Xinjiang, Huawei, and the techno-trade war
It’s day 378 of the U.S.-China techno-trade war by our count. One noteworthy development: The U.S. government appears to be forming a line on the internment camps in Xinjiang. We’ve included relevant reports in this section.
Here is the latest news:
- Huawei holdup: “Progress toward a U.S.-China trade deal has stalled while the Trump administration determines how to address Beijing’s demands that it ease restrictions on Huawei,” reports the Wall Street Journal(paywall). Bloomberg says (porous paywall) that “Trump and Xi are struggling to find a path forward in the trade talks.”
- “More than 50 global companies, including Apple and Nintendo, have announced or are considering plans to move production out of China,” according to Nikkei Asian Review (porous paywall).
- Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, clarifies her zero-sum view of the U.S.-China relationship in an article titled How to win against Beijing. She concludes thusly:
China requires a response that is not just “whole of government” but “whole of nation.” Fortunately, there is support across the political spectrum for countering China’s new aggressive policies. We must act now, before it’s too late. The stakes are high. They could be life or death.
- In counterpoint, Jonathan D. Pollack and Jeffrey A. Bader have published a policy brief titled Looking before we leap: Weighing the risks of US-China disengagement. Excerpt:
For both Washington and Beijing, the patient rebuilding of a rules-based order, not the assertion of unilateral advantage by either, remains the only credible path forward. Rather than mirror-image Chinese xenophobic or paranoid behavior, the United States should insist on reciprocity in the relationship to promote openness, move aggressively to open China’s markets, welcome Chinese visitors and researchers, and defend our allies. The United States also needs to fix its own broken domestic politics and mitigate the downsides of globalization at home to diminish the gratuitous scapegoating of China. Without such efforts, the region and the world will inevitably move toward open-ended rivalry, or worse — from which no country, including the United States, can possibly benefit.
Donald Trump met various victims of religious persecution from around the world on Wednesday, including four people from China. Read more about it here:
‘Tough stuff,’ Trump says about China’s network of camps in Xinjiang
