.
. Now it's
, because the West has built its strong system in China and to simply cut it off, it will hurt deeply. That's why
Ai Weiwei has never minced his words about China. "It is a police state," he says.
First, the U.S. is — rightly — no longer willing to accept
China’s unfair trade restrictions on importing of U.S. goods and its
stealing of the intellectual property of U.S. firms — something the U.S. tolerated for many years before China became a technology powerhouse.
And second, now that China is a technology powerhouse — and technological products all have both economic and military applications, unlike the toys, T-shirts and tennis shoes that used to dominate China-U.S. trade — the two sides are struggling to figure out what to buy and sell from and to each other, without damaging their national security. The ripping sound you hear is the sound of
two giant economies starting to decouple ⇒ possibility that the integration of global innovation ecosystems will
collapse as a result of mutual efforts by the United States and China to exclude one another.
And now that tear is moving to people. Since June 11, the State Department has been restricting visas for Chinese graduate students studying in sensitive fields — like aviation, robotics and advanced manufacturing — to one year, instead of five years. There has also been a crackdown on Chinese investments in anything close to American infrastructure or military-related industries.
Many of those who do go abroad now prefer Canada and Australia over America. The U.S. will pay a price for that over time.
This decoupling is not all Idiot-in-Chief’s fault — not by a long shot. China’s president, Xi Jinping, also overplayed his hand, taking over islands in the South China Sea, announcing plans to invest massive amounts so China can dominate critical technologies of the 21st century, and worse, tightening Communist Party rule over Hong Kong and horrendously sending Muslims in Western China to “re-education” camps. He’s also resisting pressures to reduce China’s most abusive trade practices.
The country benefited tremendously from the globalization system that the U.S. and its allies built since World War II, but Beijing has often been grudging about making any sacrifices to maintain it.
