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US TikTok ban: China’s complaints are a double standard
Beijing blocks US technology companies like Facebook, Google, and X from operating in China. So why is the Chinese government so upset over the proposed TikTok ban in Congress? US Ambassador to China Nick Burns discussed China’s double standard when it comes to foreign tech firms on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. The US has been pushing for TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app’s US operation, and millions of nationalist netizens on Chinese social media are decrying it as another example of the US limiting China’s global rise.
Burns says the idea that American firms could operate in China by following Chinese data and national security laws isn’t a convincing argument because a wide swath of US tech has been blocked for years, and China’s “Great Firewall” was set up to insulate Chinese people from the rest of the world. China’s rationale for US tech companies’ absence in China, he says, is fundamentally anti-democratic.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
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- US-China tech “Cold War” is on ›
- US-China relationship at its most stable in years as Yellen visits ›
- Why the US-China relationship is more stable than you might think - GZERO Media ›
Where the US & China agree - and where they don't
“This is largely a competitive relationship,” Burns tells Bremmer. It’ll likely be a systemic rivalry well into the 2030s between the two largest economies in the world and the two strongest militaries in the world, so what happens here is very consequential.”
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
The US-China Cold War fallacy?
A steady stream of headlines today suggests that a metastasizing confrontation between China and the United States has put an end to what we’ve known as globalization, the flow of goods, services, and money across international borders at unprecedented speed and scale.
It’s true that US-China relations have become more contentious than at any time since (at least) the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, and every time it appears things might improve, some new revelation or provocation has officials in Washington and Beijing threatening some new action. High tariffs between the two countries for all kinds of goods have remained in place for the past five years.
It’s also true that the US and China are fragmenting the flow of the globalized economy by remaking supply chains to reduce dependence on the other side for critical resources and products where they believe a shortage might threaten their national security. Yes, competition in the tech sector, especially for products like computer chips, has created an increasingly disruptive rivalry.
We also cannot ignore the reality that China’s President Xi Jinping has expressed some limited support for Russia and its president at a time when Russian forces occupy territory inside NATO-backed Ukraine and are killing Ukrainian civilians.
Washington and Beijing clearly have an increasingly contentious relationship that’s getting worse, and the globalization we’ve known over the past three decades is fragmenting in some ways.
And yet … did you know that US-China trade volumes set a record in 2022?
In the 10-plus years that Xi Jinping has ruled in China, the share of China’s exports headed for the United States, Europe, and Japan has barely moved at all. Whatever sympathy Xi has for Putin, he appears to believe that economic growth is crucial to the future of China – and its ruling party – and that economic growth depends on pragmatic relations with America and its most prosperous allies.
It’s crucial too that other wealthy countries continue to see the necessity of strong economic relations with China. US-friendly democracies in Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada remain closely aligned with Washington on security questions, but none of their leaders have taken action that suggests they believe China can be economically isolated as Russia has been.
In short, there is recognition in the United States, China, Europe, India, and every country that profits from a globalized economy that no one can afford a 20th-century-style division of the world into two blocs separated by a wall made hastily from cheap East German cement. Globalization may retreat for now into a surging number of regional trade deals, as we’ve seen over the past 15 years, but it has become too big to fail, and those in positions of power know the headlines don’t tell the full story.
That’s our assertion, but we’re also watching areas of the US-China conflict – and potential confrontation – that are genuinely disruptive.
Have a look and tell us what YOU think. Write to us here.- Ukraine dam sabotage: not enough evidence to speculate - GZERO Media ›
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- Where the US & China agree - and where they don't - GZERO Media ›
The Graphic Truth: US-China: Cold War or Cold Cash?
In the 10 years since Xi Jinping took power as China’s leader, trade volumes between the world’s top two economies have continued to grow. The same is true of Chinese trade with key US allies like the EU and, to a lesser extent, Japan.
In fact, US-China trade has continued to rise despite the Great US-China Trade War of 2018-2020, when the Trump administration and Beijing slapped tariffs on some $730 billion of each other’s goods. In 2022, US-China trade reached a dizzying record high of $689 billion. For comparison with the actual Cold War — US-Soviet trade throughout the entire 1980s amounted to less than $50 billion.
That said, while overall trade continues to rise between China on one side and the US and its allies on the other, this trade is steadily becoming less important as a part of China’s overall global commerce. That is, China is relying ever more on trade with the rest of the world, and less on Uncle Sam and friends.
To show what that looks like, we track China’s trade with the US, EU, and Japan, and look at how that has figured into China’s total trade between 2012 and now.
A Cold War may come one day, but for now, cold cash is still king.
US-China trade, Afghan exodus, EU inflation, Mexican journalists
$200 billion: The US says China failed to meet its “Phase I” trade deal commitment to increase purchases of certain American goods and services by $200 billion in 2020-2021 compared to 2017 levels. Having met 60% of its commitments, according to some estimates, Beijing says it has done its best to implement the Trump-era deal despite pandemic-related economic disruptions.
1 million: Over a million Afghans have fled southwestern Afghanistan since October, setting off down one of two major migration routes to Iran. Economic collapse and fear of prolonged Taliban rule have prompted the mass exodus in recent months.
4: A Mexican lawyer and journalist was gunned down in the western state of Michoacán on Wednesday, marking the fourth killing of a journalist in the country over the past month. The murders reflect the dangers faced by journalists working amid ongoing political corruption and drug-fueled violence.
5.1: The Eurozone recorded an inflation rate of 5.1% in January, slightly exceeding an earlier record set the month before. Indeed, the rising cost of gas, food and other staples is likely to be a decisive factor in upcoming elections in France.U.S. President Joe Biden speaks virtually with Chinese leader Xi Jinping from the White House in Washington, U.S. November 15, 2021.
Joe Biden & Xi Jinping talked. US-China tensions remain.
Just hours ago, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping held their first bilateral videoconference together. The three-hour virtual meeting was, as expected, cordial despite sharply diverging views on many issues. (An effusive Biden even managed to elicit something between a Cheshire Cat grin and an outright smile from the famously stone-faced Xi.) Without much detail, both sides agreed to continue working together on climate following their COP26 joint pledge, and to return to normalcy on trade. On Taiwan — by far the prickliest of many prickly topics including Hong Kong and Xinjiang — Xi warned America to not "play with fire" while Biden responded that both countries are responsible for avoiding open conflict over the self-governing island. Nevertheless, the two leaders showed, at least in the brief part of the call that was open to the public, that they can deal with each other face to face in a respectful way, which puts at least some "guardrails" (the precise word Biden mentioned) on a bilateral relationship that is otherwise spiraling in slow motion toward confrontation.
US-China trade deal; Pakistan & the pandemic; Pompeo & the UN
Ian Bremmer brings you his perspective on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
How goes the U.S. China trade deal?
Well, if you were listening to senior adviser, trade adviser Peter Navarro last night, when he said the deal was over and the futures markets went down several hundred points, you'd say, oh, my god, the deal's gone. But literally within like half an hour, you had Kudlow, Larry Kudlow coming out and saying, no, I disagree. Trump then tweeting and saying the deal's fine. I think Navarro probably had a strip pulled off of him yesterday between him and Brad Parscale, the head of the Trump campaign. There are some unhappy folks that are in the inner circle right now.
But look, the deal is actually intact-ish, right? I mean, Lighthizer, the U.S. trade rep has been working closely with the Chinese, trying very hard to tell everyone that the Chinese are in compliance. Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, just went to Hawaii to meet with Chinese leadership. They came out of that saying the deal is still very much in place. And then Trump's own tweet yesterday making very clear that he does not want to break this deal, even though he's blaming China for absolutely everything around coronavirus and saying that's 100 times more important than the trade deal. The reality is that he watches the markets and he doesn't want a market hit from new tariffs and a consumer hit from new tariffs. Five months before the election. So for now at least, I think this deal is fairly solid.
The problem is that it doesn't get you very far. I mean, it stops you from having escalatory tariffs from both sides, but it doesn't stop you from having a big fight on Hong Kong or Taiwan or the South China Sea or Huawei or the Uyghurs coronavirus or any of 20 other things that are going on in the wrong direction between the Americans and the Chinese right now. So it's in place. We'll see if it lasts until November. And U.S. - China is nonetheless not getting any better.
Second question: Why is Pakistan doing such a bad job controlling the pandemic?
Well, they don't have much money. First of all, to keep the country locked down. You know, in the United States and wealthy countries, you get a lot of people saying we're gonna get back to work and a place like Pakistan, the leadership is saying we need to learn to live with the virus. We're just not going to be able to lock down. They have nowhere near the health care that could take care of all the people that will go in ICUs. They know that they have nowhere near the testing capacity to even have a sense of how far how broadly coronavirus is spreading. They have nowhere near the ability socially distance people away from their friends, their families, especially given much more dense living conditions in urban centers in Pakistan. One of the big problems they have right now is that the military is getting angry at the bad job that the prime minister, Imran Khan, is doing. And so they are increasingly having direct influence over a lot of local decisionmaking. I wouldn't say it's a soft coup, but it is a transition away from executive authority, away from parliamentary authority, towards military authority in Pakistan, something that's always a concern, especially because Pakistan-India relations are problematic. Pakistan gets almost all the economic support and investment from China right now. The Indians, of course, very much on the other side of that fighting the Chinese directly over a border dispute that just killed 20 Indian soldiers in the last week. This geopolitically is going to get more challenging over time. And Pakistan is a very populous country. Again, all of this is going to make more news.
What country's response to coronavirus has been the least political?
Well, for me, when I say least political, I would say expertise driven. In other words, you want the epidemiologists and the medical doctors out front informing policy and how to respond to the pandemic. You want your economic advisers, your Central Bank governor, responding to the economic challenges and dislocations. What countries have done that? There were a bunch! Among wealthy countries the biggest ones would be Germany and South Korea.
A lot of small wealthy countries, because it's easier when you have a small government and you kind of know that you can rally a comparatively homogeneous population together behind a crisis in one direction. So countries like the UAE, like Singapore, like Taiwan, Hong Kong, the territory's done quite well. In response, New Zealand, of course, everyone talks about, but also some poor countries, Vietnam, Argentina, Greece, that have leadership that really saw this as a moment to put politics aside, get all of the political parties in the case of Greece and Argentina or all of the elites, political elites and military in the case of Vietnam and the party together to ensure that there was an early, serious response and no cheerleading. This is not a time for good news, is the time for hard facts. And the better that governments were able to do that early, the more effective their response. The U.S., of course, having a hard time here, but the developing world is going to have an even harder time if you're a developing country and you don't have the money. Much worse than Pakistan. I mean, what we see going on in Brazil and Mexico, in India, there are a lot of countries out there that are going to suffer really tremendously over the next six to 12 months because they have no capacity to respond effectively or respond non-politically to coronavirus.
Finally: Why did Secretary of State Mike Pompeo call the United Nations a "haven for dictators"?
Well the UN commissioned a report on policing and systemic racism in the context of the George Floyd murder and that's what prompted Pompeo to call the UN a haven for dictators. They don't tend to go after the Chinese, for example, on the Uyghur issue. They don't tend to go after Venezuela for their horrific treatment on human rights. The Iranians, for example, the same in terms of treatment of homosexuals in that country. So it is true that with a lot of small countries and a lot of aid that is provided by the Chinese, the willingness to treat different sorts of human rights abrogation with very different perspectives in the U.N. does anger the Americans. Having said that, when you're the largest economy in the world and you say that you run better than everybody else, that exceptionalism does also lead to criticism. But you know what? It is worth pointing out that this Friday marks the seventy fifth anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter. The Americans got it done, it happened in San Francisco back in 1945 at the end of World War II, it was right before the official end of World War II, but it was the Americans leading the way in saving the planet from Nazi Germany and the fascists in Italy and the emperor in Japan and trying to create a better rule of law based on a human rights entrenched world order.
And so it's a big anniversary year for the UN, but it's coming at a time of great global crisis pandemic, massive economic depression, and, of course, a GZERO geopolitical backdrop, the opposite of what the Americans and its allies hoped you would build on the back of that United Nations formation. So the UN. is hoping to turn this moment into an opportunity to highlight the relevance of cooperation globally and to strengthen the global solidarity that we truly don't have right now. And in an effort to start a dialogue about what issues matter most to people around the world, the UN launched the survey. So we're going to do something a little interactive here. You can find it at UN75.online. And it is only six quick questions. You can fill them out in just a couple minutes. It's about your opinion on countries working together and what key issues in light of this pandemic crisis matter most to you today? The environment, the economy, equality, jobs, data technology, you name it, all of the info gathered is going to help to inform the United Nations General Assembly agenda this September. And this conference is course going to have its own unique challenges. Given that it's going to be held mostly, virtually big question marks about which world leaders will attend. Stay tuned. Participate. It's your United Nations, too.
Huawei To Hell
It's been a momentous few days in the US-China tech cold war. The confrontation between the world's sole superpower and its biggest geopolitical rival is still more economic and technological than ideological or military, but it's shifting fast. Here's a quick rundown.
What happened: On Monday, the US Department of Justice unveiled sweeping criminal charges against Huawei, one of China's most important technology companies, accusing it of fraud connected to violations of US sanctions against Iran and intellectual property theft. Officials also confirmed the US would pursue the extradition of Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou, whose arrest in December in Canada at the request of the US has infuriated Beijing.
Why it's important: Huawei is a global leader in 5G, the next generation of mobile network technology that will transport more data at faster speeds than ever before, making game-changing innovations like smart cities and driverless cars possible on a commercial scale for the first time. China views 5G and Huawei as key to its future economic and technological development, its ambitions to extend its global influence, and ultimately the power of the Communist Party.
The US, by contrast, sees Huawei and China's broader technology ambitions as a national security threat. It's worried that a Chinese presence in 5G networks could give Beijing new ways to conduct espionage, or even allow China to shut down vital data networks in a crisis. Monday's criminal charges will further increase political pressure, opening a new and potentially explosive legal front in the US campaign against China's technology and industrial policies.
What happens now? This is an irresistible force meets immovable object situation, and China is going to respond. The question is, how and when?
Negotiations between Washington and Beijing to resolve the countries' $360 billion trade war will probably continue, for now. The US stopped short of saying what penalties it might pursue against the Chinese telecoms giant, which could include sanctions or even a potential ban on Huawei acquiring US technology – an action that would further ratchet up tensions.
Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He arrived in Washington on Tuesday for trade talks, including a personal meeting with President Trump. Both sides have incentives to try keep the Huawei and trade issues separate as they try to strike a deal, or at least extend negotiations, beyond a March 1 US deadline.
Still, the US charges against Huawei and Meng are a serious escalation in an already tense situation that could make it harder for the two sides to bridge their differences. Meng is already a cause celebre in China, and even an implied threat of harsh US action against Huawei could stiffen Chinese President Xi Jinping's resolve to avoid big concessions to US trade and security hawks.
Bottom line: Far from over, the conflict between the US and China is morphing into an even deeper and more profound confrontation.