US bid to foil Chinese tech sector’s rise bound to fail
Recent moves by the Trump administration aimed at foiling China’s development of its hightech industries are nothing but a containment strategy that is doomed to failure.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and White House trade advisor Peter Navarro both fear-mongered lately about the Made in China 2015 strategy, which aims to upgrade the country’s manufacturing sector by focusing on 10 sectors — information technology, high-end machinery and robotics, aerospace, marine equipment and ships, advanced rail transport, new energy vehicles, electric power, agriculture machinery, new materials and biomedical.
While Lighthizer described the Chinese strategy as a threat to the global trading system and vowed that the US will draft its punitive tariff list, based on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, targeting Chinese products under the strategy, Navarro distorted the Chinese plan as an attempt “to dominate every single emerging industry of the future, and therefore your economies aren’t going to have a future”.
This is in stark contrast to what Premier Li Keqiang said at the China Development Forum on Monday that the Made in China 2025 strategy promotes an open and fair environment with equal treatment for domestic and overseas businesses.
China will not force any technology transfer from any foreign company and will enhance efforts to protect intellectual property rights and severely crack down on infringement, and it welcomes more globally competitive businesses to share China’s growth opportunities, Li said.
On the contrary, the US efforts will only make China more determined in pursuing its modernization strategy.