congressman Gonzalez.
Congressman Gonzales also said that what the United States needs to do as a country is to make sure that we do everything we can to be a leader in these industries; and the United States has been a global leader in innovation. However, in the face of the behemoth that is the Beijing regime, the United States needs the attention and commitment of the entire government and society to continue to advocate for the American model and economic values and to uphold the universal norms that have always protected U.S. and global security.
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