Current affairs perspective
Sino -US relations are undoubtedly the most noticeable relationship.Before the outbreak of the coronary disease, the two world's largest economies started a trade war and scientific and technological warfare.The United States not only bypasses the World Trade Organization, but directly impose additional trade tariffs on the rise of China's rising China, but also adopts a series of restrictions on Made in China 2025 such as Chinese manufacturing 2025. Chinese high -tech enterprises Huawei and ZTE are all on the sanctions list.
The spread of global epidemics began this year is even more worse. The United States and China have fiercely confronted the issues such as virus origin, information disclosure, and World Health Organization. Geopolical issues such as Taiwan, South China, and India are also heating up.Some observers even put forward the conclusions that have been trapped in the United States and China that they have fallen into a comprehensive decoupling or a new Cold War. People have begun to worry about whether some Asia -Pacific countries are facing a difficult issue for choosing a side station between the United States and China.
However, if the U.S. President Trump has been in the past four years, the trend of the US -China trade war and scientific and technological warfare has been reviewed. It is not difficult to find that although the degree of confrontation between the United States and China in these fields in recent years is very fierce, the two sides have a bottom line.Globalization and mutual dependence make it difficult for the trade war and scientific and technological warfare to evolve into a comprehensive decoupling of the two countries in these fields.With the approaching of the US election, Sino -US relations may face a new window period.
During the last election campaign, Trump put forward the idea of playing a trade card for China, arguing that the United States' long -term huge trade deficit to China was brought about by unfair trade, causing unemployment and fiscal difficulties in the United States.After Trump came to power, he immediately fulfilled his promise. He not only hired an economist at the Hua Eagle, but also started a long -lasting trade negotiation with Chinese leaders.
The atmosphere of negotiations became increasingly tense, and eventually led to the United States in 2018 and began to impose punitive tariffs on China's transmission of goods in the United States. China immediately adopted a retaliation method of increased taxes and the trade war officially broke out.Since then, the top leaders of the two countries have reached a consensus, but the tariff war between the two countries in 2019 has intensified. Until the first phase of the trade agreement was signed this year, the trade war came to an end.
It can be seen from the development of the trade war that although the United States and China have a fierce confrontation and the differences between the two sides are very large, the huge complementarity of the economic and trade fields of the two countries enables the two sides to sign an agreement.Despite the implementation of the agreement and the challenge of the crown disease epidemic this year, the trade volume between China and the United States is still at a high level, and the two parties are one of the main trading partners of each other.In the field of investment, unexpectedly, in the first half of this year, the U.S. investment in China was raging in the epidemic in the first half of this year.relation.
At present, the United States has not continued to impose tariffs on China in the field of trade. Although the trade war has not officially ended, it has not deteriorated.At the same time, Trump has not achieved the purpose of trade deficit against China through a trade war. On the contrary, it is ironic that this trading deficit is still expanding during Trump's term. China is in August this year.Exit, the year -on -year growth was as high as 20%.Seeing that Trump's first term is about to end, the probability of the trade war has continued for a long time.
In the field of science and technology warfare, although controversy between Huawei, Tiktok, WeChat, and Chinese study in the United States and researchers in the United States, the United States has not completely blocked the existence of these products or services in the United States, and there are still hundreds of thousands of hundreds of thousandsStudents and researchers from China stay in the United States to study and visit.
The U.S. government has repeatedly suspended sanctions on Chinese technology companies, and sometimes take some changing measures to reduce the impact.The recent example was that Trump suddenly changed his mind at the last moment and approved TIKTOK to continue operating in the United States, and the US government's ban on WeChat was also postponed by constitutional doubts.Representatives in the American educational and scientific circles have continued to speak, and believe that excessive restrictions and review have hindered the normal scientific research exchanges between the two countries and do not meet the national interests of the United States.
From the perspective of effect, this scientific and technological warfare has limited impact on Chinese companies.In the United States' continuous suppression, Huawei ’s smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2020 have surpassed Samsung in the global market for the first time.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the mutual dependence of China and the United States in the field of economy, trade and technology has restricted the space for the development of the trade war and scientific and technological wars.This policy orientation not only cannot achieve the expected purpose, but also the fundamentals of the development trend of globalization and the economic and technological connection with the two countries, so it is unsustainable.
At present, the biggest variable that affects the relations between China and the United States is from the geopolitical fields rather than the field of trade or technology.At the closure of the US presidential election again, people generally pay attention to whether Democratic candidates Biden Biden will change Trump's tough policy for China.But what really needs to be concerned is not the possible changes in this governing style, but if Bayeng is elected, whether it will still choose to pressure China in the field of economic and trade and technology as Trump, it will still change strategies and turn to geographyPolitics and security are tough.If the latter occurs, the situation will be more complicated than the trade war or scientific and technological warfare, and challenges China more.After all, Trump is a businessman, and he has not put too much pressure on China in the fields of military, security or human rights.Biden is different. As a heavyweight political figure in the Democratic Party for a long time, he is more sensitive to human rights and geopolitics.
Therefore, if Biden was elected, he might gradually dilute the trade war and scientific and technological warfare, and chose to pressure China in the fields of local land, security and ideology.
The author is the National University of Singapore
Senior Researcher and Assistant Director of East Asia Research Institute
