Wang Yi serves as head of China’s central foreign affairs commission and as foreign minister. He’s Beijing’s foreign policy supremo after President Xi Jinping.
But Wang has a problem. While he’s very good at showing loyalty to Xi and conformity to the president’s wishes, Wang is not very good at building relationships or pursuing pragmatic discussions with foreign partners. He is known as unusually prickly, even for a Chinese Communist apparatchik, and for welding himself to his talking points. This makes it challenging for Wang to accomplish his key mission with regards to the West. Namely, securing greater Western latitude for China’s trade policy, high-technology import efforts and military expansionism in the East China and South China Seas.
Wang again underlined that reality on Thursday when he suggested that U.S. restrictions on technology exports to China had reached “bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity.” He went on to demand that the United States share AI knowledge and other high-tech product streams with China. He argued that if the U.S. “only wants itself to prosper but denies other countries’ legitimate development, where is international fairness? If it persistently monopolizes the high end of the value chain and keeps China at the low end, where is fairness and competition of fair competition?”
As usual, Wang is being very creative in his interpretation of reality.
After all, the U.S. is restricting high-technology exports to China in order to keep China economically corralled. If that were the case, the U.S. would be applying the same restrictions to every nation or political bloc, such as the European Union, that poses a competitive challenge to the U.S. economy. Instead, the U.S. seeks to maximize its high-tech exports where doing so is compatible with critical U.S. security interests. The U.S. wants to balance lucrative exports with its national security. In that regard, U.S. export restrictions vis-a-vis China are designed to ensure that U.S. technology is not then used to strengthen the People’s Liberation Army. This is no small concern when one notes that China voraciously applies any feasible dual civilian-military use technology for PLA purposes. Beijing also weaponizes civilian research in order to develop new cyber, space, and kinetic strike platforms.
The U.S. isn’t the only one facing this pressure from Beijing.
China has also sought high technology knowledge and goods from close U.S. allies such as the Netherlands. Israel’s support for China’s tech appetite has been particularly problematic. Again, however, the issue is what Beijing wants from this technology. Because it’s not about building cars quicker or improving productivity in its low-value goods sector. Instead, China uses this technology for purposes such as improving its anti-ship ballistic missile force. That’s no small concern considering that U.S. aircraft carriers — manned by 6,000 Americans each — would be the centerpiece of any U.S. military effort to resist a Chinese attack on Taiwan and the Philippines.
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Put simply, were the U.S. to accept Wang’s sense of what is fair and just, the U.S. would be accepting that unrestrained tech trade with China is acceptable even if it puts tens of thousands of Americans at greater risk of death in any future war while also making likelier China’s prospect of victory in such a war. And war is likely coming.
Put another way, Wang is living in a Chinese Communist dream world.