NEW YORK, June 13. /TASS/. The relations between Beijing and Washington may deteriorate if former US leader Donald Trump wins the presidential election, Jia Qingguo, a standing member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, told Bloomberg in an interview.
"If Trump comes into office, I think that there’ll be more uncertainties in the [bilateral] relationship. It’s likely that the China-US relationship will enter another period of deterioration. Because Trump has governed for a term, and also because he and his people have said things about China since he left office, we know more or less what his China policy is like," said Jia, professor of the School of International Studies at Peking University. "I think it’s likely to be tough and more reasonable and more detrimental to the interest of both China and the US," he added as he described Biden’s approach as "more predictable," albeit tough, too.
The Chinese expert dismissed US export controls of high-tech products to China as counterproductive and harmful to both economies. "US policies now are fixated on how to deny China’s high-tech and economic development in general instead of how to advance American interests. It doesn’t make sense for the US to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. Such a practice hurts China and creates problems for the US such as inflation," he explained. Also, according to Jia, "it doesn’t make sense to expand export controls of high-tech products to China, because it makes more difficult for US companies to sell their products to China and hence more difficult to maintain their competitive advantage."
"It can help slow down China’s high-tech development in the short turn," Jia continued. "However, it can also force China to develop its own high-tech products along different paths. One day, China may no longer need to buy American products. That’s bad news for US companies," he concluded.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that China has progressed in its drive to free itself from the reliance on US technology in the production of microchips. The newspaper wrote that while US export restrictions have, on the one hand, disrupted China’s production capacities in the sphere, they have also prompted it to increase investment in semiconductors, develop and experiment more.