While much of the attention in the arena of world affairs has been focused on Russia in recent years, a much bigger threat is emerging from China. The U.S. National Intelligence Council is warning about the Chinese using individuals and companies in America to "facilitate the legal and illicit transfer of U.S. technology, intellectual property and know-how" to China. The White House echoed these concerns and outlined others in a new report titled "How China's Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World."
Chinese efforts to catch and surpass the U.S. in technology, intelligence and industry are nothing new, but are getting new attention under the Trump Administration. "China has been developing the technology in order to compete with the U.S. for years, and some of that has been through either outright theft of intellectual property, but also in-house development," says Matthew Bey, senior global analyst forStratfor. "The United States is worried that China's rise in technology is now going to threaten all of the different industries where the U.S. has had its own competitive advantage built up since the 1960s."
Bey tells KTRH that China's economic threat to the U.S. has gotten much worse since China joined the World Trade Organization, a move that many U.S. companies supported. "The business community liked the opportunity of being able to export to the Chinese market, as something that was beneficial to U.S. industries," he says. "Now we're starting to see that become a threat."
As for what the U.S. plans to do about the threat, President Trump has already ramped up tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to balance out the massive trade deficit between the nations. And Bey believes more action is on the way. "We are expecting the Trump Administration to unveil a new investment policy, and potentially even export controls on Chinese technology or Chinese tech investments in the future," he says. "That's going to be the next round of tension between the U.S. and China."