The move was branded baseless and bad for business after Beijing responded in kind to Washington’s technology restrictions
go through Timur Fomenkopolitical analyst
China recently restricted the use of chips made by U.S. semiconductor company Micron for its national infrastructure, labeling them as “National Security Threat”.
The wording and rationale for the move should sound familiar, as it’s exactly what the U.S. has been doing for the past few years, blacklisting Chinese tech companies and urging allies to do the same. “You can’t trust Huawei in your 5G infrastructure” is the general line used by officials in Washington. According to them, and the Western media that has repeated it, Chinese technology of all kinds, from TikTok to balloons to refrigerators, poses an “espionage risk.”
Therefore, based on this treatment of Chinese companies by the United States, it is only a matter of time before Beijing strikes back. One might think that if Washington is willing to use “national security” as an excuse for market exclusion, China can also accept it. Just fair, right?
Obviously not.The United States has expressed anger at Beijing’s statement, accusing it of “There is no basis in fact.” Not only that, Washington then further claimed that this move proves that China’s regulatory environment is “Unreliable” and the country is no longer committed to “Reform and Opening”.
Somehow, the United States can say this with a straight face. Washington has the power to restrict Chinese companies on an industrial scale, but when Beijing does so, even on a marginal level, it proves that Chinese investment is not reliable. Even as the microchip companies point to the damage done by America’s disastrous policies, Washington appears to have either no sense of self or an extreme sense of self-entitlement which, as has been discussed many times, gives it the near-sacred status of setting the rules It imposes rights on others that it feels under no obligation to obey.
This shows how the US views its right to exploit China’s own market. The U.S. relationship with China has always been conditional on the premise that Beijing will gradually change its political system and economy to match U.S. preferences. In the 1980s and 1990s, in the era of China’s “reform and opening up”, the United States believed that China was changing and was destined to reform based on ideological overconfidence after the victory of the Cold War.
From this perspective, free market economics is seen as an evangelical transformative force that, with the advent of capitalism, led naturally to liberal democracy. So there is never a premise of “touching” China in its own way, it always has to “cause” something. By the 2010s, it was clear that this was not going to happen. Not only has China’s political system not changed, but its economic trajectory and industries continue to develop in ways that threaten the foundations of U.S. hegemony. US foreign policy then shifted to now trying to “force” China to change and contain it.
Of course, the U.S. likes the idea of trade with China and its markets, as long as that trade does exactly what Washington likes. It is to make China’s market subordinate to the United States to develop, and to prevent China from having its own world-leading industries. This mentality creates an apparent contradiction in political rhetoric: China “must” open its markets more to Western goods, but at the same time must shut them out in certain areas. China’s resistance to this has been condemned as what it calls “unfair” economic practices.
Because of this, the only “engagements” the US wants with China are completely one-sided, such as being forced to order $200 billion a year in US agricultural products (as Trump envisions), but being banned from importing them from China. US semiconductor market. This is why the U.S. requires that even if U.S. companies lose market share in China, other countries such as South Korea have no right to occupy the lost market share.
America is not interested in compromise, only in surrender. So trade with China is really only conditioned on ideological conversion, or if that fails, surrender to full-blown exploitation, turning China into a fully open and industrialized neoliberal country, possibly with a small group of very wealthy pro- -Western oligarchs who betrayed the country.
In Washington, U.S.-China economic relations are guided by a sense of ideological entitlement. We can blacklist your company and even force third countries to use any Chinese technology, but don’t try to limit our own company. otherwise.
Statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
You can share this story on social media:
