Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cheered from the sidelines at a basketball game in Shanghai on Wednesday night, and spent Thursday chatting with students and meeting with American executives at New York University’s Shanghai campus. I spent a lot of time there. It all underlined the United States’ insistence on economic, educational, and cultural ties as beneficial to both countries.
But ending such hospitality during a trip to China this week is among several steps the United States is taking to sever economic ties in the region that the Biden administration says threaten U.S. interests. And they will likely attract significant attention from Chinese authorities.
While seeking to stabilize relations with China, the Biden administration is pursuing several economic measures to limit China’s access to the U.S. economy and technology. It is poised to raise tariffs on Chinese steel, solar panels and other vital products to protect American factories from cheap imports. The Chinese government is considering further restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors to prevent it from developing advanced artificial intelligence that could be used on the battlefield.
This week, Congress also passed legislation that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the app within nine to 12 months or exit the U.S. entirely. The president signed the bill on Wednesday, but the bill will likely be challenged in court.
Blinken’s trip, where he was expected to arrive in Beijing on Friday for a high-level meeting, had a much friendlier tone than his trip to China last year. The visit was the first since Chinese reconnaissance balloons crossed the United States and caused an uproar among Americans.
Blinken said in a meeting with Shanghai Communist Party Secretary Thursday morning that direct engagement between the United States and China is valuable and necessary.
“We have an obligation to responsibly manage the relationship between our two countries, and that is also an obligation to the world,” he said.
Speaking to students at NYU’s Shanghai campus later that morning, he said the educational exchanges in which they participated provided “stabilizers” to a complex and conflictual relationship.
Since President Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California in November, U.S.-China relations have become more stable, with none of the dramatic ebbs and flows of trade tensions under former President Donald J. Trump. It looked like there was.
But while the Biden administration still aims for a more restrictive economic relationship with China, Mr. Xi has strongly signaled that business interests are secondary to national security concerns.
This includes regulation of semiconductor technology, an issue that both sides are raising more prominently than ever before. The Biden administration is considering further export controls, particularly on factories that have helped Chinese tech giant Huawei produce cutting-edge semiconductors.
Emily Benson, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “By clearly trying to diminish China’s technological capabilities, particularly its advanced AI capabilities, the United States has made export controls a top priority in U.S.-China policy.” He pushed us to the front.” think tank in Washington.
During a phone call between Biden and Xi earlier this month, the two leaders made technology regulation a top priority.
According to the White House, Mr. Biden stressed that he will continue to take the necessary steps to prevent America’s advanced technologies from being used to undermine our national security, without unduly restricting trade or investment.
Mr. Xi said imposing new sanctions on China was not “removing risks” but creating risks. China will not sit back and watch if the United States is “eager to contain China’s high-tech development and take away the legitimate rights of China’s development,” he said, according to state news agency Xinhua.
U.S. officials say the restrictions are necessary given China’s authoritarian government and nationalist economic model. But the move has irritated China’s leaders, pushing tensions over economic measures to their highest point in years.
This action is not coming only from the US government. Susan Shirk, author of Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise, said China is moving toward a more self-sufficient industrial policy and trying to displace the United States. . Under Mr. Xi, China has established itself as a high-tech powerhouse.
“Mr. Xi has openly acknowledged that while he wants to reduce China’s dependence on other countries, he wants other countries to remain dependent on China. In his words, ‘ as a powerful countermeasure and deterrent against supply cutoffs. Silk said.
China also has not allowed security concerns to affect large parts of its economy, even as Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders try to reassure foreign companies that investment is welcome. There is. A new national security law expands the Chinese government’s reach into Hong Kong, threatening its status as a financial hub. U.S. executives are increasingly wary of China’s investigations into foreign companies and the country’s extensive rules on sharing data and information with foreigners.
Despite China’s complaints about the US government’s efforts to crack down on TikTok, China itself has banned other Western social media services for decades. Apple announced last week that the Chinese government had ordered it to remove WhatsApp and Threads from its app stores.
Blinken and other U.S. officials have emphasized that U.S. export controls, sanctions and other restrictions on Chinese tech companies apply to only a small part of the broader U.S.-China relationship. Trade is encouraged elsewhere, they say.
The U.S.-China Business Council, a group of 270 U.S. companies with operations in China, said in a report this week that while China’s slump led to a decline in product exports in 2023, U.S. exports to China will likely decline in 2022. estimated that it supported more than 900,000 U.S. jobs. economics, U.S. tariffs and other factors.
“I would like to remind U.S. lawmakers and other influential people that every U.S. state and congressional district maintains its own economic and trade relationship with China, and that any change in U.S.-China trade policy is extremely important,” he said. It is important to remind that this should be carefully considered.” Mr. Craig Allen, Group President;
