WASHINGTON – With relations between the world’s two largest economies strained in recent weeks, an Idaho senator is looking to outline a clearer U.S. strategy toward China.
In an interview with The Spokesman-Review, Idaho lawmaker Jim Risch defined his vision of citations and why he believes the 3 most sensible priorities of U.S. foreign policy are “China, China, and China.”
Relations between the two countries hit a new low after the Trump administration ordered China’s consulate in Houston closed July 21, accusing diplomats working there of stealing trade secrets from American companies and universities.
U.S. officials say the alleged activity is a component of a broad style of economic espionage in Beijing, adding that two Chinese citizens were charged on July 22 in eastern Washington for hacking the Hanford nuclear and corporations that are preparing coronavirus tests and vaccines.
Risch said the theft of high-value assets in the United States, which values the U.S. economy between $225 billion and $600 billion a year, according to a 2017 report, has helped China become the world’s fastest development economy. A Chinese government-controlled company has stolen approximately $9 billion in secrets from the Boise-based semiconductor manufacturer Micron Technology industry, according to a 2018 indictment.
“It’s been centuries in decades,” he said, “and this is largely due to the fact that they have stolen all the smart concepts we have, our government and our freedoms. And because they have evolved so rapidly, they have not felt the consequences of the rule of law and foreign norms that we, the United States and other evolved countries, have lived for decades, if not centuries.”
President Donald Trump and his allies have also escalated their criticism of China recently, an apparent campaign strategy with the election less than 100 days away. Trump has taken to pointedly calling COVID-19 “the China virus,” and in a speech July 23, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on U.S. allies to force change in the Chinese government, framing the U.S.-China relationship as a divide “between freedom and tyranny.”
“We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, will have to motivate China to change,” Pompeo said, “in a more artistic and assertive way, because Beijing’s movements threaten our other people and our prosperity.”
The Chinese government retaliated for the closure of its facility in Houston, the first consulate opened after the normalization of relations between the countries in 1979, ordering the closure of the U.S. consulate. In Chengdu City. This strategically vital diplomatic post is guilty of tracking the western provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang, two widely documented sites of human rights violations.
In a July 30 editorial in Politico, China’s most sensible diplomat in the United States called on the two countries to repair relations. Ambassador Cui Tiankai called the US resolution to close the Chinese consulate in Houston as “one of a series of measures aimed at demonizing China and intensifying ideological confrontation.”
“Obviously it’s probably the most tense it’s been since 1979, when diplomatic relations were established,” said J. Norwell Coquillard, executive director of the Washington State China Relations Council. “The parties aren’t talking to each other directly, they’re talking over each other.”
Robert Hamilton, Gov. Jay Inslee’s international trade adviser, said the situation is even more worrying than pre-1979, because now “we have more connections that will be disrupted, whether it’s students or tourists or investment or trade.”
Risch said economic relations with China, the world’s largest exporter of goods for more than a decade, are vital to the Northwest. The industry war between the two countries that began when Trump imposed Chinese price lists in 2018 has hurt some American farmers, China agreed to buy more Washington and Idaho potatoes as a component of an industry deal reached this year.
“Other people in Idaho and Washington are as affected by foreign policy issues as other people in California, New York, Texas or elsewhere,” Risch said. “Farmers in Idaho and Washington are well aware that what is abroad is affecting them and their prices.”
Idaho exported goods worth $417 million to China in 2018, or only about 10% of the state’s total exports that year, according to the Idaho Department of Commerce. A 2018 investigation through credit score firm Fitch found that Idaho’s economy is more likely than any other state that is harmed by the ongoing industrial war.
Washington is the state that is most trade-dependent in the country, Coquillard said, with about 40% of foreign trade-like jobs, and China is the state’s most sensitive export destination. The Chinese market is not only vital for products such as cherries, wheat and Boeing aircraft, but products from other states are also exported to Washington.
But amid the preferential price lists of the industry war, exports from Washington to China halved between 2017 and 2019, Hamilton said. Chinese foreign direct investment in the United States increased from $46.5 billion in 2016 to $4.8 billion in 2019, according to the knowledge of economics firm Rhodium Group.
Robert Manning, a senior investigator at the Atlantic Council, a group of experts in Washington, said he gave Trump credit for asking China to stay within the rules, but the administration has had a coherent strategy to deal with China.
“I think a pretty strong bipartisan feeling that many of the previous assumptions that guided our Chinese policy have turned out to be false,” said Manning, who worked in foreign policy under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “I compare it to the level of mourning of the moment. We’ve been in denial for a while and now we’re blindly angry.”
“The challenge is that it’s an attitude, not a policy,” Manning said. “Sooner or later, we’ll have to evolve beyond anger and outrage and find some kind of competitive coexistence with the Chinese.”
The Risch Bill, which he co-wrote with the GOP Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Todd Young of Indiana, seeks to do just that by proposing a policy of “managed strategic competence” with China. The 160-page volume includes provisions to combat the theft of high-value assets and the reinforcement of China’s military, make the U.S. generation sector more competitive, and repair fray ties with foreign allies and organizations.
This new package puts senators at odds with the White House. Under Trump, the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, an industrial agreement proposed through the Obama administration to counter Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
“The irony for me is that we continue to withdraw from foreign institutions, create a void, and then complain about Chinese influence,” Manning said. “It’s like a Marx Brothers movie.” When asked about the resolution to withdraw from the TPP, Risch was a diplomat, he was one of 26 Republican senators to point out a letter encouraging Trump to reconsider the resolution in 2018.
“Certainly, the president has very unique perspectives on trade,” he said with a smile. “The president prefers bilateral agreements to multilateral agreements. Now you may agree or disagree with that, but the basis is the same, and we want relationships.”
Risch pressed that having a coherent policy toward China is not a partisan factor and said the bill was drafted with input from the committee’s Democrats. But a spokesman for the committee’s most sensible Democrat, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, said his party was drafting its own legislation, though he refused to detail how expenses differ.
“The member of Menendez’s rating does not believe that Trump’s management has a genuine festival strategy with China,” spokesman Juan Pachon said in a statement. “Therefore, it has created the legal basis for a comprehensive technique of a new American-Chinese policy focused on our allies, our values, and the restoration of the resources of our national strength and competitiveness here at home. This is a technique that is simply not included in any proposal to date, and we look forward to presenting it in the coming weeks ».
Coquillard said China’s economy is about to be the largest in the world and its population of 1.4 billion surpasses the United States, and that the United States will have to paint with its allies to build a more viable appointment with China.
“You must have a unified technique for China,” he said. “They want a little retrospective in some areas, and getting there won’t succeed. The systems are different, the way we see the global is different, but we have to coexist.”
Risch said he imagined a long-term in which China would stay at the helm of the United States and its allies, and where there is much at stake.
“The quote we hope to have would be with an evolved country that acts like other evolved countries,” he said. “In other words, they adopt and respect the rule of law and foreign standards. It’s a very successful style for the rest of the world, and if you need to sign up for the foreign scene, you have to. If we don’t make them settle for these things, it will be a very long 21st century for us and for all other evolved countries.”