Why technology is a double-edged sword for US-China ties

 

The US has sent mixed messages to China. While the tech firms want in, the government is talking sanctions. But with President Xi Jinping visiting, they may have to accept collaboration as a conduit to peace.
Confusion. That's a key word when it comes to US-China relations on cyber issues. 

"There is too much confusion over different aspects of the cybersphere - too much confusion in the media and frankly, I think, occasionally in the minds of the policy makers," says Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's John L. Thornton China Center. 

But it stands to reason: seeing Chinese president Xi Jinping (pictured above) hobnob with American tech luminaries in Seattle while at the same time the White House considers sanctions on China for "government-enabled cyber theft of proprietary information" is indeed confusing.
You may in fact wonder, as I have, whether the US government is out of step with the American tech industry. 

Kenneth Lieberthal says an emphatic "no."
"Do the tech companies want the US government to push back on Chinese demands for source codeand that kind of thing? Of course they do. They're not out of step on that," says Lieberthal. "But the companies themselves will make their own decisions as to what they participate in in China and what the conditions are." 

Those conditions are often difficult. Lieberthal says there is "no doubt" the Chinese government wants to make the conditions for US internet companies operating in China "onerous."
"The flipside," he says, is that "China is a huge commercial opportunity." 

E-commerce boomChina has the largest e-commerce market in the world, says Charles Ng, an associate director-general who oversees innovation technology at InvestHK. The country boasts "over 550 million buyers and users," he says.
Small wonder, then, that China should want to flaunt its market.

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