USA-China: a story that can explain the future

The Asian giant has always played the same way since its economic opening in the late 1970s: responding to the world with what it has best and, at the same time, be consistent with its purpose. No one can deny that, at the commercial level, he has been the world's largest supplier of goods in recent decades. Also the biggest buyer. In the meantime, he has done nothing different from what has been done by the rest of the great powers who aspired to dominate the planet in modern history: his politics may be reflected in British mbad production during the industrial revolutions, the German innovation that allowed military supremacy to go through the "great wars", the race to the Soviet space, or the American-style technological globalization of the second half of the twentieth century . China has a bit of all this seen in patents, developments in telecommunications, strengthening of its military apparatus or satellite advance. With a powerful exogenous projection, complemented by an endogenous logic in the service of the country.

That's why the resonant words of Donald Trump punishing Chinese companies does not make a difference in the Asian giant. Exploiting vulnerabilities, committing malicious acts or developing a sophisticated spy system is part of a rhetoric that will not work. By "the bad", China will not change its state policy. But the president of the United States has its rationality: for good has not been able to chart the path of China's political, economic and military growth. Examples remain in the current century: requests by George Bush Jr. to stop dumping policies, Barack Obama's demands to revalue the yuan, or the same pressure from Trump to end subsidies to conglomerates "National champions" of companies by the government. Nothing worked. Only marginal incremental changes that have not stopped Chinese aspirations.

In addition, for China, get rid of the $ 1,118 billion of US Treasury bonds at any time, strengthen the bureaucratic control measures of trade flows or play with the exchange rate as it pleases are only accessory tools use. , only in case of absolute necessity, to weigh an adverse financial situation caused by the American adversary. Nothing more than that. In this context, and as the United States seeks to maintain its pre-eminence under the constant pressure of the international economic situation, China has entered a growth trajectory that will not end until it succeeds in becoming the world's superpower. dominant who can equip himself with all the necessary resources his population possesses a dignified quality of life. Or at least it's the party's discourse to travel with the "new man" on the path to full communism.

At the moment, the pragmatism that prevails in Beijing aims to achieve the technological self-sufficiency of 70% of key components and materials by 2025. It therefore does not reject the "iron curtain of technology": by example, BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi), taking advantage of the ban on all social networks and foreign search engines, replaces in China the GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon). And in turn, the Asian giant tries to seduce the participating countries of the New Silk Road to convince them to use their technology. In this sense, the case of Huawei It is emblematic: with its 5G intercontinental network, they plan to create more than eight million jobs in China by 2030. What better than an anti-American speech better than to present the arrests? Western Chinese telecommunications giant as a barrier to the right to "grow and prosper".

In addition, Trump ignores a win-win scenario, in which he knows that Huawei spends one-third of its $ 11-million annual budget on the purchase of US components. The reality is that the pillars of the American dilemma focus on Huawei's 4024 patent applications filed internationally over the last year, making it the most innovative company in the world. In the shadow, what really worries him is his "necessary cooperation" – legally imposed on all Chinese companies since 2017 – with the country's intelligence services. It is not for nothing that the Washington hawks have already demanded, for this reason or for other reasons, that China have the opportunity to change its legislation. To a utopian proposition, a dystopian response from the Chinese government: they will not accept in any way an interference in the internal affairs or in the policy of the State dictated by Beijing.

That is why the US government has an interest in continuing to take advantage, with great care and regulation, of the benefits of globalization's commercial and financial trade in the format they created decades ago. . . For inter-state injustices, both left and right, there is always a dialogue, a consensus on pricing, financing, improving productivity, the ability to export to large scale, etc.

However, parallel to and parallel to China, the United States must continue to develop and strengthen itself – with a speed equal to or greater than that of its adversaries – in the civil and military technological career; simply so that when the shortage of resources or a serious geopolitical dilemma becomes unmanageable, I find them sufficiently prepared to face a possible thaw of this new "cold war". Because the Chinese position is and will be clear, and can be summed up in one sentence: "Negotiate, of course, fight, at any time, intimidate yourself, even in dreams".

By Pablo Kornblum, economist and doctor of international relations. Author of the book "The Anesthetized Society: The World Economic System in the Public Eye".