The US-China Confrontation and the New World Order: The False Technological War
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Abstract
Since 2017, the government of the United States of America (US) has undertaken a series of actions against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, together, can enter on the definition of a technological war. They drastically restricted technology transfer, vetoing Chinese companies’ operations in the US, while the government requires USA companies to make commitments aimed to limit their business in the PRC.
Most of the media, as well as many analysts and observers, have proposed various elaborations to “explain” this conflict and the supposed inevitability of the US government's response (Boustany and Friedberg, 2019; Lim, 2019; Kennedy and Lim, 2018). However, it is also recognized that there are several anomalies in this semi-official scenario. On one hand, it is assumed, in accordance with historical experience, that trade and technological wars serve as vehicles to win markets and, therefore, profits for a rival power, but in this case the so-called Corporate America has mostly manifested its skepticism and frank disagreement with the actions of its government (see Mitchell, 2020). This suggests that, for USA corporations, especially those more globalized, China is not a rival, but a trading partner, so that, at least from the point of view of their immediate interests, the conflict seems strange to them.
On the other hand, China has not developed its techno-productive capacities in a similar way as Japan did, which translated its advances into technological learning and autonomous innovation as a means of winning markets to the USA, like we will see. Instead of that, the PRC, both out of necessity, but also out of strategy, adopted a model of collaboration and codependency. This codependency has linked Chinese companies economically with USA corporations and other powers. So that, technological rivalry is not the logical corollary of that relationship.
According to our hypothesis, the USA government has started the confrontation with China because it considers that the growing influence that the Asian country exercises in the world is contrary to its hegemonic interests. Following this strategy, the USA government runs into resistance of its own capitalists and, at the same time, it is capability as global order provider deteriorate. China's influence is not only economic, but also political and cultural, representing an alternative to the neoliberal and individualist doctrine that still prevails in the West. The present global production stagnation, together with the harsh social condition in developed countries, are seen by USA strategists as weaknesses that play in PRC hands; for that reason, they radicalize its action against China.
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