Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken applauded on the sidelines of a basketball game in Shanghai on Wednesday evening and spent Thursday speaking with students at the New York University campus in Shanghai and meet American business owners. All of this has highlighted the type of economic, educational and cultural ties that the United States ostensibly presents as beneficial to both countries.
But beyond those jokes during his visit to China this week are several moves by the U.S. to sever economic ties in areas where the Biden administration says threaten U.S. interests. And these issues will also receive greater attention from Chinese officials.
Even as the Biden administration attempts to stabilize relations with China, it is proposing several economic measures that would limit China’s access to the U.S. economy and technology. He is preparing to increase customs duties on Chinese products steel, solar panels and other crucial products in an attempt to protect U.S. factories from cheap imports. He is considering new restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors to try to prevent Beijing from developing sophisticated artificial intelligence that could be used on the battlefield.
This week, Congress also passed legislation that would force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, to sell its stake in the app within nine to 12 months or leave the United States altogether. President I signed it Wednesday, but the measure will likely be challenged in court.
Mr. Blinken’s visit, which was to take him to Beijing on Friday for high-level government meetings, had a far more cordial tone than the trip he made to China last year. This trip was the first after a Chinese spy balloon traveled across the United States, sending the American public into an uproar.
In a meeting with Shanghai’s Communist Party secretary on Thursday morning, Blinken said direct engagement between the United States and China was both valuable and necessary.
“We have an obligation to our people – indeed an obligation to the world – to manage the relationship between our two countries responsibly,” he said.
Speaking to students at NYU’s Shanghai campus later in the morning, he said the educational exchanges the students were engaged in provided “ballast” for a complicated and contentious relationship.
Since President Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California in November, U.S.-China relations appear more stable, nothing compared to the dramatic ups and downs of trade conflicts under former President Donald J. .Trump.
But the Biden administration continues to move toward more restrictive economic relations with China, while Mr. Xi has made clear that trade interests come second to national security concerns.
This includes controls on semiconductor technology, which is being raised by both sides as a more important issue than ever. The Biden administration is considering strengthening export controls, particularly on factories that help produce advanced semiconductors for Chinese tech giant Huawei.
“By explicitly trying to degrade Chinese technological capabilities, particularly in advanced AI, the United States has pushed export controls to the forefront of the U.S.-China agenda,” said Emily Benson, a trade expert at Center for Strategic and International Studies. Washington Think Tank.
In a call between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi earlier this month, the two leaders discussed technological controls as being of paramount importance.
Mr. Biden stressed that the United States would continue to take necessary measures to prevent advanced American technologies from being used to undermine its own national security, without unduly limiting trade and investment, according to the White House.
Xi said imposing new sanctions on China does not mean “reducing risks” but creating risks. If the United States was determined to “contain China’s high-tech development and deprive China of its legitimate right to development, China will not stand idly by,” he said: according to the official Xinhua news agency.
U.S. officials say their restrictions are necessary given China’s authoritarian government and statist economic model. But the measures have angered China’s leaders and pushed tensions over economic measures to their highest levels in years.
The measures aren’t just coming from the U.S. government: Susan Shirk, author of “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise,” said China has been moving toward a more self-sufficient industrial policy and seeking to supplant the United States. The United States as a high-tech superpower under Mr. Xi.
“Xi openly acknowledges that while he wants China to be less dependent on other countries, he wants to maintain other countries’ dependence on China ‘as a powerful countermeasure and deterrent,’ as he said it, ‘against them cutting off the supply,'” Ms. Shirk said.
China has also let security concerns affect more of its economy, even as Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders have tried to reassure foreign companies that their investments are welcome. A new national security law extended Beijing’s reach to Hong Kong, threatening the city’s status as a financial hub. U.S. leaders have been alarmed by China’s investigations into foreign companies, as well as the country’s broader rules banning the sharing of data and information with foreigners.
Despite China’s complaints about the U.S. government’s efforts to crack down on TikTok, China itself has banned other Western social media services for decades. Apple said last week that Beijing had ordered it to remove WhatsApp and Threads from app stores in China.
Mr. Blinken and other U.S. officials have stressed that U.S. export controls, sanctions and other restrictions on Chinese technology companies apply to only a small fraction of the broader U.S.-China relationship. China. Elsewhere, trade is encouraged, they say.
In a report released this week, the US-China Business Council, a group of 270 US companies that do business in China, estimates that US exports to China supported more than 900,000 US jobs in 2022, even though exports of goods fell in 2023 due to China’s sluggishness. the economy, U.S. tariffs and other factors.
“It is important for us to remind U.S. lawmakers and those in influential positions that each U.S. state and congressional district maintains its own economic and trade relationship with China, and that changes in trade policy between the U.S. “United States and China need to be looked at very carefully,” said Craig Allen, the group’s president.
