In the 46 years I’ve been following U.S.-Chinese relations (since being posted to Hong Kong in January 1979 and serving in Beijing from 1981 to 1982), this strikes me as the most complex, high-stakes moment.
The Chinese are fueling conflicts in Ukraine and Middle East against American and NATO allies. They are expanding influence around the world as America retreats from its traditional role–US AID is gone. So is the Voice of America. The U.S. commitment to the United Nations is very much in question. Places like Pakistan and Cambodia have become de facto Chinese colonies.
The hottest issues, though, are ones surrounding technology and Artificial Intelligence. Nvidia wants to sell relatively advanced AI chips to China but now Beijing is blocking it. Moreover, it is investigating whether other American semiconductor companies have violated Chinese anti-trust laws. Xi Jinping is brandishing his country’s dominance of rare earths as a geopolitical weapon.
The proposed deal over the future of TikTok is part of the puzzle. Will the Chinese really turn over control of the algorithms that control TikTok as it reaches 170 million Americans? There’s a hint that the Chinese are going to surrender control as a good-faith bargaining chip. But Oracle is going to merely “license” the technology. Who will control what TikTok promotes to its young users? I’d be willing to bet that China will retain some sort of backdoor control over the algorithms and the data they collect.
What we need is a coordinated, sustained strategy that the federal government implements in coordination with all businesses that operate in China or source components from it–as well as working with our European and Asian allies to create coherent strategies. But this is precisely what is lacking. President Trump is too deal-oriented to understand the need for a coordinated strategy.
Underlying all this is the fact that the Ministry of State Security has penetrated the networks of America’s nine largest telecommunications companies, which means it can access any of the communications that flow through those pipes. It also has demonstrated through Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon that it can penetrate government agencies that are involved in U.S.-Chinese relations. It’s highly likely that the Chinese can obtain inside views of what roles the State and Commerce departments are playing, as well as penetrate into the workings of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. (CFIUS.) At least to some extent, they can anticipate what the Americans are going to present in any negotiation.
Bottom line: the Americans are on course for a disastrous failure to understand the long-term challenge that China is posing and commit serious mistakes that will reverberate in our ears for years and decades to come. .
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