Consider This from NPR - Is China A Threat Or An Opportunity?

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

In many parts of the U.S., China remains a huge business opportunity despite recent friction. That's the country where Apple makes its phones and Nike stitches its shoes. Yet inside the Washington Beltway, China is a security threat. Full stop. It's one of the few things Democrats, Republicans and most everyone else in the capital agree on. NPR correspondents Greg Myre and John Ruwitch report on this gap between how China is viewed in Washington policy circles and how many outside the proverbial beltway think about the country. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Tiffany Williams runs this luggage store in Lubbock, Texas. We are celebrating our 70th year of being Lubbock's source for all things travel. My grandfather started the store in 1951. And like many businesses in the U.S., Williams relies on products shipped in from China. I mean, it's just crazy to think to when all of it started back in 2018, I guess. So back in 2018, when then President Trump announced new tariffs on billions of dollars

of Chinese goods, stores like Williams took a hit. It just makes it a little harder to sell that really great bag that, you know, maybe had a price point of $400 back in 2018. And that bag is probably now, gosh, $550, pushing $600. And it's the same bag, you know. Now, William says when you take into account the tariffs, duties, and shipping costs, there's no other option than to charge more. We'd like for that product to be at a price the consumer is comfortable paying. And then, you know, we'd love to see some tariff relief in our industry just because there is no luggage made in the United States. But tariff relief doesn't appear to be coming. We have to raise with China our continuing and intensifying concerns about the impacts of China's very muscular industrial policies on economies like ours. Catherine Tai

is a United States trade representative, and she told NPR last week that this growing concern about China's influence, it means those Trump era tariffs are staying in place for now. This is where we are starting in terms of our next steps with China is to start from where we are. I find it fascinating out of all of the things from the previous administration that, you know, that sadly tariffs are the one thing we need to stick with. The Biden administration has signaled that some businesses can eventually qualify for exemptions from these tariffs. But those details are still murky. And in the meantime, for business owners like Williams, they're one more obstacle while trying to stay afloat. It's like we start

pulling ourselves back up and then, you know, COVID hits us and then we start pulling ourselves back up and the supply chain hits us. So we just kind of keep getting punched down. I don't think we're going to be out for the count, but it sure is getting a lot harder to get back up with each punch that comes. Consider this. The U.S. isn't done sending a message to China, but that message continues to come at the expense of American companies. And this much is clear, no matter the risk, we can't afford to stop doing business altogether. From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Tuesday, October 12th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. When it comes to the U.S. relationship with China, there's this ever-present tension. In many sectors, China presents huge business opportunities. It's where Apple makes its phone, Nike stitches its shoes, U.S. farmers sell soybeans to China, and Wall Street invests billions. But the view from Washington, D.C., is virtually unanimous. An adversarial, predatory Chinese leadership poses our biggest geopolitical test. If confirmed... China is a challenge to our security, to our prosperity, to our values across a range of

issues, and I do support an aggressive stance, in a sense. Much of what we're investing in in terms of capability is really focused on our efforts to counter the challenge presented by China. And I would also say that when you speak... That's CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. And when President Biden speaks about China, he emphasizes a competitive relationship, the race to stay ahead with military power, technology, and political influence. But as NPR correspondents John Ruich and Greg Myrie report, it's often a very different view outside of Washington. We start with John. In the small southwestern Alabama town of

Thomasville, the China threat has been more of a China opportunity. Sheldon Day is the town's mayor. I think you do have to compartmentalize. I think that's something that I've learned over the years, that even if you disagree with someone, if you walk away from the table, you're defeating any potential resolution. For years, Day watched Thomasville cycle through economic ups and downs. The town of around 4,000 residents relied, for the most part, on a single industry, timber. Unfortunately, over the years, in rural areas, without good job growth, et cetera, the number one export has been our children. He wanted that to stop. So to jumpstart the economy and create jobs,

he looked outside the United States. A few years ago, Thomasville beat out dozens of other cities to woo an investment by Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group. It's a Chinese company that makes metal tubes that go into air conditioners and other machines. In 2014, Golden Dragon built a $120 million plant in Wilcox County next to Thomasville. There was, even at that time, some stigma associated with recruitment and or

inviting a Chinese industry to come to your community. But that didn't bother Day. He went out of his way to make Golden Dragon feel welcome. We said, look, let's make them honorary citizens of Alabama. So we had these real nice proclamations done by the state Senate. The Chinese executives ate it up. There have been cultural differences over the years, but Dace's golden dragon has made good on all its promises. And the company has continued to invest in the community, creating hundreds of jobs. I'm definitely somebody who tries to bring people together, who tries to look for ways to do business rather than ways not to. I do think that we would be, the whole world would be a better place if we sit and talk to each other more and do business with each other,

break bread with each other. So, a Chinese company making air conditioning parts in rural Alabama may not set off alarm bells in the national security community. But many are troubled when it comes to high tech. Think 5G wireless, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. My job is to introduce the gray between the black and the white. Gilman Louie has a foot in two distinct camps, the Silicon Valley tech scene and the national security establishment. Louie, an American of Chinese ancestry, runs a big venture capital firm in San Francisco. He made a fortune in video games. He brought the iconic game Tetris to the U.S. in the 1980s.

China's a huge market for him. Yet he's also deeply involved in national security and often visits Washington. He was the first head of In-Q-Tel, the innovation arm of the U.S. intelligence community. Louie plays devil's advocate on both coasts. In Washington, he tells national security types they can't just see China as a threat. He cites Chinese students researching cutting-edge technology at U.S. universities. I think Washington needs more tools. If you had better analytics, if you had better tools and identified those as individuals, rather than just having broad strokes.

If you were born in China, you're a national security threat. If you're ethnically Chinese, you're a national security threat. But when he's in Silicon Valley, Gilman Louie warns entrepreneurs about how China may be using their technology. You guys got to open up your eyes. You have to understand where your technology is ending up. I mean, if your technology is ending up in things like facial recognition that will allow an authoritarian regime to pick off ethnic minorities. Do you really want, even as a brand, to be associated with that? Louis sees a complicated balancing act, but thinks the U.S. can protect its most advanced technology and still do business with China.

Let's not use a sledgehammer to solve all of our problems, right? Let's be very careful in what we recommend, what we choose to look at, and make sure that we are still providing the level of protection that our companies and our economy and military actually needs. In other parts of the country where the conversation is less about high-tech competition, they're all for a cooperative approach to China. I think a great part of the Midwest would be very happy to, you know, business trade-wise, get back to the way things were. Kenneth Quinn is a former U.S. ambassador now working with the Missouri-based United States Heartland China Association. The group's trying to build bridges between Middle America and China,

promoting cooperation in agriculture, education, and culture. Okay, there's, you know, issues of human rights. There's issues of, you know, military presence in the South China Sea. But let's treat those separately in a different channel. We'll give them all the importance they deserve. But let's over here, get together. The U.S. Heartland China Association represents 20 states from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, farm states. Earlier this year, it held a four-part roundtable with business leaders in agriculture. Quinn says there was a lot of enthusiasm and ag is a bright spot in the relationship, something to build on. We bring people together to demonstrate that there's a lot of interest in doing this and that agriculture is kind of a safer place in which to take these steps. Meanwhile, the Biden White House is so far keeping many of the hardline policies of former President Donald Trump.

The administration is maintaining trade sanctions, flexing U.S. military muscle in the Pacific, and is critical of Beijing's human rights abuses. But economic decoupling between the U.S. and China will be very difficult. Elizabeth Loris is a professor and the author of Politics and Society in Contemporary China. You can't just, you're going to pick up your factory and move all your resources and have a consistent, reliable energy source and a shipping port, you know, to get your stuff out at a decent price. And the logistics, China has nailed that down. And China's leader, Xi Jinping, uses this as leverage. One of the goals of the Xi Jinping regime is to make the world really reliant on China for its supply chain, but not to have China reliant on the rest of the world.

So that makes it difficult for the businesses. The problem is, even as the trade friction continues, the world's two largest economies have no real choice other than to keep dealing with each other. And on questions of national security, the trend lines point toward a rivalry that's only growing more competitive. NPR correspondents Greg Myrie and John Ruich. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Kornish.