Interviews with leading thinkers on China
Dr. Dan Wang is China director for Eurasia Group, specializing in China’s economy, industrial policy, and geopolitics. She previously served as the chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China based in Shanghai, responsible for macroeconomic forecasting and capital market analysis.
US ties to China’s biotechnology industry are under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill these days. During last year’s FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Congress passed a provision to potentially prohibit the Department of Defense from entering into contracts with certain Chinese biotech firms.
Last November, the State Council issued plans for both the Beijing and Shanghai Free Trade Zones (FTZ), stating further commitments in liberalizing service sectors for foreign investment and facilitating trade. In the plans, Beijing and Shanghai respectively issued policy frameworks to give foreign investors more access in healthcare, finance, and telecommunication services, among others.
Last weekend, Chair of the Select Committee on the CCP Mike Gallagher (R-WI) announced that he is not running for reelection. His retirement from Congress surprised many, as the young congressman was considered a rising star, particularly on foreign policy.
On Monday and Tuesday, a delegation from the US Treasury Department, led by Under Secretary for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh, traveled to Beijing for the third meeting of the two countries’ recently established Economic Working Group. It was the working group’s first meeting in 2024 and its first in-person meeting in China.
Aligning with the 24 Measures, a policy directive from the State Council aimed at attracting foreign investment, China’s intellectual property (IP) agencies have undertaken multiple measures aimed at addressing the concerns of foreign IP rights holders.
US and Chinese officials are meeting more frequently than in recent years, thanks in large part to the over a dozen working groups and dialogues established or restarted amid a thaw in bilateral relations that began in 2023. These mechanisms were established to address global and bilateral issues relating to economics and trade, military-to-military communications, climate change, counternarcotics, and more.
US-China technology competition is expected to continue unabated in 2024. In high tech, both governments continue to de-risk their economies from the other’s through industrial policy and export controls, which have spilled over into previously uncontrolled sectors, such as cloud computing.
Last Friday through Saturday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to broker details on several areas of US-China cooperation agreed upon by President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping late last year. Sullivan and Wang discussed recent efforts, such as officially resuming military-to-military dialogue between the United States and China earlier this month, and plans for the future, including the possibility of hosting a US-China dialogue focused on AI.
The House Select Committee on the CCP is pushing for tougher enforcement of the US ban on imports from China’s Xinjiang province. Committee leadership has called for expanding screening measures, adding more Chinese firms to a forced labor blacklist, and lowering the de minimis threshold.
China’s 2023 GDP growth was above 5 percent, surpassing the official target. Given that China’s economic performance in 2022 was lackluster, China will require much stronger economic activity to maintain a similar growth rate. Policymakers continue to opt for limited fiscal stimulus and are instead looking to attract foreign investment to catalyze growth for the time being.
