By: Jianli Yang & Lianchao Han
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping finally held their much-anticipated virtual summit on Monday. After the meeting, intended to normalize relations and establish guardrails for contest, competition, and cooperation between the two world powers, U.S.-China trade talks are likely to resume shortly. In her recent speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai laid out a new trajectory for the Biden administration’s trade policy.
Tai correctly pointed out that China’s state-centered, nonmarket trade practices were not addressed in the Phase One agreement, a trade deal signed by the Trump administration with China in January 2020, and stated that she intends to raise these broader policy concerns with Beijing. She vowed to use “the full range of tools we have … to defend American economic interests from harmful policies and practices.”
But there’s one key unfair practice that stands out and that the Phase One deal didn’t address: China’s internet market. The opening up of China’s internet should be a core component of the Biden administration’s new approach to its trade relationship with China. At present, China’s internet market combines bad trade practices, the harming of U.S. interests, and human rights violations. The United States has some leverage to… [Continue Reading]
Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/16/us-china-trade-talks-opening-china-internet-great-firewall/