For much of recorded history, China was a leading science and technology power. But just as the West rose, China turned in on itself, and missed the Industrial Revolution. The result was the 'Hundred Years of Humiliation', and a long struggle for a modern, yet distinctly Chinese, civilisational identity. Today, technological innovation has returned to the core of national pride and ambition.Since the 1980s, reforms have transformed China into the world's second largest economy and a major global power. Cyber space and other advanced technologies have become a battleground for international dominance; but today's world relies on global supply chains and interstate collaboration--at least, for now. Growing tension between the USA and China could result in the two superpowers decoupling their technology--with significant consequences for humanity's future.The Great Decoupling shows that this technology contest, and how it plays out, will shape the geopolitics of the twenty-first century.
This paper proposes channels through which technological decoupling can affect global growth, and embeds these different layers in a global dynamic macroeconomic model. Multiple scenarios are considered that differ along two dimensions: (i) the coalition of countries (hubs) that initiate the decoupling, and (ii) whether non-hub countries are also forced to decouple via ‘preferential attachment’ – i.e. by aligning themselves with the hub they trade most with. All global technology hubs lose across scenarios, and losses are largest under preferential attachment. Smaller countries with relations that straddle multiple hubs generally lose, whereas those whose trade is heavily concentrated with one hub may gain due to reduced competition under some scenarios. Technological fragmentation can lead to losses in the order of 5 percent of GDP for many economies.
US-China Tech War: What Chinese Tech History Reveals About Future Tech Rivalry by Nina Xiang reviews the history of China's technology development and attempts to understand how it could shape current and future tech rivalry between the United States and China. The book focuses on the semiconductor industry, the epicenter of the current US-China tech rivalry. Despite decades of government-led effort to boost its chips industry, China has lagged far behind other countries and the country is extremely vulnerable to U.S. tech blockage. Why did China fail to achieve its goals after repeated effort? What does tightening technology blockage by the U.S. mean to China's tech space? How deep will the rift between the two countries' tech ecosystem be? The book dispels a number of myths about how China progressed technologically: the whole-nation model, forced technology transfer, and China's efforts to stimulate home-grown tech. With a deeper look, these hyped terms reveal a different side that would surprise readers. In addition, China's tech tradition and tech DNA have an important influence on China's technology development. The country's strength in tech applications has deep roots. This will also determine how U.S.-China tech rivalry will play out. Quotes from the book: "It became clear to Moore that, no matter how much science went into conceiving of silicon wafers, there would always be an artlike skill associated with their production." - Robert Curley "Let me tell you something: High-end semiconductor manufacturing is black magic. Both the processes and tools used for it are very complex. ASML's EUV lithography machine is probably the most complex tool humankind ever developed since it stopped jumping between trees. It took billions of Euros and decades of experience to perfect it. Other experienced lithography machine suppliers failed at it. China has no experience in high-end semiconductor manufacturing tools with the exception of one-off/few-off prototypes." - Bora Taş on Quora The belief in the value of scientific truth is not derived from nature but is a product of definite cultures. - Max Weber One sentiment which is assimilated by the scientist from the very outset of his training pertains to the purity of science. Science must not suffer itself to become the handmaiden of theology or economy or state. The function of this sentiment is likewise to preserve the autonomy of science. For if such extra-scientific criteria of the value of science as presumable consonance with religious doctrines or economic utility or political appropriateness are adopted, science becomes acceptable only insofar as it meets these criteria. In other words, as the "pure science sentiment" is eliminated, science becomes subject to the direct control of other institutional agencies and its place in society becomes increasingly uncertain. - Robert K. Merton
This book provides an original systematic assessment of China's twenty years in the WTO. Combining insights from law, economics, political science, and international relations, it offers rich, multifaceted analyses of the opportunities and challenges China presents to the world trading system and the responses from other WTO Members. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The last few years have been "anni horribiles" for in International Economic Law in general and in particular for the World Trade Organization, since its inception in 1995 the guarantor of the world multilateral trade system. The increasing trade tensions, a high level of US security tariffs on steel and aluminium, the US boycott of the WTO Appellate Body, the US-China "trade war" and the reasons underlining it, only aggravated a disastrous world-wide economic situation at a time of tremendous global health and societal emergency, due to the persistent devastating spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book critically discusses the most salient past US administration’s unilateralist and protectionist practices. At the same time investigating the new Biden Administration’s trade approaches in order to assess whether the precedent trade trajectory is likely to continue, or there is hope of reviving the US commitment to the rule-based multilateral trading system. The book’s goal consists in distilling from current legal events the reasoning that might help the next generations in obtaining what the world needs most. These are a conscious and voluntary return to multilateralism, the search of new forms of effective global cooperation, better trade policies, a more equitable globalization, sound legal arguments, and solid economic reasons to combat rising nationalisms. If enacted, these elements hopefully would contribute to defeat new risks of political conflicts and long-lasting "trade wars". The book will be helpful to students and scholars in international and trade law, political science, and also professionals working in international and EU institutions.
The relation between China and the United States is arguably the most important bilateral relation in the world today. The U.S. and China are respectively the largest and the second largest economies in the world. They are also respectively the largest and the second largest trading nations in the world as well as each other’s most important trading partner. If China and the U.S. work together as partners towards a common goal, many things are possible. However, there exist significant friction and potential conflict in their economic relations. The large and persistent U.S.-China bilateral trade deficit is one of the problems. It is essential to know the true state of the China-U.S. trade balance before effective solutions can be devised to narrow the trade surplus or deficit. The impacts and potential impacts of the 2018 trade war between China and the U.S. on the two economies are analysed and discussed. The longterm forces that underlie the economic relations between the two countries beyond the 2018 trade war are examined. In this connection, how a “new type of major-power relation” between the two countries can help to keep the competition friendly and avert a war between them is explored. ~~~~~~~~ Lawrence J. Lau’s timely The China-U.S. Trade War and Future Economic Relations is full of careful analysis, penetrating insight and helpful suggestions from the world’s preeminent economist on this relationship. —Michael J. Boskin Tully M. Friedman Professor of Economics, Stanford University Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This sober and systematic study of U.S.-China trade relations and of technological development in the two countries is particularly timely. Lawrence Lau is one of the world’s foremost economists working on these issues. —Dwight H. Perkins Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus Former Chair, Department of Economics, Harvard University This is a timely and penetrating analysis of the China-U.S. trade and economic relations, from its origins to its impacts and to a way forward. —Yingyi Qian Chairman of the Council, Westlake University Former Dean, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University Counsellor of the State Council, People’s Republic of China Lawrence Lau’s book on the current U.S.-China trade war is insightful, balanced and comprehensive; rich in data on trade, investment, science and technology. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to get past the headlines. —A. Michael Spence Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences (2001) Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University Lawrence Lau brings light in the form of rigorous honest fact-based economic analysis to a subject where most of the discussion has been heated bluster, false claims, and political rhetoric. —Lawrence H. Summers Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; Former President, Harvard University There is no topic more important, or more timely, or more urgent, than the China-U.S. trade war. Professor Lau is the ideal person to write about the implications of the China-U.S. trade war and the proposed resolution. —Tung Chee-Hwa Vice-Chairman, Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee Chairman, China-U.S. Exchange Foundation The history of Sino-American relations, to a great extent, has been a shared history. Lawrence Lau’s timely and penetrating study will tell us it is still in best interest for both countries if they continue to pursue a shared journey and destination instead of parting ways. —Xu Guoqi Kerry Group Professor in Globalization History, The University of Hong Kong Author of Chinese and Americans: A Shared History This beautifully composed book uses nontechnical language to unravel the intricacies of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war, together with its long-term impact. I learned a lot from reading it. —Chen-Ning Yang Nobel Laureate in Physics (1957)
A leading foreign policy thinker uses Chinese political theory to explain why some powers rise as others decline and what this means for the international order Why has China grown increasingly important in the world arena while lagging behind the United States and its allies across certain sectors? Using the lens of classical Chinese political theory, Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers explains China’s expanding influence by presenting a moral-realist theory that attributes the rise and fall of great powers to political leadership. Yan Xuetong shows that the stronger a rising state’s political leadership, the more likely it is to displace a prevailing state in the international system. Yan shows how rising states like China transform the international order by reshaping power distribution and norms, and he considers America’s relative decline in international stature even as its economy, education system, military, political institutions, and technology hold steady. Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers offers a provocative, alternative perspective on the changing dominance of states.
Various efforts by US lawmakers and the executive during the Trump administration to move toward technological decoupling with China betray a deep-rooted and pathological misunderstanding of how the global technology industry works. They also risk backfiring on five counts. First, it is too little too late. If the United States was serious about policing what it refers to as China’s “innovation mercantilism,” it should have taken steps in this direction almost 15 years ago when China first got serious about increasing “indigenous innovation.” Second, efforts to contain China by cutting off its companies’ access to western technologies and markets are bound to be counterproductive. Chinese firms are sure to gain access sooner or later to these technologies and thereby succeed in their global ambitions anyway. Third, a policy of uncompromising confrontation only strengthens hawkish elements in China and further undercuts China’s case to embrace deeper market opening and structural reforms. Fourth, technological decoupling undermines the US’s relative position and its technology companies’ ability to maintain pre-eminence across a range of advanced technologies. Fifth and finally, US efforts to contain China for the sole purpose of retaining unchallenged hegemony essentially cedes the moral high ground to the Chinese leadership and undermines the US’s position globally as the so-called “city upon a hill.” Instead, the new Biden administration should use the US’s still formidable market power and geopolitical influence to both gently coerce and actively incentivize China into shouldering more responsibilities with its newfound economic power. Indeed, the carnage that the Trump administration has wreaked on the US-China relationship and the many trade and investment restrictions imposed on Chinese firms and imports provide a great starting point for the Biden administration to negotiate with China. They should focus on a more balanced and reciprocal relationship of mutual market openness and competitive opportunities for each nation’s firms and their respective domestic markets.
