China and the West: No ‘Cold War’ but more ‘interdependence’

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By CGTN’s The Point

Despite the media bombast of a tech “Cold War” between China and the US, an expert said that the two countries are growingly dependent on each other amid skirmish in light of the recent tit-for-tat trade actions by Beijing and Washington.

In its March 24 report titled “For the US and China, a Technology Cold War That’s Freezing over,” the New York Times claimed that a cold war “is being waged” and “it just got a lot chillier.”

“It often kicks up the dust,” Dawei Li, CEO of China Thinkers Bureau, referred to the paper on CGTN’s The Point (@thepointwithlx), saying: “There’s no ‘Cold War’ between China and the US, but probably we have some skirmishes in between.”

The escalating trade tensions between China and the US could deepen what has become a global contest for technological dominance between the two sides, said the paper.

“When China is going faster to show its power of technology innovation, there must be some competitions,” said Thomas Luo, co-founder, and CEO of Pingwest.

Luo noted that China intends to show its contributions, but it is perceived differently.

China and the West used to collaborate based on “asymmetric” relations, Denis Simon at Duke Kunshan University pointed out, but that has become “symmetric” in the wake of China’s increasing capability, the cutting-edge technology in particular.

“The West is starting to feel the pressure from China’s emergence now as a much more significant player in global technology markets,” Simon reasoned.

He argued that people and governments are ignoring the fact that China and the West are, instead, becoming “more and more interdependent,” citing collaborative publications of tech articles and R&D projects that are growing and expanding.

“In the coming decades, the West should get used to the fact that we have a new partner (China) in the center of the stage,” Li said. “The world is different.”

The Cold War and zero-sum mentality look even more out of place, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Tuesday when delivering a keynote speech at the 2018 Boao Forum for Asia annual conference.

The Point with Liu Xin is a 30-minute current affairs program on CGTN. It airs weekdays at 9:30 p.m. BJT (1330GMT), with rebroadcasts at 5:30 a.m. (2130GMT) and 10:30 a.m. (0230GMT).