为何美国无法彻底与中国“分手”
ANA SWANSON 2023年7月10日
今年5月，美中技术战给爱达荷州芯片制造商美光科技带来了沉重打击。中国政府禁止处理关键信息的企业购买美光芯片，称该公司没有通过网络安全审查。美光表示，这道禁令可能导致公司全球收入减少约八分之一。然而在6月，这家芯片制造商宣布将增加对华投资，斥资六亿美元扩建位于中国西安的一家芯片封测工厂。
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A Micron Technologies plant in Manassas, Va. Global semiconductor companies like Micron are in an extremely tricky position as they try to straddle a growing rift between the United States and China.
By Ana Swanson, covers international trade and tracks the U.S.-China relationship.
In May, Micron Technologies, the Idaho chipmaker, suffered a serious blow as part of the U.S.-China technology war. The Chinese government barred companies that handle crucial information from buying Micron’s chips, saying the company had failed a cybersecurity review.
Micron said the change could destroy roughly an eighth of its global revenue. Yet in June, the chipmaker announced that it would increase its investments in China — adding $600 million to expand a chip packaging facility in the Chinese city of Xian.
“This investment project demonstrates Micron’s unwavering commitment to its China business and team,” an announcement posted on the company’s Chinese social media account said.
Global semiconductor companies are finding themselves in an extremely tricky position as they try to straddle a growing rift between the United States and China. The semiconductor industry has become ground zero for the technology rivalry between Washington and Beijing, with new restrictions and punitive measures imposed by both sides.
U.S. officials say American products have fed into Chinese military and surveillance programs that run counter to the national security interest of the United States. They have imposed increasingly tough restrictions on the kind of chips and chip-making equipment that can be sent to China, and are offering new incentives, including grants and tax credits, for chipmakers who choose to build new operations in the United States.
But factories can take years to construct, and corporate ties between the countries remain strong. China is a major market for chips, since it is home to many factories that make chip-rich products, including smartphones, dishwashers, cars and computers, that are both exported around the world and purchased by consumers in China.
Overall, China accounts for roughly a third of global semiconductor sales. But for some chipmakers, the country accounts for 60 percent or 70 percent of their revenue. Even when chips are manufactured in the United States, they are often sent to China for assembly and testing.
“We can’t just flip a switch and say all of sudden you have to take everything out of China,” said Emily S. Weinstein, a research fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
The industry’s reliance on China highlights how a close — but extremely contentious — economic relationship between Washington and Beijing is posing challenges for both sides.
Those tensions were reflected during Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s visit to Beijing this week, where she tried to walk a fine line by faulting some of China’s practices while insisting the United States was not looking to sever ties with the country.
Ms. Yellen criticized punitive measures China has recently taken against foreign firms, including limiting the export of some minerals used in chip making, and suggested that such actions were why the Biden administration was trying to make U.S. manufacturers less reliant on China. But she also affirmed the U.S.-China relationship as strategic and important.
“I have made clear that the United States does not seek a wholesale separation of our economies,” Ms. Yellen said during a roundtable with U.S. companies operating in China. “We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilizing for the global economy, and it would be virtually impossible to undertake.”
The Biden administration is poised to begin investing heavily in American semiconductor manufacturing to lure factories out of China. Later this year, the Commerce Department is expected to begin handing out funds to help companies build U.S. chip facilities. That money will come with strings: Firms that take funding must refrain from expanding high-tech manufacturing facilities in China.
The administration is also weighing further curbs on the chips that can be sent to China, as part of a push to expand and finalize sweeping restrictions it issued last October.
These measures could include potential limits on sales to China of advanced chips used for artificial intelligence, new restrictions for Chinese companies’ access to U.S. cloud computing services, and restrictions on U.S. venture capital investments in the Chinese chip sector, according to people familiar with the plans.
The administration has also been considering halting the licenses it has extended to some U.S. chipmakers that have allowed them to continue selling products to Huawei, the Chinese telecom firm.
Japan and the Netherlands, which are home to companies that make advanced chip manufacturing equipment, have also put new restrictions on their sales to China, in part because of urging from the United States.
China has issued restrictions of its own, including new export controls on minerals used in chip manufacturing.
Amid tighter regulations and new incentive programs from the United States and Europe, global chip companies are increasingly looking outside China as they choose the locations for their next major investments. But these facilities will likely take years to construct, meaning any changes to the global semiconductor market will unfold gradually.
John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents the chip industry, said in a statement that the ongoing escalation of controls posed a significant risk to the global competitiveness of the U.S. industry.
“China is the world’s largest market for semiconductors, and our companies simply need to do business there to continue to grow, innovate and stay ahead of global competitors,” he said. “We urge solutions that protect national security, avoid inadvertent and lasting damage to the chip industry, and avert future escalations.”
Ana Swanson is based in the Washington bureau and covers trade and international economics for The Times. She previously worked at The Washington Post, where she wrote about trade, the Federal Reserve and the economy. More about Ana Swanson
The concerns of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reflect continuing tensions between the two countries.
Alan Rappeport, who covers the Treasury Department, reported this article from Beijing with Keith Bradsher, the Beijing bureau chief.
Yellen Shares Concerns Over China's Treatment of U.S. Companies
During her first day of meetings in Beijing, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen criticized punitive measures the Chinese government has taken against American firms.
During meetings with my counterparts, I'm communicating the concerns that I've heard from the U.S. business community, including China's use of non-market tools like expanded subsidies for its state owned enterprises and domestic firms, as well as barriers to market access for foreign firms. I've been particularly troubled by punitive actions that have been taken against U.S. firms in recent months. I've made clear that the United States does not seek a wholesale separation of our economies. We seek to diversify and not to decouple. A decoupling of the world's two largest economies would be destabilizing for the global economy, and it would be virtually impossible to undertake.
Of all the economic rifts between the United States and China, one felt personally by American executives is what they describe as the difficult, even hostile, conditions they face doing business in China.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen laid bare those concerns on Friday by leveling a forceful objection in Beijing to punitive measures the Chinese government has taken against foreign firms, as tension between the two nations has escalated.
Surrounded by executives from some of the most powerful American companies, Ms. Yellen criticized the Chinese government’s harsh treatment of companies with foreign ties and its recent decision to impose export controls on certain critical minerals. She suggested that such actions justified the Biden administration’s efforts to make U.S. manufacturers less reliant on China.
Ms. Yellen’s comments, made to a group of executives from American businesses operating in China, underscored the challenges that the world’s two largest economies face as they struggle to reconcile their deep differences.
She delivered the forceful defense of American industry on her first day of meetings in Beijing during a high-stakes trip to ease tension between the United States and China. Ms. Yellen conveyed her objections to China’s top officials, including Premier Li Qiang, in what was the first visit to China by a Treasury secretary in four years.
“During meetings with my counterparts, I am communicating the concerns that I’ve heard from the U.S. business community — including China’s use of nonmarket tools like expanded subsidies for its state-owned enterprises and domestic firms, as well as barriers to market access for foreign firms,” Ms. Yellen said at an event held by the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
“I’ve been particularly troubled by punitive actions that have been taken against U.S. firms in recent months,” she added. Representatives of Boeing, Bank of America and the agriculture giant Cargill were among those in attendance.
In March, the Chinese authorities detained five Chinese nationals working in Beijing for the Mintz Group, an American consulting company with 18 offices around the world, and closed the branch. The next month, the authorities questioned employees in the Shanghai office of Bain & Company, the U.S. management consulting firm.
Scrutiny of American businesses operating in China followed restrictions that the Biden administration imposed on China’s access to critical semiconductor-making technology and tools.
The Biden administration is preparing additional restrictions on U.S. technology trade with China, including potential limits on advanced chips and U.S. investment in the country. The administration is also preparing to restrict Chinese companies’ access to U.S. cloud computing services to curtail China’s use of advanced chips for artificial intelligence.
The tit-for-tat continued this week when Beijing retaliated against the Biden administration’s limits on semiconductors, announcing that it would restrict the export of certain critical minerals used in the production of some chips. Ms. Yellen said on Friday that she was “concerned” by China’s export controls and suggested that additional responses from the United States could be looming.
Ms. Yellen meeting with Li Qiang, China’s premier, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday.
Chinese companies have also felt a chill of distrust in the United States and have been unsettled by recent actions, including the congressional hearings about the Chinese-owned social media network TikTok, where lawmakers spent five hours blasting the platform’s ties to China. The Biden administration has told TikTok that it wants ByteDance, the app’s Chinese owners, to sell the app or face a possible ban in the United States.
Deepening American barriers to Chinese investments and corporate deals, including in once prosaic sectors such as farmland purchases, have also unsettled Chinese businesses, according to Wang Yong, the director of the Center for American Studies at Peking University.
“Unfortunately, these relationships that have been mutually beneficial have now become politicized, securitized and even demonized — treated as having an impact on national security,” Professor Wang said. “But I personally think that while there is so-called strategic competition between China and the United States, they still have many common interests.”
An official from China’s ministry of finance expressed hope on Friday that the meetings with Ms. Yellen would improve economic relations and suggested that the United States needed to take steps to make that happen. The official added that neither country benefited from “decoupling” and disrupting supply chains.
Longtime observers of the relationship between the two countries were skeptical of the chances of a swift breakthrough.
Shi Yinhong, a political scientist at Renmin University in Beijing, said Ms. Yellen’s visit could not be expected to “really mitigate substantially” the numerous and broad differences between the two countries. But given those differences, he said, Chinese officials were unlikely to be surprised by Ms. Yellen’s remarks in support of American businesses in China.
“I doubt that the Chinese side would have much higher expectation at all,” he said.
U.S. businesses have been alarmed by China’s ever-tightening national security laws, which include a stringent counterespionage law that took effect on Saturday. The U.S. State Department issued a warning this week advising Americans to reconsider traveling to China because of the possibility of wrongful detention.
Michael Hart, the president of the Chamber of Commerce in China, said American companies were trying to play a constructive role in the economic relationship between the United States and China.
“We’ve been trying, regardless of what’s happened at the political level, to find common cause with our Chinese counterparts by employing, manufacturing, producing, buying, selling, paying our taxes and doing it all in a manner that reflects our values,” Mr. Hart, who was seated next to Ms. Yellen, said.
The Treasury secretary planned to raise these issues during a blitz of meetings with top Chinese officials over the next two days.
Ms. Yellen also met on Friday with Liu He, China’s former vice premier, and Yi Gang, the departing governor of the People’s Bank of China. A Treasury Department official said Ms. Yellen had discussed the outlook for the economy in an informal discussion with her former counterparts that lasted more than an hour.
Later on Friday afternoon, she met with Mr. Li at the Great Hall of the People, which sits on the edge of Tiananmen Square.
Ahead of her meeting with Mr. Li, China’s No. 2 leader, Ms. Yellen emphasized the importance of “healthy competition” between the two nations and stressed that measures taken by the United States on the basis of national security should not be misconstrued as attacks on China.
“The United States will, in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security,” Ms. Yellen said. “And we may disagree in these instances.”
She added: “However, we should not allow any disagreement to lead to misunderstandings that needlessly worsen our bilateral economic and financial relationship.”
Seated next to Ms. Yellen, Mr. Li noted that the world had high expectations for their meeting.
Offering a ray of optimism, the premier noted that when Ms. Yellen arrived in Beijing, she was photographed pointing to a rainbow in the sky and suggested that it was a sign that the relationship between China and the United States could be mended.
“I’m really looking forward to this opportunity to have an exchange of views with you,” Mr. Li said through an interpreter.
The meeting lasted over an hour, twice as long as planned, according to a Treasury official. Both sides struck positive tones in their summaries of the discussions.
The United States described it as “candid and constructive” with an emphasis on closer communication. China’s state television service, CCTV, delivered a fairly upbeat assessment of the meeting, in contrast with recent Chinese official statements about the United States.
CCTV summarized Mr. Li’s remarks to Ms. Yellen as saying that “strengthening cooperation is the realistic demand and correct choice of China and the United States.”
Claire Fu and Christopher Buckley contributed reporting.
Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters. He previously worked for The Financial Times and The Economist. More about Alan Rappeport
Keith Bradsher is the Beijing bureau chief for The Times. He previously served as bureau chief in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Detroit and as a Washington correspondent. He has lived and reported in mainland China through the pandemic. More about Keith Bradsher
