If the bill ultimately passes both houses of Congress, it will represent a major shift in how the United States government manages its relations with the tech sector.
The new U.S. administration has been reviewing its China policy since President Joe Biden took office. And now the review enters its second half.
In the two-month first half of the review, the administration set the tone for long-term strategic competition with China, established the principle of beginning at home and setting the goal of rebuilding the middle class. It stressed that strategic competition with China must be bounded and managed to avoid disaster.
Such a framework for long-term strategic competition bears resemblances and differences to Trump’s savage competition. The difference lies in Biden’s emphasis on reinvigorating institutional confidence and innovative strengths by managing America’s own affairs rather than trying to crush its rivals. The two administrations are similar in the fact that when talking about domestic and foreign affairs, they always refer to the China challenge as the overall driving force for U.S. policy changes at home and abroad.
Wu ZurongResearch Fellow, China Foundation for Int l Studies
Competition between the United States and China has become a hot topic since President Joe Biden took office. Unfortunately, competition in its true sense is not what’s going on. What the U.S. has done in the past four months is a disguise put up by the Biden administration to contain China’s rise. Signs of dangerous consequences have been emerging behind the so-called competition.
First, competition is a political and diplomatic slogan of the Biden administration to hold China down in a wide range of areas. According to Biden’s address to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s 2021 graduating class on May 19, the purpose of competition with China is so the U.S. can “game the system” or tip the rules in its favor.