In a lecture to Britain’s Ditchley Foundation in Oxfordshire on Saturday, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns said that it would be unwise for the US to sever its ties with China, given the deep economic interdependence between the two countries.
Burns said that China is the only nation in the world “with both the intent to reshape the international order and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so.” He said that rather than decouple from China, the US should instead focus on diversifying its supply chains.
He said, “In today’s world, no country wants to find itself at the mercy of a ‘cartel of one’ for critical minerals and technologies… The answer to that is not to decouple from an economy like China’s, which would be foolish, but to sensibly de-risk and diversify by securing resilient supply chains, protecting our technological edge and investing in industrial capacity.”
As the US has sought to stymie China’s technological advancement through the imposition of a raft of economic sanctions and export controls over sensitive technologies, the relations between the US and China have grown strained. Over the past several months, the US has blacklisted several Chinese companies for supplying sensitive military technologies to Russia, and imposed export controls on the semiconductor industry of China.
This week brought word of more restrictions from Washington, limiting the sale of semiconductors associated with the development of artificial intelligence to China, as well as a new executive order designed to screen investments heading to China, to make sure they are not advancing China’s research and development of technologies which threaten the national security of the United States.
Beijing, which has long characterized Washington’s restrictions as violations of international trade rules, went on this week to pass a new law which gives the government the power “to take necessary countermeasures” against foreign entities that “endanger China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in violation of international law and fundamental norms governing international relations.”
The new law did not specifically explain where exactly the lines separating acceptable conduct from unacceptable conduct would lay.
