The US and China can turn the page on age-old tech rivalry with coronavirus vaccine cooperation

Tensions over technology between China and the United States have existed right from the beginning of their relationship – for both countries, technology has always loomed large, embodying achievement and hope on the one hand, and loss and fear on the other. The US-Soviet collaboration in the depths of a raging Cold War that led to vaccines against smallpox and polio worldwide puts to shame the lack of US-China collaboration in the Covid-19 pandemic. What can be done to handle the US-China tension over technology? Two episodes of history merit brief mention. The first is that China’s Beijing-Zhangjiakou railway, the first to be designed and built indigenously from 1905-09, benefited greatly from American input. Leading its construction was Zhan Tianyou, who majored in civil and railway engineering at Yale University as a student on an educational mission sent by the Qing dynasty. Before then, foreign railway technologies were available and in competition in China. The other example is the American project to establish a radiotelegraphy presence in China, which achieved limited results despite efforts by the Federal Telegraph Company and Radio Corporation of America from 1916-1941. The project embodied American visions of spreading modern science and culture (including Christianity), its ambition to prevail in an “open door” competition with imperial Japan and Russia in China, and to pave the way for American goods in the market. Through it all, China was undergoing a far more tumultuous process of nation-building than today. But it had a strong insistence on mastering new technologies to improve its society and people’s well-being. Coronavirus: Beijing holds fire on Trump threat ‘to make China pay’ Back then, and for over a century afterwards, one stream of US reaction to China’s technological developments has been supportive and enabling. The other has tended to view China’s actions and reactions in technological realms – whether from government agencies, businesses or individuals – as too rabid to tolerate. As China’s Communist Party gained control, the US led an embargo of Western trade with China, formalising in 1952 the China Committee, a US-sponsored body to supervise the embargo and ensure certain technologies stayed beyond Chinese reach. In 1996, this was replaced by the Wassenaar Arrangement, in which member states police the export of arms and dual-use technologies to unspecified target countries. China has not been a member since its inception. Yet, during and after the Cold War, science and technology was also a rare area of positive US-China interaction. Exchanges among American and Chinese scientists helped pave the way for the normalising of diplomatic ties. Since 1979, hundreds of thousands of collaborations in education, research and commerce have been launched with the political blessings of both governments, improving the quality of life in both societies. Recently, the Trump administration reportedly urged the Dutch government to deny the sale of an advanced semiconductor manufacturing machine to China by citing the latter’s obligations under the Wassenaar Arrangement. America fears competition. It’s time for a non-US led world order Today, China also controls its technological exports. In August, for the first time in 12 years, it updated its list of controlled technologies which require government approval for export, including the technology behind TikTok. This came after the Trump administration ordered Chinese company ByteDance to divest TikTok in the US over data concerns. The disquiet over the forced divestment of TikTok also clearly indicates that many see the need for rules to manage technological competition between countries. First, in the current US-China relationship, politics trumps technological cooperation – but does this have to be a fait accompli? In standard international relations literature, all countries pursue power, prestige and influence, which justifies doing whatever is necessary to gain control and dominance. But technological advances in China, the US, and indeed anywhere else bring much more to society as a whole when they are not being aggregated into the unlimited imagination of geostrategic rivalry. Second, competition in technology development, including through export controls, whether between China and the US or globally, often suffers from simplistic political branding. The labelling of certain protected technologies as “sensitive”, “foundational”, “emerging” or “frontier”, just to name a few, risks justifying wanton restrictions on global technological flows, and denying societies around the world the necessary tools with which to advance. For example, as the Covid-19 vaccine race puts pharmaceutical companies in the spotlight, how should their technologies be labelled and should their pharmaceutical exports be subject to controls? China should stop picking ideological battles with US, academic says Third, despite the adjustment in economic globalisation towards greater support for more locally focused supply chains, there will be no slowing down in either the diffusion of technology – by way of patents – or the spillover effects in the movement of products and technological know-how between sovereign jurisdictions. If anything, such movements will only become more complicated. Against this background, the building of coalitions in technology trade may conceivably become an increasingly tempting approach, bringing more societies into the political and policy entanglements associated with the technology sanctions of both China and the US. As such, a challenge for both China and the US is how to not become a burden on the rest of the world as they go about slapping sanctions on technology and other economic areas. The trajectory of the recent past has damaged what is left of the goodwill each society has for the other, especially with the Trump administration’s policy escalation in leaving no stone unturned in its restricting and denying of Chinese access to technologies and science education in the US. There is little chance of a meeting of minds between the US and China if they continue to see technology as a sphere of geostrategic rivalry. But the two political establishments have an opportunity to demonstrate the boundaries of that rivalry – by treating Covid-19 vaccines for what they are: life-saving science that can and should be effectively deployed worldwide as soon as possible. For China, the US, and all of us, that would be the right thing to do. Zha Daojiong is Professor of International Political Economy at the School of International Studies, Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, Peking University. This is an edited version of his presentation to a webinar on China-US relations on October 9, organised by the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University, and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC