Is the trade war between the US and China just a matter of trade or anything else?
News Time
An agreement to end the trade war between the United States and China may soon emerge; however, the battle between the two major world powers goes far beyond trade. Washington and Beijing are hopeful that the agreement on the end of the ongoing trade war between the two countries may come to light soon; however, the battle between the two major world powers goes far beyond trade and has a focus on trade, economics, defense, culture and technology.
The question that arises is what the United States wants from China and what is its real goal? The simplest answer is a trade agreement that was agreed last month by President Trump and Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Liu He in the Oval Office. However, the tensions between the two countries are far more serious than trade. Everyone in Washington who spoke to them agreed that the contract at the Oval Office last month would not make much difference. In recent years, the attitude of the United States towards China has clearly changed dramatically and it is important to understand that this change came only after President Trump’s arrival in the White House. Former US Department of Defense official Daniel Clemens says that if Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat or Republican gets the presidency in 2016, a similar policy would be seen in China. Dr. Daniel Clemens is the Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for New American Security. He added that there was a feeling in the US that our policy with regard to China was not working. There are many reasons for the increasing trade tensions in both countries.
Ray Boone, who worked as an economic analyst for the US government from 2001 to 2018, says the promise of economic benefits made when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 was never fulfilled. He said that China had never intended to run under rules and regulations. China also wanted to join a multilateral alliance so that it could know how this alliance organizes global trade. In other words, China joined the alliance with the intention of changing it. And this led to unemployment and factory closure in the United States, called “China Shock.” Particularly impressed were those people who voted for President Trump in 2016. Many US companies have relocated their factories to China due to lower labor costs. However, according to Daniel Clemens, the companies that moved to China had to pay a heavy price. These companies were forced to shift their technology and intellectual property chain. Even those companies that did not move their factories to China also revealed that their trade secrets had somehow come to China. US law enforcement has a long list of Chinese people involved in espionage and computer hacking.
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray recently notified Congress that more than a thousand investigations initiated by Americans on complaints of theft of creative rights or Intellectual Property are currently pending, and ends up in China. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray: US law enforcement has a long list of Chinese people involved in espionage and computer hacking according to the US government, Intellectual property stolen by China over the past four years is worth up to $ 1.2 trillion.
According to Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation, this is a major cause of tension in the US-China relationship. They say that when companies find out that their registered products are being stolen and with their trade secrets being hijacked, these companies have concluded that partnership with China has not been profitable, but in fact has had negative effects. According to Ray Boone, the mood changed at the end of 2015, people who previously talked in favor of a partnership with China was now scared of how fast China was taking control of everything.
Meanwhile in the Pentagon Brig. Gen. Robert S. Spalding was the head of the team whose responsibility was to develop a new national security strategy to tackle China’s growing influence. Now they have said goodbye to the army and they have written a book in this regard. When asked about the threat posed by the US to China, he said that it was the second major threat to US existence after the Nazi Party in World War II. I think this is a bigger threat than the Soviet Union. China is the second largest economy in the world, which is reached by Western governments and institutions, which was beyond the reach of the Soviet Union.
Brig. Gen. Robert S. Spalding work that did while in the Pentagon resulted in a national security strategy, published in 2017 under the title National Security Strategy. Bonnie Glaser, head of the China Power Project, says the document, considered credible in government circles, aims to guide each and every case. And this document marks a huge change in US strategy. Bonnie Glaser says there has been a major change in the thinking of US government circles regarding the threats posed to the United States and the war on terror has now replaced the (economic) war between the major world powers.
So now the US Department of Defense understands that a major US military target in the coming decades will be to counter China’s growing power. The rapid pace with which China has built artificial islands and deployed troops in China’s waters in violation of international law has upset many people in Washington. According to the Heritage Foundation’s Dean Cheng, each year the trade route to China passes $ 5.3 trillion. In this regard, China’s actions were intended to somehow be able to cut off the major blood vessel, which is a blood vessel in global trade. Likewise, the desire to become the world’s largest country in the field of technology such as robotics and artificial intelligence also shows clearly what China’s ambitions are. Bonnie Glaser says this thing has now become the mainstay of this competition, because if China goes beyond the US in these areas, it will probably overtake the United States and become the world’s largest power. And this is what is at stake now.
The US military’s military base is not a vast army but a state-of-the-art weapon and systems used by them. If China takes the lead in this kind of important technology, then the United States may not be able to withstand it for long. However, Dr. Daniel Clemens believes that the field of non-military technology is also very important. China not only is mastering domestic surveillance and censorship technology it is also exporting such technology and financing other countries in this regard. Dr. Clemens believes that what will become central to the debate about China in the days to come is his undemocratic attitude or attitude in the field of high-tech.
So even if President Trump fails in the next election, do not expect that US policy on China will change in the near future. The mood in Washington has changed. It is no longer a matter of whether China should take it horizontally or not, but the debate is how to make it work. Many Democratic Party leaders prefer to work with US allies, contrary to President Trump’s unilateral policy, however, most Democrats also know that if their party takes a gentle attitude toward China, the party will receive fewer votes.
