SSU Forum “Japan-US-China Triangle Relations after the 2020 Presidential Election”

The Security Studies Unit (SSU) of the Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI) invited Dr. Sheila Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Kazuto Suzuki, Graduate School of Public Policy, the University of Tokyo, and Associate Professor Asei Ito, Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo as speakers and held a public symposium. This symposium took place as part of the “US-China Competition and Securitization of Critical and Emerging Technologies: Evaluating Policy-making Process and Impacts on Globalized Economy” project subsidized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
At the opening of the symposium, IFI Director Professor Kiichi Fujiwara, who served as the symposium moderator, stressed that the symposium addresses an important topic with geopolitical and economic ramifications, and introduced the three speakers. The following is a summary of the symposium centered on the presentations by the three speakers at the two panels.

Panel 1: The New US Administration’s Policies on China/Asia and Implications for Japan
At the first panel, a panel discussion was held based on the keynote speech by Dr. Sheila Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations.

Keynote Speech “The Japan-US Alliance and the Challenge of China—prior to the Inauguration of President Biden”
(Dr. Sheila Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations)
Dr. Smith emphasized the importance of understanding how Americans perceive China and of how those perceptions impact Japan in its foreign policy toward China. The Trump administration’s concern regarding China is deeply rooted in the ideology of anti-communism. In particular, stressing that China caused the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic intensified wariness toward China, and in the recent presidential election, China policy became a point of debate not only in foreign affairs but in all policy fields. Some in Japan worry that the upcoming Biden administration will be soft on China.
In Japan, the debate over China policy is centered on economic interests, but in the US the economic interdependence between the US and China was not thought to be reflected in policy, which for many years followed the line introduced in the Kissinger era of separating China from the USSR and drawing China into the market economy. In recent years, the viewpoint finally emerged that China is acting to buy up US technologies, with a growing trend toward protecting technologies from China.
Concerns regarding the influence of China are also seen in issues concerning values. Anti-communist ideology has emerged at the forefront of US political debate. China’s human rights issues have been viewed as problematic by the left since the 1970s. Today, the oppression of Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the intensified pressure on anti-government forces in Hong Kong and elsewhere are regarded as issues. The US had not been as firm as Japan in its policy toward China, but America now sees China as a threat, and this includes its growing military power and expanded influence in Southeast Asia.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also had a negative impact. President Trump’s criticism of China’s response has strengthened skepticism. Calls for containing China’s influence have emerged even among the elite of the US foreign policy community, who formerly advocated coexistence with China.
Foreign policy experts from the Obama administration are expected to return in the upcoming Biden administration’s Asian policy team. Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt M. Campbell was responsible for issues in the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands during the Obama administration, and other team members include security experts with extensive knowledge of China and Asia who implemented US sanctions against China during China’s border dispute with India and worsening relations with Australia. They must reinforce international coordination and impose sanctions in response to the challenges to democracy being made by China. Regarding Hong Kong, Biden will probably implement similar policies to those pursued by Trump: policies to protect US technology and research will likely be retained. The Department of Justice is also expected to maintain policies that are consistent with the existing policies.
As advice to the Suga administration, Dr. Smith recommended rapid engagement in the Taiwan issue. She said that the international community must prepare a response to economic pressures exerted by China on Taiwan, avert uncoordinated efforts against China, and form a consensus after acknowledging the different perceptions and interests regarding China held by different countries.

Panel Discussion
Following the keynote speech by Dr. Smith, a panel discussion took place with Prof. Fujiwara as the moderator. Prof. Fujiwara began by noting that there is a difference between restraining the expansion of China’s influence and actually changing China’s policies. He explained that the Trump administration’s harsh policies were unable to change China’s policies, and may have conversely hardened the human rights and other policies of the PRC. Prof. Fujiwara then raised the question of what alternative measures can be taken when neither the carrot nor the stick proves effective. Dr. Smith responded that it is important to form a consensus on the actions that Japan and the US should take and to reinforce the international coalition including Australia and other nations in case China takes a hard line, presuming that China’s policies cannot be changed.
Following this panel discussion, a question-and-answer session was held with the participants.

Panel 2: Science & Technology, Economics, and Security: US/China policy trends and the Role of Policies from Now
The second panel was moderated by SSU member Associate Professor Ryo Sahashi of the Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo, based on presentations by Professor Kazuto Suzuki and Associate Professor Asei Ito.
To begin with, Associate Prof. Sahashi stressed the importance of predicting how the regulations regarding science and technology implemented under the Trump administration will be changed under the upcoming Biden administration while the Democratic Party and Republican Party are advocating different policies, and what types of developments may emerge toward decoupling the Chinese and American economies.

Presentation 1: US-China Technological Supremacy Competition and Japan’s Economic Security
Professor Kazuto Suzuki, Graduate School of Public Policy, the University of Tokyo
Prof. Suzuki noted that the competition over technological supremacy is an economic security issue. It is not clear which country is more advanced—the US or China—in emerging technology fields including the telecommunications and IT-related technologies that have developed rapidly in recent years. For example, the US is in the lead in biotechnology, but China is catching up. On the other hand, China is superior in quantum information and sensing technologies. China has already implemented advanced surveillance technologies in society. Under such conditions, which country holds technological supremacy becomes an issue. Coordination is important to maintain technologies in which the West is dominant. In the US, the consensus on opposing China transcends party lines, so even if the rhetoric and stance change under the Biden administration, no fundamental changes are expected. The caution regarding dependence on Chinese technology will remain. However, what will be of concern under the Biden administration is the widespread criticism of the giant IT firms known as GAFA [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon]. Anti-trust lawsuits have been filed in the US, and this may throw water on the development of new technologies using data, led by the private sector. There are concerns that investment in fields such as quantum information technologies and surveillance technologies mostly borne by the IT giants may contract, and engineers become fragmented. The West has the strengths of monopolistic control over semiconductor manufacturing equipment technologies and other high-value-added upstream technologies. China’s strengths are downstream in mass production. The question is whether China can grasp technological supremacy under such a situation.
Conditions in China are changing greatly in recent years. China is gaining confidence in the level of its technologies and changing sides from appropriating technologies to protecting technologies. Last year, General Secretary Xi Jinping instituted a policy of developing killer technologies, making other counties dependent on China, making other countries vulnerable, and strengthening China’s political power. But that alone does not necessarily lead to Chinese supremacy. To achieve supremacy requires not only good products but also an attractive social system overall. However, China used facial recognition surveillance to successfully contain COVID-19 by force, and that success may become an attraction of its social system.
To date, Japan has taken a defensive economic security policy to protect its technologies from theft, but the offensive economic security of how to change Japan’s technology into power also becomes necessary. Having other countries depend on Japanese technologies is the key. Japan has strengths in materials, machine tools, and robotics, so reinforcing those strengths is important. Japan must also take part in the setting of international standards and rulemaking. In the past, Japanese technologies became de facto standards as the market chose Japanese products, but today Japan must oppose China by taking leadership in international negotiations and setting technology standards in coordination with the US. Standing at the center of supply chains in that manner would constitute an offensive security approach for Japan.

Presentation 2: Government and Corporate Developments in China after the Fifth Plenary Session
Associate Professor Asei Ito, Institute of Social Science, the University of Tokyo
Associate Prof. Ito emphasized that the Chinese economy has greatly changed over the past 20 years. In the early 2000s, the image and actual conditions were that China had an outdated manufacturing industry, with its digital economy limited to copies. This greatly changed over 20 years. China has jumped to the global forefront through innovations based on intensive investment, making use of externalities, and the population effect.
One important meeting held by the Government of China and the Communist Party in the past year was the Central Economic Work Conference in December, which assessed the performance during 2020 and decided key policies for 2021. Another was the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in October, where members drafted the outline of the next Five-Year Plan (2021- 2025) and discussed the long-range objectives through the year 2035. Here as well, upgrading science and technology was stressed as a national strategy, and the domestic cycle approach was also emphasized. Economic development driven by domestic demand gained priority because of the difficulty in pioneering new overseas markets under US-China friction and the impact of COVID-19.
Prior to the Fifth Plenary Session, Xi Jinping held discussions with entrepreneurs, economists, social scientists and other groups, and this included a forum of scientists convened in September where Xi said “science has no borders, but scientists have motherlands” and advocated original innovation “from zero to one” as a major policy. Specifically, Xi called for the publication of first-class academic journals in China, reinforcing basic research by fostering and selecting top students to skip grades, and collecting the best researchers in mathematics, biology, and other natural sciences. In public health and climate change, Xi called for advancing international cooperation. In a remote address to the UN General Assembly, Xi pledged that China will cooperate with the SDGs and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
Given these conditions, there is a need to discuss whether the decoupling of the US and Chinese economies is really effective, and the types of impacts it has had. An ecosystem for the creation of wide-ranging businesses has already been established for China’s domestic companies. To be sure, there are some bottlenecks in certain upstream technologies and facilities, as made visible during the Trump administration. But China will now act to generate technologies internally. Intrinsically, because the Chinese economy is at the middle-income country level, the merit has been that it was acceptable to focus on catching up while purchasing advanced technologies from overseas. But under US-China trade friction, the merits of middle-income countries, in general, were lost and technologies had to be internalized. While that requires costs, a domestic consensus has formed within China on the idea of paying those costs.
For Japan, the issue is how Japan should approach the decoupling of the US and Chinese economies. In a public opinion survey conducted by Associate Prof. Ito with the Nikkei last summer, opinions were divided regarding how much Japan should agree with and participate in the decoupling policy under the Trump administration. The present status of Japan’s business community is that no consensus on participation has been reached. China is an important partner for Japan, and that importance has only heightened from the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no evidence so far that Japan’s policy toward China since the Ōhira administration [1978-1980] will be greatly changed. The time has come to discuss what should be revised.
Some researchers in Beijing are confident that conditions will become more advantageous for China as time passes. Associate Prof. Ito stressed that it is important to keep the existence of this belief that “time is on China’s side” in mind when considering how to persuade China and explaining that adjusting strategy would be in China’s own benefit.

Panel Discussion
Following the presentations by these two speakers, a panel discussion was held with Associate Prof. Sahashi as the moderator. First, Associate Prof. Sahashi asked Prof. Suzuki about the expected policy changes under the Biden administration, even if the fundamental stance is to remain unchanged, and he asked Associate Prof. Ito about how the growth of the Chinese economy has slowed because of US technology controls. Prof. Suzuki expressed the opinions that first, while limiting personnel exchanges with China, the US is likely to expand exchanges with India and other countries, and that second, changes will probably occur in ethical innovations such as placing issues concerning privacy and the human rights of individuals on the research and development agenda. Associate Prof. Ito mentioned that a scenario with a growth rate of 2% has already appeared in a 2019 report entitled “Innovative China.” Because China must become a major power and implement technological development using its economic power during its phase as a middle-income country, it faces many problems compared with regular middle-income countries. Associate Prof. Ito said that the issue will be how China responds to those problems.
Next, Dr. Smith, who was the speaker for Panel 1, pointed out that the US Department of Justice is advancing a program against China, and that first-line Chinese researchers and engineers have been arrested and charged, and she posed the question of how such policies are expected to be pursued under the Biden administration. Prof. Ito responded that it is important for the US to maintain technological superiority to remain economically dominant, so caution regarding China’s acquisition of technology will likely intensify, with continued vigilance regarding the “Thousand Talents Plan,” etc. Regardless, he predicted there will be differences in the level of strictness depending on the administration, and that while the Trump administration included researchers from India, etc., this will be eased under the Biden administration.
Following this panel discussion, a question-and-answer session was held with the participants.

Closing Comments
Upon the closing of the symposium, Prof. Fujiwara thanked those on stage and the participants. He emphasized the importance of investigating truth at universities and expressed hopes of providing further opportunities for considerations in the future.

SSU shares a video of the keynote speech of Panel 1 and the discussion that followed. *Panel 2 is not scheduled to be released.

Panel:1

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sheila Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations(CFR)
Moderator and Discussant: Professor Kiichi Fujiwara, Director of IFI University of Tokyo

※This forum was organized by subsidies from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.