Illustration: Stephen Case
Which of the following constitutes a threat to US national security: steel, social media, port cranes or self-driving cars? The answer is: all of them, according to Washington, if they are from China.
Citing national security risks, the Biden administration has retained the punitive Trump-era tariffs imposed on Chinese steel while Congress is threatening to ban TikTok.
A recent bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives seeks to limit the use of foreign cranes, meaning those made in China. Last month, transport secretary Pete Buttigieg said there were national security concerns about China’s self-driving vehicles after members of Congress called for restrictions on the operations of Chinese autonomous vehicle companies in the US.
Nowadays, national security concerns define much of the US government’s economic policy towards China, and are often cited as the reason for Washington’s actions against it – as in strengthening export controls, increasing the scrutiny of Chinese investments in the US, setting up exclusive economic and trade clubs such as the “Chip 4” alliance, ending Hong Kong’s preferential trade treatment, blacklisting Chinese entities and individuals, and planning to restrict US investments in China.
But what exactly does Washington mean by “national security”?
The answer is far from clear. Take 5G, for example. As far back as January 2020, the UK government, after monitoring and testing Huawei Technologies’ 5G equipment, had concluded that deploying it was manageable in terms of risk, and would not negatively affect intelligence-sharing between Britain and the United States.
But the Biden administration and its predecessor have left no stone unturned in its bid to decimate the Chinese company. The government has restricted Huawei’s access to the US market, barred its supply of chips and operational systems and, for years, been pressuring its Western allies to ban Huawei’s equipment – all while failing to present a shred of evidence to show the company poses a security threat to national or global communication networks.
In semiconductors, the Biden administration insisted its export ban on advanced chips and technology to China was intended to prevent the country from upgrading its military capabilities.
Yet, China is self-sufficient in the chips used in its military systems. China’s military systems rely on less-sophisticated chips and other dual-use components that are widely available. Washington’s case rests on the presumption of nefarious intent tied to China’s dual-purpose military-civilian fusion.
Washington has not bothered with defining national security – on purpose; the Biden administration desires a free hand on the issue. In response to a World Trade Organization ruling against America’s imposition of tariffs on national security grounds, the US delegate to the WTO maintained earlier this year that every country has the authority to take measures it considers “necessary to the protection of its essential security interests”.
The Biden administration has even gone on to seek the European Union’s support on agreements on critical raw materials on the grounds of national security.
As the US national security strategy reveals, Washington’s overarching strategic goal is to maintain America’s hegemonic powers – or “US leadership”, in the words of President Joe Biden, who has stressed it on many occasions. To this end, Washington is hell-bent on beating China. It defines China as its major adversary and the “most consequential geopolitical challenge” to its cherished hold over the unipolar world.
Baiting China has thus become politically correct and even fashionable in Washington as Democrats and Republicans compete to hobble China’s development. Washington’s witch hunt has turned national security into a convenient tool against China.
To justify its crusade and allay the concerns of the rest of the world, the Biden administration insists its actions are narrowly targeted, despite involving critical hi-tech sectors such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.
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Despite Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s claim that Washington’s curbs on chip exports were not aimed at impeding China’s technological development, The New York Times last month described it as “an act of war”, echoing Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, who called it “an act of economic warfare” with the aim to “clearly slow China’s economic development”.
AI and quantum computing are also at the core of China’s economic transformation. They are China’s key areas for growth. More importantly, they will be the drivers of its economic development for years, if not decades, to come.
Washington’s actions are, as Michael Swaine, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, put it, designed not just to “prevent China from gaining hi-tech capability of relevance to military or national security but to prevent China from becoming a hi-tech nation at all”.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has also insisted that US actions are “motivated solely by our concerns about our security and values”. It would seem that Washington’s national security largely involves beating China, keeping it down and far behind the US, technologically and economically.
Whatever China does, Washington sees it as threatening to undercut America’s global power and privilege. In short, targeting China has become a synonym for the maintenance of US hegemony. For all that the US pushes to “Make America Great Again” or “Build Back Better”, it refuses to entertain the idea of China’s rejuvenation.
In truth, China is not to blame for Uncle Sam’s problems. Neither does it intend to challenge or supersede the US. Washington’s China-baiting, cloaked in national security, is tilting at windmills and, as such, is likely to precipitate its own demise as a superpower.
Zhou Xiaoming is a senior fellow at the Centre for China and Globalisation in Beijing and a former deputy representative of China’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva