Xi Jinping and the United States: State and Foreign Policy in China, and Implications for the Technology Sector and the China-US Relationship
Please accept my country’s gratitude and congratulations as you embark on your third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. We believe your reign will someday be recognized as a great blessing by the United States and otherfree nations, despite it not being obvious at the moment.
Sun said that for the past five years, he had focused on getting his third term, and part of that was convincing him to remove the term limit from the party constitution. His political agenda is likely to shift from a domestic to global one.
“This is actually one of the areas — compared to, for example, domestic reform and domestic economic policy — this is an area that Xi Jinping is going to prevail,” Sun said. “These people are going to operationalize his vision and his strategy with even more momentum and more precision.”
Sun said she expects the “political confidants” and “political loyalists” of Xi to be appointed to key positions involving national security and foreign policy to help enact his vision.
Some people within the government do not believe in China’s policies towards the U.S., but she thinks that those people will be eliminated from the bureaucracy.
Chris Li, director of research at the Asia-Pacific Initiative at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, says that both China and the United States are likely to have a disagreement over Taiwan in the coming years.
China’s strategy toward Taiwan has not fundamentally changed, Li said, but “there’s a perception that Beijing is more and more focused on no longer just deterring independence … but rather, compelling reunification.”
But that perception — and the resulting actions from the U.S., such as high-level congressional visits from the likes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — has led to something of a catch-22 situation, Li said.
There’s a lot of trust issues between the US and China and there are some actions that the US views as responding to China’s actions.
Meanwhile, the tech industry has become a larger priority for China, especially as the country moves toward the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by the centennial of the People’s Republic of China in 2049, in which Xi aims to make China a modern socialist country.
China has worked to bolster its domestic research and innovation capacity, Li stated, and this has led to people in the U.S. talking about “decoupling from China” when it comes to technology and the supply chains that support it.
That led to what Li said is an impasse. But that doesn’t mean progress can’t happen, only that achieving it will test both countries in the years to come.
More of this is on China. To appreciate how badly China has lost America, you could start with this question to Beijing: “How is it that you had the biggest, most powerful lobby in Washington — and it didn’t cost you a penny — and yet you blew it?”
The U.S.-China Business Council is one of the organizations I am referring to. For nearly four decades, these powerful business groups have pushed for more trade and investment with China, believing that it would be a win-win. So did the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.
The first started in 2003, shortly after China was admitted into the World Trade Organization (thanks to America), when the leading advocate for market reforms in China — Prime Minister Zhu Rongji — stepped down. Zhu wanted U.S. companies to be in China because he believed that Chinese companies had to compete with the best at home to compete effectively in the world.
China’s inland provinces were dominated by state-owned Chinese industries that lacked interest or ability to compete globally the way China’s coastal provinces could. They got more influential.
China agreed to sign on to a W.T.O. side agreement that would limit Beijing’s ability to discriminate against foreign suppliers. China did not sign it. It continued to subsidize its state owned industries as well as steering its state buying power to them.
Chinese industries are copying Western companies that built factories in China. Beijing subsidized the Chinese industries that competed against the same Western companies they had protected in their domestic market.