(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Now What in the U.S.-China Trade War?

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agriculture, allies, China, decoupling, Democrats, election 2020, forced technology transfer, Hong Kong, Huawei, impeachment, intellectual property theft, National Basketball Association, Phase One, Steven Mnuchin, subsidies, supply chains, Taiwan, tariffs, Trade, trade talks, Uighurs, verification, {What's Left of) Our Economy

This is the second working day since the United States and China reached what the Trump administration is calling a “Phase One” trade deal with Beijing last Friday, and the questions surrounding the agreement still far outweigh what’s known. That alone should tell you that towering obstacles continue blocking any confident assessment of where the President’s so-called trade war stands, much less where the conflict is likely to go. Even so, here are some observations I hope are useful.  (Teaser:  One major point concerns tonight’s Democratic presidential candidates debate.)

First, the absence of any written statements or documents from the U.S. side describing or even summarizing what’s actually in the agreement justifies big doubts that anything deserving the term “deal” has been reached at all. Further reinforcing legitimate skepticism is China’s long record of broken promises on trade.

Second, especially strong skepticism is warranted about U.S. claims that any meaningful progress has been made on the so-called structural issues focused on from the very beginning by the Trump administration. For it as I’ve long argued, China’s government is so vast and secretive, and leaves such scanty written records of key decisions, that it will simply be impossible for the United States to monitor and enforce even the most promising Chinese commitments on intellectual property theft, technology extortion, discriminatory Chinese government procurement, and Beijing subsidies that shaft U.S.-owned and other foreign businesses vis-a-vis their Chinese rivals.

Third, even if China currently means to keep its alleged promises to binge buy American agricultural products, any number of external events could upset the apple cart. They include the Hong Kong picture becoming uglier (its becoming prettier can’t be totally ruled out, but seems highly unlikely); new Chinese crackdowns on other protests that may emerge (especially among the Uighur Muslim population) or revelations of new Chinese atrocities against the Uighurs or other minorities or other protesters; more attempted Chinese bullying of high-profile U.S. businesses like the National Basketball Association; a major flare-up of tensions over Taiwan or China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea; a step forward in the Huawei case that increases the chances that the CFO daughter of the founder of this Chinese telecommunications giant will be extradited to the United States from Canada for sanctions-busting; and Chinese moves that persuade Washington that Beijing has no intention of keeping its perceived agriculture or other promises.

Moreover, the longer China takes to ramp up its buys from American farmers, the greater the potential for these kinds of shocks to bring this “Phase One” agreement crashing down.

Fourth, the less impressive the “mini-deal” keeps looking, the more convincing my view that its apparent modesty reflects President Trump’s belief that his domestic political position has weakened significantly – both because of the new impeachment threat and signs of an economic slowdown.

It’s true that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has suggested that if the deal hasn’t been finalized by December 15, the Trump administration will go ahead with a previously vowed 15 percent increase on $156 billion worth of levies on Chinese imports. But that’s anything but a concrete threat. In addition, it’s important to note this report suggesting (the specifics are really sloppily described) that China wants the sequencing to work in the opposite way:  First, tariffs get rolled back (or frozen in place?), then the agriculture buys begin. 

Moreover, no one in the administration has said anything about reversing its Phase One-related decision to suspend a big tariff increase (to up to a formidable 30 percent on some products) previously announced to begin on October 15. So even though U.S. duties on some $360 billion worth of Chinese goods would still remain in place if China blows Mr. Trump off, there’s a real chance that Beijing won’t incur any further punishment – doubtless because the President believes that tariffs above and beyond current levels and coverage could panic investors again and further soften economic growth.

Some kind of blow-up in Hong Kong or elsewhere could yet change Mr. Trump’s calculations. But the more important point so far is that events, not the President, are now in charge of the trade talks track of his China policy.

Fifth, at the same time, none of the above means that the United States is devoid of leverage versus China and in particular the kind of clout that can keep advancing its economic as well as closely related technology and national security interests, and this is where a second, arguably more important, track of the Trump China policies needs to be remembered. As I’ve written, the President has sought not only to end the threat of China’s economic predation by forcing Chinese policy changes through tariff pressure. Although he rarely speaks of it, he’s also been trying to repel Chinese threats to U.S. security and prosperity through a series of unilateral measures aimed at decoupling the United States from China economically.

By crimping trade, investment, and technology flows, these decoupling steps are reducing America’s vulnerability to China by significantly reducing the access to the U.S. market so crucial to the success of China’s advanced industries; by shrinking the footprint of China’s state-controlled economy in America’s largely free market system; and by cutting off a Chinese tech sector that could be become highly dangerous from critical supplies of U.S. components.

Decoupling has also been advanced by those tariffs so far imposed on $360 billion worth of Chinese products (amounting to nearly 86 percent of all goods imports from China last year). They haven’t done much to achieve their stated aim of improving China’s behavior, but they have decreased China’s importance to the U.S. economy by prompting an exodus of global manufacturing supply chains out of the People’s Republic.

Further, the Trump decoupling campaign has also helped awaken many foreign governments to the China tech and broader economic threat – though because so many other countries (including major American treaty allies), were profiting so handsomely from the pre-Trump globalization status quo, progress on this front has been uneven and disappointing. (See here for why Germany, for example is so conflicted.) 

Sixth and finally, one major set of actors in this drama, though, hasn’t been very woke on China issues:  most of the Democratic presidential candidates. Sure, many have supported a policy of “doing something” on China (though rarely involving tariffs – or any other concrete measures). But so far, none seems to view China’s multi-dimensional challenge to America as a major concern – and all the top-tier contenders and most others now support impeaching the President. 

Consequently, they could greatly strengthen not only Mr. Trump’s position, but the American position, with firm declarations in tonight’s debate that China will stay squarely in Washington’s cross-hairs if they win the White House, and that therefore there’s no point in stonewalling in hopes of easier post-2020 U.S. policies. Not that any confidence looks well founded that any of them will.        

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Trump Should Have Hung Tough with China

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Applied Materials, ASM Lithography, Bloomberg, Bloomberg.com, China, electronics, forced technology transfer, Fujian Jinhua, G20 Summit, information technology hardware, intellectual property theft, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Made in China 2025, Micron Technology, Netherlands, semiconductors, Taiwan, technology, Trade, trade war, Trump, United Microelectronics Corporation, Xi JInPing, ZTE, {What's Left of) Our Economy

A U.S.-China summit on the sidelines of the global economic conference in Buenos Aires has produced what amounts to a three-month truce in the trade conflict the two countries have been waging since the early months of the Trump administration. I’ll have a detailed reaction coming out in a major newspaper op-ed piece tomorrow, so I don’t want to steal my own thunder here.

For now, it’s worth spotlighting a recent Bloomberg.com piece on America’s latest efforts to fight China’s intellectual property theft, and the dangerous progress and ambitions it’s been largely fueling. It’s so good, and so important, that it illustrates exactly why the President should have hung tough in his China trade diplomacy – and how much more thoroughly America’s China policies need overhauling before they can adequately serve U.S. national interests than even the Trump administration has been indicating.

Just to review, the Trump administration has imposed several rounds of tariffs on literally hundreds of billions of Chinese products typically headed for the American market, largely in response to China’s newly explicit ambition to achieve worldwide technological supremacy – and in the process become the world’s strongest economy and military power.

This Chinese goal – made clear in a program called Made in China 2025 – is anything but entirely new. Indeed, much of the blueprint has been in effect literally for many years, and certainly once Chinese leaders realized that the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Western Europe seemed happy enough to foster their country’s economic development by supplying in various ways the knowhow to make major tech catch-up a realistic goal. So China has long sought to secure such technology as fast as possible, by whatever means were needed – including those that violated various trade commitments it had made.

In the last few years, however, China’s often startling resulting advances, its reversion to a national economic strategy ever more reliant on government dictates and strong-arming and discriminating against foreign investors, and its mounting belligerence in world affairs, have woken up even many pillars of America’s free trade-happy establishment to the threat they’d been creating. And crucially, the crestfallen included many of the very companies that were handing over their crown jewels to China, along with the politicians and think tank shills they funded.

The Bloomberg article is so valuable because in one fell swoop, it illustrates how deeply involved American companies have been involved – and remain – in strengthening China’s tech capabilities, how consequently vulnerable China remains to American inputs of various kinds, and therefore why there is absolutely no reason for the Trump administration to relieve its tariffs’ pressures on China’s economy without major – and completely verifiable – concessions from Beijing.

In the piece, a team of Bloomberg reporters make all these points with a detailed account of a Chinese (government-supported, of course) entity that sought to produce advanced versions of critical pieces of the semiconductors used in smartphones. The explicit goal: Reduce the Chinese electronics’ industry’s dependence on foreign semiconductors.

That objective per se is highly objectionable – that is, for anyone who takes seriously the supposed main purpose of the global trade system, which is to foster the most efficient possible global division of labor by freeing up trade flows to ensure that the output and provision of various products and services is concentrated in those countries that do these jobs best. But defenders of the global trade status quo never seemed to notice that China demonstrated no interest in passively accepting the verdict of market forces.

In fact, as the Bloomberg team makes clear, American technology companies have been all too ready to aid this Chinese ambition, even with Beijing’s ambitions ringing more and more alarm bells. Specifically, this Chinese entity (as usual, I refuse to call these outfits “companies” or “businesses” because Beijing’s effective control over them sharply distinguishes them from groupings in largely free market economy that actually deserve those labels), was being supplied by U.S. semiconductor manufacturing equipment firms KLA-Tencor, Applied Materials, and Lam Research – along with foreign counterparts like the Netherlands’ ASM Lithography and Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp.

But at the end of October, the U.S. government placed the Chinese entity – called Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuits – on a list of economic actors whose operations are just to pose “significant risk of becoming involved in activities that are contrary to the national interest of the United States.” Several days later, Washington also indicted the entity for stealing the intellectual property of American semiconductor firm Micron Technology of stealing its intellectual property. As a result of the national security finding, American companies are in effect prohibited from supplying Fujian Jinhua. And since Fujian’s non-U.S. suppliers sell it goods that contain American-made parts, the restrictions cover them, too.

The result of the ban announcement? According to the Bloomberg article, Fujian Jinhua’s “dream is now in tatters with consultants from American suppliers gone, the factories silent and workers rattled.” And lest you think this is just one anecdote, recall that a similar American export ban on selling to Chinese telecommunications manufacturer ZTE would have doomed that entity had President Trump not let it off the hook in hopes of currying some valuable favor and negotiating leverage (so far, in vain) with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

In other words, the United States enjoys decisive leverage over China in the struggle for technological, economic, and military power, and should continue ramping it up to extract whatever concessions it can get from Beijing. In this vein, it’s as shocking as it is disturbing that U.S. tech firms like those mentioned above are still allowed to contribute to China’s technological development months after the Trump administration has literally designated China as a power (along with Russia) that is challenging “American power, influence, and interests, [and] attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” Further, the same national security strategy document declared, more specifically, that “Part of China’s military modernization and economic expansion is due to its access to the U.S. innovation economy, including America’s world-class universities.”

But more important, as I’ve written, since verifiable concessions are so unlikely, this pressure should form one major element of a larger strategy that to disengage America from China economically, and this goal, and the stakes that justify it, should be declared by President Trump soon after his return from Buenos Aires.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trump Tariffs Evoke Summers Snake Oil

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Al Gore, China, Clinton administration, current account surplus, Emergency Committee for American Trade, exports, FDI, Financial Times, forced technology transfer, foreign direct investment, General Motors, intellectual property theft, Larry Summers, Obama administration, offshoring lobby, tariffs, Trade Deficits, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Larry Summers doesn’t like President Trump’s China trade policies – that’s not news. After all, he served in senior economic policy posts both in the Clinton administration, which proudly championed expanded trade with China and laid the groundwork for the PRC’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and in the Obama administration, which less proudly but nonetheless effectively coddled much of the Chinese trade predation (including intellectual property theft) that even most globalization cheerleaders now admit is a major problem.

Newsier are two arguments Summers made yesterday in the Financial Times that indicate how dishonest years of justification of the China trade policies by globalist U.S. administrations have been, and how clueless they remain.

The dishonesty entails Summers’ dismissive treatment of China’s intellectual property “extraction” (as he calls what is usually and rightly recognized as “extortion”) from U.S. and other foreign companies that are forced by Chinese policy into joint venture partnerships with Chinese entities. According to Summers, this form of theft is no big deal for Americans because these episodes

“typically involve cases where the company in question produces for China in China and so have little impact on US employment. In many cases a substantial number of the company’s shareholders are foreign and it pays taxes to many governments. It is more than a little ironic that an administration that condemns outsourcing should make standing up for those who move production to China so central a priority.”

As should be clear to anyone who has followed U.S. trade policy toward China and other offshoring-friendly countries, that’s a heckuva way to describe the outbound American investment that’s been encouraged by the trade deals and related policy decisions enthusiastically supported by Summers and his White House bosses.

For especially during the Clinton years, when so many of these policies were put in place, the construction of American-owned factories, labs, and similar facilities in China was depicted not as activity that would substitute for American exports, or for U.S.-based production (in the form of goods shipped from these factories to the U.S. market), but as activity that would benefit the domestic American economy and its workers by supercharging U.S. exports – which would comprise much of the content of these foreign-made products.

Here’s a typical example from a 1998 report by the (Offshoring Lobby-funded) Emergency Committee for American Trade:

“American companies with global operations ship the large majority — between 60 percent and 75 percent — of total U.S. exports. Their foreign affiliates are important recipients of these exports; their share has increased to over 40 percent today.”

And let’s not forget one of the showcase examples of such Clinton-era investments – General Motors’ 1997 agreement with a Shanghai-run entity to produce autos in China. GM gushed that the joint venture would generate billions in American auto parts exports to China, and the importance attached by the Clinton administration to such deals was made clear by the decision to send Vice President Gore to the PRC to attend the signing ceremony. (Neither GM Chairman John Smith nor Gore mentioned that the agreement’s provisions mandated that the factory achieve 80 percent Chinese content levels within five years.)

Now, according to Summers, these joint ventures don’t significantly benefit the American domestic economy at all. Of course, there’s still the matter of how this Chinese tech theft – including from world-leading U.S. companies in cutting edge industries – will affect America’s innovation and technology futures. But these critical issues don’t seem to be on Summers’ screen.

The author’s cluelessness is evident from his insistence that

“it is wrong to say nothing has been achieved through negotiation with China. Only a few years ago, China’s current account surplus was the largest relative to GDP among significant countries….Today China’s global surpluses are far below past US negotiating targets of a few years ago….”

Here’s the (glaringly obvious) problem. During the current economic recovery, China’s total trade surplus with the United States (including its services deficit) jumped by 75 percent – from $219.47 billion in 2009 to $385 billion in 2016 (the last year for which such figures are available). Can a piece from Summers expressing his astonishment that so many U.S. voters opted in 2016 for a candidate promising to look after “America First” be far behind?

Im-Politic: Trump’s On-Target – & Detailed – China Trade Plan

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2016 election, China, currency manipulation, Democrats, Donald Trump, environmental standards, exports, forced technology transfer, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, imports, intellectual property theft, labor standards, Mainstream Media, Obama, offshoring, political classes, Republicans, special interests, subsidies, think tanks, TPP, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, World Trade Organization, WTO, yuan

Boy, it’s hard to keep Donald Trump and his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination from dominating my posting. That’s because he remains the only presidential candidate recognizing the need to overhaul both the U.S. trade and immigration policies that have long been gutting the truly productive sectors of the American economy, and kneecapping wages and living standards for the nation’s working and middle classes.

Trump’s on-target priorities have once again been displayed in the new position paper he’s released on handling China – which is key to getting overall American trade policy right as well as getting much of U.S. national security policy right. Also evident from this paper – despite endless claims by the establishment-coddling Mainstream Media that Trump’s campaign is all sizzle and no steak, he’s once again outlined a series of impressively detailed policy positions.

And Trump’s China policies boast strong potential to put Hillary Clinton and other progressives who claim to champion American workers squarely on the spot. The Democratic presidential front-runner has said or posted nothing comparably specific on trade issues other than (for now?) opposing President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Unless she ups this part of her game, independent voters are sure to take note.

Trump’s China plan starts off by correctly identifying the crux of America’s China problems right away. In the process, he’s sharpened his rhetoric and message. Rather than blame U.S. policy failures on simple “stupidity” on the part of American leaders, he points out that the nation’s economic approach to China has served the interests of “Wall Street insiders that want to move U.S. manufacturing and investment offshore,” not American workers. I’d have broadened that indictment to include most of the nation’s multinational manufacturing companies, but Trump valuably reminds voters that the biggest immediate obstacles to improving their economic prospects are Americans, not “foreigners.”

Trump also understands that many of China’s most harmful trade practices have nothing to do with the kinds of tariffs and quotas that for centuries dominated country’s efforts to keep domestic closed. Moreover, he focuses on the vast array of non-tariff barriers used by Beijing “to keep American companies out of China and to tilt the playing field in [its] favor.” These range from currency manipulation to rampant intellectual property theft to exports subsidies that clash with global trade law to forced technology transfer to “lax labor and environmental standards” that enable China’s “sweatshops [and] pollution havens [to steal] jobs from American workers.”

In addition, the Republican presidential hopeful gets the vital point that the damage done to the American economy by these Chinese practices can’t be ended without forcing China to face some consequences – namely, lost access to a U.S. market that China desperately needs in order to sustain growth and employment rates that can help keep its rulers in power. Trump does express some hope that such threats can lead China to “join the 21^st century.” But he also indicates that, until and unless this goal is achieved, it makes no sense to permit China “to trade with America.”

Trump’s China plan will be slammed by the offshoring-happy, China-coddling Mainstream Media – and surely by nearly all of the policy hacks staffing America’s offshorer-funded think tanks. And let’s not forget many of his fellow Republican candidates, whose campaigns are largely financed by these special interests.

But it will be especially interesting to see the reactions of Trump’s Democratic opponents and the rest of the nation’s liberal and progressive establishment. For most of Trump’s positions mirror those of the party’s mainstream – and can be found in numerous bills their legislators have introduced into Congress and voted for. Will they continue dismissing Trump a charlatan – and worse?

In fact, if Trump’s positions deserve criticism on any score, it’s that they’re too mainstream – and accordingly timid. For example, since, as Trump sees, the United States does enjoy such decisive leverage over China by dint of serving as “the world’s most important economy and consumer of goods,” there’s relatively little need for Washington to negotiate more effectively with Beijing. His positions are better presented as take-it-or-leave-it propositions, with market access turned off, or at least curbed, until strong evidence of China’s compliance is available.

Similarly, Trump is far too deferential to the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose creation spearheaded by the mercantile U.S. trade competitors and American offshoring interests precisely in order to prevent the defense of  U.S. economic interests in a timely, effective – i.e., unilateral – manner. At one point, his China paper (rightly) suggests that U.S. policy need not rely so heavily on the deliberations of “an international body.”

But he also (wrongly) suggests that Washington should continue to rely heavily on using the WTO to resolve its trade problems with China – an approach that is not only pitifully piecemeal, but that keeps an anti-American international kangaroo court in charge of most American international economic interests. If he’s serious about defending these interests – and restoring full American sovereignty – Trump needs to support establishing the United States as judge, jury, and court of appeals over all trade disputes, as well as over whatever enforcement issues arise from existing or future trade agreements.

Further, Trump appears to place excessive emphasis on China’s current currency manipulation. To be sure, there’s still strong evidence that the yuan remains substantially undervalued. It’s also not legitimately deniable that anti-currency manipulation tariffs would be an especially effective response to China’s trade predation. After all, China’s exchange-rate protectionism artificially cheapens the cost of everything produced in and traded by China. Therefore, these Chinese products (and services) receive price advantages over foreign competitors that have nothing to do with free trade or free markets. 

But it’s also undeniable that China’s currency policies have gotten much more complicated in recent months, as Beijing has needed to move to support the yuan in order to stem unprecedented capital flight. So for both political and substantive reasons, Trump would have been much better advised to treat currency manipulation as threat that is all too likely to reemerge if China’s economy keeps slowing, not as today’s leading danger. (The same of course holds for the Asian countries who have just negotiated President Obama’s Pacific Rim trade agreement.)

Yet despite these flaws, Trump’s instincts on trade policy remain much sharper than those of the rest of the nation’s media/political establishment – not least of which entails his understanding that it won’t be possible to “make America great again” unless its trade policy becomes great again, too. And his new China trade blueprint shows that he grasps enough major policy details to make that goal reality.

Following Up: Defense-Related Tech Keeps Flowing to China While Obama Fiddles

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China, cyber-security, Defense Department, Following Up, forced technology transfer, hacking, IBM, Obama, technology, The New York Times

It’s great to report that at least some of the Mainstream Media’s biggest guns are finally waking up to the dangers posed to U.S. national security by decades of the nation’s most advanced and militarily-relevant know-how being transferred to China by many of America’s leading technology companies. (The main examples can be seen here, here, and here.) Less great is having to report that the Obama administration still too often seems asleep at the switch.

Let me start with a little personal story. Thirteen years ago, while visiting IBM’s software-research lab in Beijing, I observed dozens of Chinese employees moving about seemingly free of any security-related limitations. I asked the lab’s manager two questions – and told him his answers would be on the record, for attribution for an article I was thinking of writing. He confidently assured me that would be OK.

The questions were: “Do you have any way of knowing whether any of your Chinese staff is also working for the Chinese government?” and “Do you have any way of knowing whether any of your Chinese staff is a spy?” The manager unhesitatingly answered “No” to both. He hastily added, “But you can be sure that we at IBM work very hard to protect our core intellectual property.” I responded, “I think you at IBM would turn cartwheels trying to make the Chinese government happy and keep it as a customer,” and he declined to comment.

But the story didn’t quite end there. The next day, the lab manager called me and let me know that he had changed his mind about his answers being on the record. I told him that’s not the way it works in journalism when the ground rules have been set in advance, but offered to negotiate with him in exchange for further info from him. When he waxed indignant about ungentlemanly behavior, I wished him a good day – but never felt compelled to use his name, and possibly ruin his career.

And a few weeks later, when I mentioned this incident to U.S. officials in China, they noted that the resources at their disposal for monitoring the tech transfer situation in the People’s Republic were hopelessly inadequate.

Thirteen years later, the situation looks far worse. As I detailed in a 2013 Bloomberg article, U.S. tech companies spent much of the decade showering Chinese entities – all of whom have relations of some kind or another with the Chinese government – with all the knowledge they would need to set up world-class cyber-hacking operations. And more generally, China’s overall high tech prowess has burgeoned as Beijing repeatedly has extorted advanced knowhow, along with capital, from American-owned and other firms all too eager to serve their crown jewels in exchange for market access. I can’t think of any remotely comparable historical precedent for one great power so energetically strengthening the defense-related capabilities of a likely rival.

And if you think about it, U.S. tech transfer policy these days has become worse still. For during most of the time since I was in China, China was acting only like a “likely rival.” Between its recent hacking offensive and expansionism in the South China Sea, it’s now acting like an unmistakable rival.

But according to the two recent New York Times reports cited above, the Defense Department is staying mum on a new report – from a firm that government agencies rely on for “classified military analysis and intelligence” – charging that IBM’s tech partnerships with China are “endangering the national and economic security of the United States, risking the cyber-security of their customers globally, and undermining decades of U.S. nonproliferation policies regarding high-performance computing.”

Just as disturbing: The Times is no doubt right in observing that “There is nothing to suggest that the partnerships have broken American laws,” and that many aspects of IBM’s operations in China “have been vetted and approved by the United States government, which is empowered through a review process to decide whether American tech companies are giving away too much advantage to military rivals.” As one wag once cracked, what doesn’t violate the law in Washington is often more disturbing than what does.

Meanwhile, back on the hacking front specifically, the Obama administration has both been deferring to the export-happy tech industry in developing new rules for controlling the sale overseas of hardware and software for on-line surveillance, and apparently doesn’t realize that these eavesdropping-focused products are indistinguishable from those that can penetrate a wide range of critical computer and internet systems. Moreover, the focus of the administration’s new efforts seems to be out-and-out rogue states like Iran, North Korea, and Syria. Super-hacker China apparently isn’t even on the screen. (That particular Times piece didn’t give it much attention, either).

Because the Mainstream Media plays such a big role in setting official Washington’s agenda, its improved coverage of China and other tech transfer-related security issues is genuinely good news. But it’s no substitute for a government that’s genuinely, or even minimally, vigilant.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: How to Stop China’s Maritime Expansionism

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12-mile limit, allies, Asia, asymmetric warfare, China, cyber-security, cyber-war, export-led growth, forced technology transfer, free-riding, freedom of navigation, hacking, international law, multinational companies, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, South China Sea, territorial waters, Trade, trade barriers, U.S. Navy

It’s too early to say that President Obama’s decision to use the U.S. Navy to challenge China’s expansionism in the South China Sea shows he’s grown a backbone. But maybe a vertebra or two? At the same time, it’s clear that this story is far from ended, that there may be less than meets the eye to Beijing’s apparent acquiescence in the administration’s clear dissing of Chinese unilateral claims to East Asian waters, and that the United States needs to explore new types of responses if it wants to maintain its leading position in the Asia Pacific region.

To recap, in recent years, China has put muscle behind its long-stated insistence that many of the seas to its east and south, along with various tiny islands and island chains, are Chinese territory. As with similar longstanding claims made by other Asian countries ranging from Japan and South Korea to the Philippines and Vietnam, these positions aren’t recognized by international law.

For literally decades, all of these countries generally agreed to disagree (despite testing each others’ resolve from time to time).  Yet nearly two years ago, China began upping the ante by creating large physical presences on some of the (mainly uninhabited) islands in the South China Sea, and then by literally enlarging some of the smallest ones (which are so tiny that they literally sink below the waves on a regular basis), and creating new ones through various land reclamation techniques. (Other countries have made similar efforts, but they’ve been much smaller and far more sporadic.) China has also claimed exclusive air rights over many of the disputed regions.

In addition, China has unilaterally declared sovereignty over the waters surrounding all these locations out to 12 miles – the normal allowed by international law, but a standard that doesn’t always apply to the kinds of artificial creations produced by China. Moreover, Beijing went even further, stating that foreign naval vessels needed to notify Chinese authorities whenever they wanted to enter such waters.

This decision apparently convinced Washington that China’s actions unacceptably threatened freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. That’s a huge deal, since trillions of dollars worth of U.S. and other international commerce sail through these waters annually, and since they’re rich in natural resources as well. And incidentally, all other regional powers seem to agree.

So the president finally authorized an American guided missile destroyer to sail close enough to one of the disputed islets to violate Chinese claims – and without asking permission. The administration has also made clear that the kind of mission carried out by the U.S.S. Lassen would be repeated frequently. Even better would be participation by regional allies, whose historic specialty so far has been free-riding on American defense guarantees.  But except for Japan, they don’t seem to be even actively considering such assistance, and the United States bizarrely hasn’t even officially sought it.

China has protested strongly, but don’t dismiss it as a paper tiger just yet. Despite America’s continuing military edge in East Asia, Beijing is hardly devoid of options. For instance, China could create significant military presences on some of the islands. In addition, and more worrisome, according to a tweet from China-watcher Patrick Chovanec, Beijing could escalate its cyber-attacks on American businesses and government agencies.

The United States would be hard-pressed to respond in kind, as I’ve noted, because it lacks clear-cut (and perhaps any) cyber-war superiority, and because such hacking could be much more damaging to America’s more advanced economy and society than to China’s.  And in fact, capitalizing on such disparities would be fully consistent with the notion of waging “asymmetric war” developed by Chinese strategists. 

A much better means of retaliation would be economic. China’s economy, which depends heavily on exporting, and especially to the United States, is slowing. And that growth threatens Communist Party rule because it’s hold on power has for decades depended heavily on its success in boosting living standards throughout Chinese society.

Of course, erecting major barriers to Chinese imports would be condemned, especially by offshoring interests, as shortsighted and even dangerous protectionism that could plunge the two countries, and the larger world, into a “trade war.” But as always, such warnings ignore the long-term net damage inflicted on the U.S. economy – and especially its invaluable productive sectors – by the huge expansion of bilateral commerce since the early 1990s.

They also ignore the clear message being sent by the persistence of the American recovery (however inadequate) in the face of a weakening global economy, and by the reemergence once that recovery began of overall U.S. trade deficits (including of course with China) as major drags on American growth: The United States needs the rest of the world economy even less than ever, and certainly much less than trade-dependent countries like China need the United States.

Would wielding this kind of economic stick against China be cost-free for Americans? Of course not, especially in the short- and even medium-term, before supply chains got restructured. Yet tariffs and other curbs could always be phased in. Nor need they cover all Chinese products (although the more, the merrier). And other means of economic retaliation could be employed as well. How about cutting off all or at least some of the defense-related technology and capital that U.S. multinational companies are still recklessly transferring to China, either voluntarily or under threat of being shut out of the Chinese market?

More important, whatever the resulting costs, they look a lot less intimidating than those that could result from even a brief military conflict (which logically would trigger even greater and costlier economic adjustments), or from massive Chinese cyber-attacks. And don’t forget the flip side of passivity: An America that failed to use its biggest advantage over China for fear of experiencing any pain at all inevitably would be an America that flashed a big, fat green light to Beijing’s expansionists.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: If Washington Was Serious About the China Economic Challenge….

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aerospace, allies, Boeing, China, Cisco, cyber-security, Edward Snowden, forced technology transfer, imports, investment, lobbying, manufacturing, multinational companies, national security, offsets, offshoring, South China Sea, subsidies, telecommunications, Trade, Xi JInPing, {What's Left of) Our Economy

However understandable, the intense administration and media focus during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit on Beijing’s cyber-hacking has overshadowed several other major Chinese threats to American national security and economic well-being – and the need to fix U.S. strategies that are failing badly to cope with them. High on the list is China’s widespread practice of extorting corporate investment and technology transfer by threatening to shut uncooperative companies out of its large and potentially bigger market. And this blackmail deserves special attention this week because two big examples of it have made it into the news recently.

The first involves Boeing, which apparently will build its first foreign factory in China – a move that not so coincidentally coincided with China’s announcement that it would buy 300 Boeing jets. The second was Cisco Systems’ decision to start cooperating with a Chinese server company on projects that reportedly could include developing new telecommunications hardware products. This deal has followed several years in which Cisco has encountered big trouble in China due to fall-out from Edward Snowden’s techno-spying revelations and charges, and to Beijing’s policy of punishing American companies after Congress in effect froze China’s version of Cisco out of the U.S. market due to espionage concerns.

Since aerospace and telecommunications are clearly central to military strength, these American corporate cave-ins could easily endanger national security – unless you believe that they’ll forever remain in their current limited form. So more effective responses are urgently needed – unless Washington wants to face ever more harmful Chinese cyber-hacking (see this article of mine on how American firms have undoubtedly shared advanced cyber-war-related technologies with China), or ever better armed Chinese forces in possible future military showdowns in the South China Sea and other disputed Asian waters.

The companies themselves explain their agreement to China’s trade and investment conditions with the “half-a-loaf” argument, and it’s not completely unreasonable. They’re obviously not thrilled to be helping create likely new competitors (whether they care about American security is another matter entirely), but they point out that any China business they preserve or gain via their cooperation is more than they’d have without the China market. In fact, Beijing has used its leverage to string them along effectively enough that they’re reluctant even to complain about their China troubles to Washington – for fear of becoming targets for Chinese retaliation, and of excessively rocking the boat of bilateral economic relations generally.

But although the companies’ behavior may be justifiable from their own individual standpoints, their unavoidably narrow, self-interested perspectives make clear why they can’t be relied to protect or advance broader U.S. interests. Washington needs to take the lead. But can it do so without imposing heavy costs on these firms? To me, the answer clearly is “Yes” – and not just because China’s economy is slowing down. The key to success is understanding that a case-by-case approach inevitably leaves China in the driver’s seat, and that the United States can and should capitalize on position as an export market desperately needed by China to ensure adequate growth.

Severely restricting China’s access to this American market would grab Beijing’s attention not only for economic reasons. Chinese leaders would begin worrying about their political futures – and their own personal well-being – since their hold on power depends so strongly on delivering jobs and rising incomes to the country’s increasingly restive population. Moreover, even keeping in mind that short-term costs for the U.S. economy are inevitable – because policy shifts of this magnitude are always disruptive, and because it may take Beijing a while to get the message – the most obvious objections are surprisingly easy to dismiss.

Where will affected companies find customers to replace those they may temporarily lose in China? In many cases, in the American market, because the smaller U.S. trade deficit with China that would result from import curbs would spur more American growth overall. Moreover, so much U.S.-China trade nowadays is “head-to-head,” (in which the same goods compete with each other), that many American firms could fill the gap left by missing Chinese imports. And when it comes to U.S. companies that can’t make up China losses this way, government compensation seems appropriate.

Given Washington’s willingness to bail out Wall Street and auto-makers for blunders largely of their own making, subsidies look defensible for firms in the line of fire of whatever trade conflict develops. (One possible caveat: Many larger, multinational companies rely on China business heavily because they lobbied so effectively for the U.S. China trade policies that have created their vulnerabilities – and other major damage to the American economy – in the first place. So there’s also a case for letting them take their lumps, at least to some extent.)

If such subsidies don’t pass muster politically in the United States, another alternative is available to Washington: using the power of the American market to dissuade non-Chinese competitors to U.S. firms from seizing the opportunities created by these new American policies to boost their own China sales. Although the American firms’ China sales would remain lost, they at least wouldn’t lose competitve ground to foreign rivals.

Further, giving these third-party companies and countries the choice of doing business with China, or with the far bigger – and more reliable – United States would have the added benefit of adding international support to American efforts to fight Chinese protectionism and economic predation.  Working with Washington would also aid foreign governments and companies by reducing China’s scope to play trade partners off against one another. 

Finally, it’s true that the kind of jobs and even technology extortion used by China are standard operating procedures – especially in aerospace and in military aerospace – for many foreign governments, including those of U.S. allies. So how could Washington justify singling out China for counter-measures? Yet when it comes to allies and their policies (called offsets), the answer couldn’t be more evident: They’re allies and China manifestly is not. It makes no sense whatever to treat all foreign governments and economies the same when their relationships with the United States are so dramatically different, and this kind of foolish consistency certainly shouldn’t hamstring America’s approach to China’s economic transgressions.

There is, however, one obstacle to this kind of revamp of U.S.-China economic relations that I don’t see being overcome anytime soon – the continued domination of China policy-making in Washington by those aforementioned multinational, offshoring-happy business interests. The China policy status quo has undermined the American economy’s productive core, and increasingly threatens national security. But the offshoring lobby believes it’s worked well enough for its members. So until a critical mass of national political leaders decides to reject their lavish campaign contributions, expect China to keep taking America to the cleaners. And when Chinese actions sting enough, expect a few grumbles from the multinationals – no doubt mainly for show.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Follow the Money, Not the Pundits, to Understand the Chinese Tech Challenge

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Ali Baba, CFIUS, China, cyber-security, forced technology transfer, foreign direct investment, IBM, innovation, Intel, Qualcomm, technology, Thomas Friedman, Xi JInPing, Xiaomi, Yahoo, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Few stereotypes are as hardy (and seductive, at least for Americans) as that of copycat Asians who come from cultures incapable of fostering creativity and innovation – at least not on the scale for which the USA is known. And few are as as misleading. If you’re skeptical of either proposition, just consider Thomas Friedman’s column today in The New York Times about China’s economic and technological future, and a spate of news reports about the activities of U.S. and Chinese technology companies themselves.

In Friedman’s words, there’s a major conflict between Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s push to move his economy from labor-intensive manufacturing to “more knowledge-intensive work” and his determination to censor the internet as well as university research. “Alas, crackdowns don’t tend to produce start-ups,” Friedman concludes.

It’s hard to argue with the logic, but oft times the world thumbs its nose at sensibileness – or at least as it’s defined by particular peoples. And however Americans cherish the notion that the political freedoms and inventiveness go hand in hand, and vice versa, lots of U.S. tech firms don’t seem to agree.

Cosmically, today also saw the appearance of a Wall Street Journal piece describing how Some of Silicon Valley’s largest companies have deepened their China partnerships in the past year.” The article mentions Intel and IBM, and could have added Qualcomm as well. Many of these deals and investments are simply responses to China’s longstanding policy of forcing foreign companies to transfer technology to Chinese partners in exchange for access to the potentially enormous Chinese market.

Lately, moreover, Beijing has added two big new wrinkles. First, its professions to fear spyware insertions in technology imports and high-profile decisions to curb purchases from U.S. firms in particular have given these companies major incentives to team up with Chinese entities. These are easier for the Chinese government to control – that is, when it doesn’t own them outright or indirectly. Second, China has begun to accuse foreign companies in numerous industries of violating Chinese laws in areas like anti-trust and bribery, and handed out some stiff fines. Non-Chinese firms have gotten the message that carrying out Beijing’s bidding in areas like tech transfer is a great way to stay on the Chinese authorities’ good side.

Nonetheless, it’s also clear that China has developed some technology winners – like Xiaomi, the up-and-coming smartphone producer that’s received Qualcomm funding ever since it held its first financing round. And let’s not forget the Yahoo stake in Chinese e-tailer Ali Baba – which may be the most valuable assets it owns.

Also ignored by Friedman is how, thanks to the literally trillions of dollars in trade profits it’s made with the United States and the rest of the world, China can now buy outright much of the advanced knowhow it needs – and has made acquiring U.S. companies a priority. Chinese takeovers with national security implications can be blocked or quietly deterred by an inter-agency American screening panel, but this Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. has more often acted like a rubber stamp than like a guardian.  

So the choice is pretty clear: When trying to understand innovation and economics in China, you can listen to the pundits, or you can follow the money. Hardly a close call if you ask me.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Obama Ignores a Crucial – Home-Grown – Cyber Threat

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China, cyber-security, cyber-war, forced technology transfer, hacking, multinational companies, offshoring, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, technology, technology transfer

Here’s how you can tell that President Obama’s conference on cyber-security later today at Stanford University just doesn’t pass the seriousness test. There’s nothing on the agenda indicating that the administration will be dealing with the ongoing transfers of knowhow by U.S. technology firms to China that have taught the Chinese much about hacking and how to defend against it.

My 2013 article for BloombergView detailed the jaw-dropping scale of this activity by the likes of Google, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Cisco, and other offshoring-happy multinationals. There’s no doubt that these transfers have slowed as Beijing has begun to push these firms around whenever their capabilities are no longer crucially needed. But there’s no reason to suppose that they won’t continue – as evidenced by the companies’ reaction to the latest conditions China will place on their businesses in the People’s Republic. In response to Beijing’s planned requirements that include turning over secret source codes for whatever equipment they sell to Chinese (government-owned) banks, the firms have simply called for “urgent discussion and dialogue.” The idea that they would shut down the numerous research centers and tech training programs they’ve set up in China is obviously as far off the table as the idea that the president would bring this matter up.

Yet if this hemorrhage of advanced, inherently offensive, hacking-related know-how to China isn’t stemmed, the various U.S. defensive measures being implemented and pursued could be largely and even wholly wasted – whether by the government, the private sector, or whatever cooperative arrangements they devise.

Worse, time is anything but on America’s side. As I’ve reported, no less than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admits that the United States has lost any superiority it might have had on cyber fronts. Unless American companies stop feeding the beast fast, the point will keep rapidly approaching at which China no longer needs them to become the world’s top cyber power.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Signs of U.S. Cyber-Security Failure May be More Serious Than Reported

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China, cyber-security, deterrence, forced technology transfer, hacking, intelligence, Michael Rogers, multinational companies, National Security Agency, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, technology transfer

Here’s another noteworthy aspect of the timing of President Obama’s Executive Amnesty announcement last night: It almost completely obscured the at least comparably important hearings held by the House Intelligence Committee about cyber threats to U.S. national security.

The testimony and other statements from Adm. Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency and the nation’s cyber-security operations, made so many critical points and raised so many critical questions that I hardly know where to begin.

News reports focused on Rogers’ warning – ostensibly the first by a U.S. government official – that China and other governments are now able to launch truly destructive attacks on America’s energy grid and other vital economic systems, and are currently conducting the electronic snooping needed to pave the way for such assaults.

At the same time, such fears have already become widespread. I’m more interested now in Rogers’ views on policy responses and their implications – some of them confusing, some of them scary.

Principally, I was pleased to see Rogers argue that the United States can’t simply stay on the defensive in this cyber cold war. No security strategy can be entirely passive and reactive unless, as is the case with nuclear weapons, the nation possesses retaliatory capabilities powerful enough to deter effectively.

And this is where I start to worry. Since the United States is widely described as the world’s predominant technology power, I’ve often wondered why Washington hasn’t responded to actual cyber attacks from China and other sources with threats (communicated in private, of course) to respond by, say shutting down major cities for a week or so, and by promising to do worse unless these foreign powers stand down.

One possible conclusion is that this simply isn’t the Obama administration’s style. Rogers actually fed this fear with his proposal for a global cyber “code of conduct” that would ostensibly prevent or damp down conflict in this realm. As with other such proposals in arms control and other sectors, this notion ignores the reality that such agreements can only succeed if a strong enough global consensus on these matters exists in the first place. That foreign cyber attacks are taking place reveals how fanciful that belief is.

But another possibility, which is much more frightening, is that Washington has turned the other cheek because it simply has no choice – i.e., that it lacks that deterrent capability in cyber warfare. Not that I – or anyone outside the American intelligence community – can be certain of such top secret matters. Yet the nation’s inability to turn its technology edge into an effective cyber defense capability or deterrent could mean either that its cyber security strategy has been a dismal failure, or that this edge isn’t so impressive – if it exists at all.

At the same time, it’s important to note that Rogers’ call for creating offensive cyber capabilities and all that it implies about the global cyber security balance has been belied by reports – based on leaked intelligence community documents – that many American cyber attacks have in fact been launched.

That would be reassuring – although it also would reveal that such moves have been inadequate so far to deter many foreign attacks. (In theory, of course, they might be deterring much worse attacks.) Yet I would be feeling much better if Rogers – and other intelligence and security officials – publicly addressed a major shortcoming in America’s cyber security strategy: the pass it’s given to U.S. multinational companies’ huge programs to train foreign technology professionals and to their substantial transfer of hacking-relevant knowhow to foreign economies.

This gaping hole in the bucket isn’t directly to blame for Russian and Iranian hacking prowess – although any such overseas aid becomes that much likelier to find its way to unfriendly countries. But as I’ve reported, it bears substantial blame for boosting China’s capabilities.

Again, because such matters are (righty) classified, it’s difficult to know what, if anything, Washington is doing to address this problem. But the continuation of such tech transfer, both voluntary and extorted, makes clear that any efforts being made need to be strengthened greatly, and that American cyber strategy will remain dangerously deficient if it continues to lack a serious denial dimension.