US, don't be doubtful of everything: commentary

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, October 12, 2003

US, don't be doubtful of everything: commentary

This year, the United States has tried for all it is worth regarding China's semiconductor industry. The United States claimed that China's import of semiconductor technology was intended to raise its military strength, which would be detrimental to US "security".

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This year, the United States has tried for all it is worth regarding China's semiconductor industry. In March it imposed a 17 percent discriminatory surtax on Chinese semiconductor products by slandering that the Chinese government violated WTO rules. At the end of September, Under Secretary of the US Department of Commerce Kenneth I. Juster, who is in charge of the Bureau of Industry and Security, tried at a meeting to dissuade Taiwan entrepreneurs from investing in the Chinese mainland's semiconductor and other hi-tech sectors. The United States claimed that China's import of semiconductor technology was intended to raise its military strength, which would be detrimental to US "security".

The US conducts are associated with its psyche of suspecting everything. In recent years, America has made enemies everywhere, and invariably suspected that other countries are against it. The United States maintains that it must hold absolute military superiority. So, on the one hand, it spends tens of billions of US dollars on developing advanced weapons, on the other hand, another country, which brings in a new item of science and technology, is regarded as a show of the latter's "military ambition" and is therefore even subjected to sanctions. The Pentagon and CIA have been keeping a close eye on products exported to China, and a deal may be stopped as long as one US official guesses that the product would possibly be used to develop weapons. Take the so-called semiconductor issue of China for example. The US side has no evidence, and admits that semiconductor products cannot be directly applied in weapons, since it's very difficult to turn civilian use into military use, and to do so it often requires to make thousands of changes. In spite of that, it still arbitrarily prohibits the export of high-performance semiconductors to China.

After the "September 11" incident in 2001, on many issues concerning national security, subjective supposition has become the basis for the US government to formulate policies, which still holds fast to the outdated Cold War mentality. The nation has in recent years formed a habit of questioning everything to see whether it can be put to "military use". The United States invariably thinks that other countries, like itself, put military priority above all else and make every opportunity to develop new weapons. It doesn't care to think that today as things are undergoing rapid change in social development, since most countries are too busy with economic construction, how can they have spare energy to engage in arms race?

The so-called worry about security is but an excuse, the fact is some Americans do not wish to see China's development. The report published by the statistics bureau under the US Congress in 2002 asserted that 15 years ago China was five generations behind the United States in the research and development of semiconductor, but the gap was narrowed down to one generation at the end of 2002, even smaller in certain fields. After listing a few reasons, including that China would use imported semiconductor technology to upgrade its weapons, the author of the report bashfully spoke out his biggest worry-after China develops its semiconductor industry with external aid, then it will no longer need to take its cue from the United States which will, in turn, be unable to put pressure on China through export control, by then where will be the power and prestige of the United States? It can thus be seen that certain Americans, to the marrow of their bones,, hope that China will permanently remain their raw material base and processing plant. Of course, these cannot be said openly, so they put on China the label of being "detrimental to security".

The tight technology export control applied by the United States on China is not in the fundamental interests of Washington. High technologies are not held only by the United States, but also by Europe, Japan and other countries, and are even ahead of the United States in some aspects. As an American telephone company manager, who has been engaged in trade with China for many years, puts it: three or four decades ago, most technologies were monopolized by the United States, no one dared say yes when the United States said no. But now things have changed. Today China can import hi-tech products from other countries, if not from the United States. In 1996 some developed countries signed the Wassenaar Arrangement under which they jointly promised not to provide advanced technologies to "enemies" and forces that might constitute a threat to them. Thereafter, they took common actions in certain fields. But now only the United States still links China's acquisition of semiconductor technology with threats to regional security and continues its unreasonably strict export control. Since other countries have come to realize that China is not a threat, and that its significant progress made in semiconductor technology over recent years has reached the advanced world level, so exporting semiconductors to China is only common trade. Under such circumstances, it is American enterprises that suffer most from the US severe export control policy.

For many years, US deficits of trade with China remain one of the main questions that affect Sino-US relations. However, the US government has indulged in complaining and played petty tricks against China, instead of finding the real cause from itself, it fails to examine its own action of forbidding export and not allowing external sales, how, then, can deficits be reduced? China-US economic and trade relationship is strongly complementary, but you keep this secret and cherish that as treasure, then how can complementarity be possible?

A batch of American companies like Motorola, which have huge business in China, have taken actions by forming groups to lobby outside the State Department, trying to affect policy-makers. As a result, Relevant US policies have been loosened a bit, but this is far from enough. US entrepreneurs still need to apply more cooling ointment to their politicians, so as to drag them from the visionary world full of imagined enemies and threats back to reality, to make them more practical in doing things and looking farther ahead. Only in this way can the economic exchanges between the two countries undergo sounder development.

(This article, written by Cai Yumin, was published on page 3 of Global Times, October 8, and translated by PD Online staff member Li Heng.)

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