Under the shadow of the Sino-U.S. trade war, the Chinese Communist Party has convened its annual “Two Sessions” meeting in Beijing.
Over the course of two weeks, the regime’s rubber-stamp legislature approves legislation and sets agendas pre-determined by the Party leadership. For the Party, the overall state of the Chinese economy—and the impact of the trade war—are the main subjects of concern.
The Epoch Times interviewed Cheng Xiaonong, a scholar of Chinese politics and economy in New Jersey who is also a visiting scholar at Princeton University, for his take on what signals the Chinese regime has given thus far at the Two Sessions, and how the trade talks will fare in the future.
The Epoch Times: On March 4, at a press conference for the National People’s Congress [NPC, the name of the regime’s rubber-stamp legislature], NPC spokesman Zhang Yesui responded to a question about the trade war, saying that the interests of China and the United States are deeply intertwined, and a confrontational relationship is not in the interest of either party. What do you think his words imply?
Cheng Xiaonong: I think that through the trade war, China has come to understand two things: one, that these types of tricks are not in a normal country’s path of development: bribing American scientists and technicians, plundering the technical staff of American companies, or attracting Taiwanese talent to work in China, etc.—using these types of methods to steal American technology. Or, they steal American professors, ethnic Chinese professors, through transferring the fruits of research from the United States to China.
The Chinese should understand that the game of theft and trickery is an evil path and that they ought to return to the righteous path. What is the righteous path? It is enterprises’ independent research and development of technology. Speaking of this, a normal human should also have this bottom line, not to steal. In actuality, the pressure from the United States is helping China to create an institutional environment that respects intellectual property rights and strengthens enterprises’ independent research and development.
To China, taking the righteous path would be a win. In the present Sino-U.S. trade war, the hand of the United States is to force China to take a righteous path. The United States is not trying to topple China. It hopes that China can develop its own economy, but it cannot rely on stealing and robbing.
The other point is, in the future China must develop peacefully, and should not rely on military strength to develop. Military struggle cannot bring about development. It can only lead to war. In the era of nuclear war and nuclear weapons, the ultimate result of provoking and pursuing war is extinction; then there is no development to speak of. Since we speak of peaceful development, China should not, and cannot think all day about how to deal with the United States, how to surpass the United States, and eventually how to suppress the United States. These ideas are actually all narrow-minded.
