TOM FRIEDMAN HAS BIDEN AND CHINA BACKWARDS

Declaration of Technology War was China's not Joe's

The lead editorial in today’s New York Times by Tom Friedman reads: “We (the U.S.) Are Suddenly Taking on China and Russia at Once.”

But after citing Henry Kissinger as saying “never fight Russia and China at the same time” and lamenting that “we are in uncharted waters” , Friedman focuses on the China-U.S. relationship.

He sets the tone by quoting a tech consultant saying : “The U.S. has essentially declared war on China’s ability to advance the use of high performance computing for economic and security gains.”

“Where does this war end?” asks Friedman. “What kind of world will it produce, if we are locked in a path of denying China advanced technologies forever with no win-win collaboration on things like climate change and cybercrime?”

These are all good questions, but the implication is that the “war” is being started now by the Biden administration.

In my time, I have served in the Reagan administration as a lead trade negotiator with Japan on semiconductors, as a leader of the first U.S. trade mission to China in the fall of 1982, and as Vice Chairman of President Clinton’s Presidential Commission on Trade and Investment in the Asia-Pacific Region. I have also served as a member of Intel’s Advisory Board and have written extensively about the semiconductor industry and most recently about China in my book THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN: America, China and the Struggle for Global Leadership.

I can say without hesitation that whatever “war” there is was not declared by Joe Biden or by the United States. The truth is quite the reverse. It was declared by China and it was not done yesterday but at least twenty five years ago.

The Internet was initially a seamless World Wide Web that provided individuals all over the world with the ability to find data and spread information widely. In the U.S. and the rest of the Free World, this was seen as a great boon, something to be welcomed and embraced. But in Beijing it was the scariest thing the Chinese Communist Party could imagine. Using it, Chinese citizens might be able to read about the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 when the party had unleashed its army and tanks on demonstrating students. Or they might be able to read the uncensored foreign press. To avoid these possibilities, the party launched the building in 1996 -97 of what became known as the Great Firewall, a jamming apparatus that would cut the Chinese Internet off from the Worldwide Web. When first informed of it, President Bill Clinton laughed and said he’d like to see the Chinese try to stop the Internet. Said he, “it would be like trying to nail Jello to the wall.” Well, the last laugh has been on Clinton. The Chinese Communist Party has succeeded to a very great extent in separating Chinese information from the rest of the world. This has been a clear declaration of information war by China that now covers roughly a quarter century.

But, it is not the only declaration. In 2012, as Xi Jinping was emerging as the new Czar of China, the Chinese Communist Party published what has come to be known as Document Number Nine - On the Ideological Sphere. This paper spells out what good Chinese Communists and the public should believe and be taught. Among other things it asserts that there is no such thing as human rights, freedom of speech, and rule of law. In other words, the Party is dedicated to the eradication of the most fundamental elements of democracy and of America.

Nor is that the last declaration of war by China. The CCP has long operated the economy on the basis of five year plans. In 2015, the new five year plan included the objective of: Made in China 2025. It listed a range of hi technology items with a target for making them in China by the year 2025. Semiconductors were high on the list, and as an advisor at the time to Intel, I can say that China exerted enormous pressure on that company and many others to move their production of semiconductor chips to China. Both carrots and sticks were demonstrated to hurry the process along. The carrots were subsidies such as free land, utilities at half price, and even capital grants. The sticks were potential, and unannounced inspections and materials shortages. At the same time, the Chinese government began pouring billions of dollars of subsidies into domestic semiconductor companies to speed along their efforts to copy and imitate U.S. , Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean chip makers. Needless to explain that China pursued an intense “make it in China if at all possible” policy with all suppliers.

Finally, as the last declaration of war, the Chinese government since 2012, and particularly in the last several years has been pursuing a policy known as CMF -Civilian-Military Fusion. In other words, producers of civilian use products must also consider and develop possible military uses and be prepared to switch quickly from production for civilian use to production for military use.

Friedman argues that the present multinational structure of the semiconductor industry is due to its worldwide relevance and to its complexity that demands inputs from a wide variety of international sources. There may be some truth to this argument, but it is important to note that the industries that have emerged in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China have been the children of the heavily government subsidized industrial policies of those countries. Had the United States pursued similar industrial policies, the U.S. semiconductor industry today would be much larger and more comprehensive and those of the other countries mentioned much smaller and less important. In other words, the diversity one sees in the industry today is to a very large extent that result of a combination of extensive industrial policies on the part of Asian countries and the lack of such in the United States.

As for the potential loss of “win-win” collaboration between the U.S. and China on climate change and cybercrime, we must be honest with ourselves. Sure, such collaboration would be nice if we could get it. But it is far from a necessity. On cybercrime, China seems to be one of the major culprits. Much of it could be stopped unilaterally if China wanted it stopped. Collaboration with the U.S. would not change that reality. As far as climate change is concerned, again, China must do most of what needs to be done unilaterally. If the U.S. were completely emissions free tomorrow, the date by which we would all fry or drown would almost not change until China got its emissions under control. The world’s future climate depends a great deal more on what China does than on what the U.S. does. Collaboration is not a cure all.

Of course, it is not desirable to fight Russia and China at the same time. But that does not mean that you don’t fight back if they both attack at the same time.