American Interest
The China Challenge
CHARLES EDEL
There is a growing consensus among Western governments about the
risks posed by China’s security, industrial, and commercial policies.
Beijing is sending a trade delegation to Washington for talks aimed at
resolving the trade war, but this is unlikely to resolve the changing
political risk factors at stake for companies doing business with China.
Understandably, most analysis has focused on the dynamics of the
ever-escalating trade war between the United States and China. This
obscures the potentially more important dynamic of the growing consensus
among Western governments of risks posed by China’s security, industrial
and commercial policies. And it obstructs the increasing willingness of
these governments to intervene in market activity for reasons of
national security.
Given Trump’s erraticism and transactional approach to foreign policy,
it is important not to mistake the general trend of a hardening trade
relationship with China across the West. A desire to put more pressure
on China is not simply a Trump phenomenon. Indeed, it’s one of the few
areas where there’s bipartisan agreement in the United States and among
its traditional allies Japan, Canada, and Europe right now. When
Jean-Claude Junker, President of the European Commission, recently
appeared next to Donald Trump in the White House Rose Garden to announce
an easing of their incipient trade spat, the media coverage almost
missed their statement pledging to work together “to address unfair
trading practices, including intellectual property theft, forced
technology transfer, industrial subsidies, distortions created by
state-owned enterprises, and overcapacity.” Even without mentioning
China by name, the point was obvious and represented a growing consensus
among many nations that China’s unfair practices are putting the rest of
the world at a disadvantage.
Despite China’s courting of the European Union, Europeans leaders have
expressed significant skepticism about Chinese commitments, increasingly
viewing Chinese investments in Eastern and Central Europe as Trojan
horses. In fact, they have started restricting Chinese investments into
their economies and have been at pains to point out that Europe shares
Washington’s core concerns about Chinese industrial and commercial
policies. And it is not just Western countries expressing concern over
the nature and intent of Chinese investment of strategic national
assets. Across Southeast Asia, wariness is growing over the dangers of
unsustainable Chinese investment, lack of transparency and
accountability, and projects that erode the foundations of national
sovereignty. This has given rise to fears that China is, in the words of
Malaysia’s newly elected Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, coercing
smaller nations into “unequal treaties.” With
constant news coverage of the escalating trade war between the United
States and China, the story that is being overlooked is the growing
consensus among Western nations that a response to China’s industrial
and trade policies is necessary. While this gradual shift in policies
reflects broader concerns that Chinese economic liberalization has
stalled for the foreseeable future, there are three specific concerns
that help explain why this is occurring now. First,
there is emerging consensus that under his drive to solidify the Chinese
Communist Party’s grip on the country, Xi Jinping has accelerated
China’s embrace of authoritarianism in a way that fundamentally
undercuts Beijing’s reformist rhetoric. The result is a country
that is increasingly closing itself—and its markets—to outside trade and
investment, insisting that the price of doing business in China is
forced technology transfer, and lurching away from transparency. As an
independent research firm has observed, the global conversation about
China’s evolution has been pushed to a “tipping point-moment of
discussion” by policy changes in Beijing. Where previously there was
debate about the policy balance, with market-oriented and state-control
ideas competing for the lead, the Xi-era has led China away from
convergence with the OECD. One result has been that American and
European businesses and governments now recognize that voluntary
mechanisms to open China’s economy have not worked and likely will not
work.
Second, China’s push to dominate artificial
intelligence, quantum computing, and other fields has begun to raise
appropriate alarm in the United States and Europe. In 2015,
Beijing announced “China 2025,” its industrial plan to dominate the core
components of a future economy by investing in cutting-edge innovation
in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and aerospace
industries among others, while also increasing Chinese acquisitions of
U.S. and Western firms. The goals are to upgrade Chinese industry,
localize production, make it more competitive globally, and put it at
the forefront of multiple cutting-edge industries. While that might make
sense from China’s perspective, it leads to obvious questions about
whether foreign companies will be boxed out of working in China or
forced to do business in China under increasingly disadvantageous terms.
Indeed, Beijing states that its goal is to increase the domestic content
of core components and materials to 40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by
2025. In tandem with this, the Chinese government has issued nearly 300
new national standards related to cybersecurity. The result is a vague
set of regulatory tools that is rapidly shifting the business
environment for foreign firms operating in China. A new report by the
Washington-based think tank CSIS has concluded that for foreign firms
engaging with China, this shift will “create security risks, add costs,
and overall underscore that Beijing is ultimately in control.” Third,
there is growing worry about the nature and intent of Chinese investment
in, and acquisition of, Western technology and critical infrastructure.
Concerned about the risks of supply chain disruptions,
information and data security, the acquisition of military or dual-use
technology, and threats to critical infrastructure, the United States
and Europe are taking steps to investigate and limit Chinese investment
in their economies. Behind these concerns lies growing recognition of
persistent Chinese efforts to manipulate financial networks, political
processes, and public debate within the United States and among its
allies. As a result, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United
States (CFIUS) is in the midst of a legislative overhaul that will
likely expand its powers, and in late July Britain rolled out its new
National Security and Investment White Paper, which was intended to
strengthen the government’s ability to prevent foreign purchases of
security-sensitive British assets. Although the document is broad, UK
officials have confirmed that “this is mainly about China” and
preventing Beijing’s acquisition of sensitive technologies and critical
infrastructure. London’s move follows similar ones in Germany and
France, which have both intervened to halt deals with Chinese companies
that raised security concerns and worked to strengthen their foreign
investment laws. All
of these factors mean that the business community should be prepared for
uncertainty ahead. Given Beijing’s increasingly assertive foreign policy
and aggressive industrial policy, democratic governments are likely to
increase the pace of their interventions into the commercial sector to
halt or amend deals for strategic and geopolitical reasons, as they
enhance regulations that govern foreign investments. Second, Donald
Trump’s erraticism and transactional approach to foreign policy and
economic issues will likely make this less a coordinated approach among
allies than one that moves forward by fits and starts. This trend,
however, is not based on Trump’s trade war, but rather is reflective of
multiple nations’ financial and security concerns and is likely to
persist. Finally, governments are now attempting to ensure that they are
not overly leveraged on a single market and therefore vulnerable to
economic coercion or macroeconomic shocks. All three of these trends are
likely to intensify, and the smart investor would be wise to pay heed to
them. |