© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A central processing unit (CPU) semiconductor chip is shown between the flags of China and the United States, in this illustration photo taken on February 17, 2023. REUTERS/Florence Lu/Illustration/File Image
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Written by Michael Martina
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For more than 40 years, a landmark pact between the United States and China has resulted in cooperation across a range of scientific and technical areas, a strong signal that the two adversaries can put aside their differences and work together.
Now with bilateral relations at their worst in decades, a debate is raging within the US government about whether to let the US-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) expire later this year, said three officials familiar with the discussions.
With Anthony Blinken in Beijing for the first visit by a secretary of state in five years and expectations low for any bilateral breakthrough, the debate over the oldest bilateral cooperation agreement between the United States and China reflects a larger question dividing policymakers: Do the benefits to the United States of doing business with China outweigh The risks of enabling a competitor who might play by different rules?
The pact, signed when Beijing and Washington established diplomatic ties in 1979 and renewed every five years since then, has been hailed as a stabilizing force in the two countries’ relations, with cooperation in areas from atmospheric science and agriculture to basic research in physics and chemistry. . It laid the foundation for a flourishing of academic and business exchanges.
Those exchanges have helped China grow into a technological and military power, but concerns about Beijing stealing American scientific and commercial achievements have raised questions about whether the agreement — set to expire on Aug. 27 — should continue.
Proponents of revamping the STA argue that ending it would stifle academic and commercial cooperation.
said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity issue.
“Expanding the US-China science and technology agreement will only put our research and intellectual property at risk,” said Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the Congressional Select Committee on China. “The management should let this outdated agreement expire.”
The State Department declined to comment on the “internal deliberations on the negotiations.” The National Security Council also declined to comment.
China’s embassy in Washington said Chinese officials reached out to the United States a year ago to talk about the deal, which it said formed the basis for 40 years of “fruitful” cooperation.
“As far as we know, the US side is still conducting an internal review on the renewal of the agreement,” said embassy spokesman Liu Bingyu, adding that the two sides may consider amendments to the original agreement.
“It is hoped that the US side will speed up the internal review before the agreement expires,” he said.
Renewal, termination or renegotiation?
The officials said that within the US government, including the State Department, which is leading the negotiations, there are conflicting views on whether to renew the agreement, let it expire, or renegotiate to add safeguards against industrial espionage and require reciprocity in the exchange of data.
They said that given the state of relations between the US and China, an attempt at renegotiation could derail the agreement.
American companies have long complained about Chinese government policies that require technology transfer, and experts warn of state-sponsored theft of everything from Monsanto (NYSE: Crop seeds for data on NASA’s space shuttle designs.
President Joe Biden’s administration has sharpened the focus on technology competition.
“Technology will be the evolving arena of global competition in the period ahead in the way that nuclear missiles were the hallmark of the Cold War,” said US coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell at the Hudson Institute (NYSE:) Forum in June. Adding that the United States “will not give up a high position.”
Supporters of renewing the deal argue that without it, the United States will lose valuable insight into China’s technical progress.
“The United States, friend or foe of China, needs to get to China to understand what is happening on the ground,” said Dennis Simon, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies technology strategy in China, adding that it is important for the United States to negotiate an agreement. Fundamentally new.
He said that “renewal advocates are trying to keep this (the issue) a little bit under the radar because they don’t want Chinese hardliners to get a piece of this and try to rip it off.”
Science and technology collaboration was once a “feel-good” part of relationships, said Anna Puglisi, a former US counterintelligence official who focuses on East Asia and now a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
She said there were questions about what the renewed cooperation could achieve at a time when China’s national security laws now cover the export of data and the country is taking steps to limit foreigners’ access to its domestic academic databases.
“There must be transparency and there must be reciprocity,” Puglisi said. And the US government needs to do a full accounting of what we got out of this and a couple of meetings.
