Todd Bishop
On August 1, according to the information provided by Shanghai, China and the United States agreed that “the working level of the economic and trade teams of the two sides will be intensively negotiated in August to prepare for the lead leaders to meet in September.” In view of this, there is no shortage of public opinion that China-US negotiations have “no breakthrough.”
However, the frequent exchange of civil servants between Washington and Beijing and the more professional dialogue in official contacts is obviously more meaningful: they will further touch on the realities of the “trade war” between the two sides.
As China and the United States continue to maintain contacts and the two sides are still able to “maintain a good atmosphere,” many industry confrontations have gradually expanded from the negotiating table to the outside.
In fact, the Washington side has begun to work hard to find various “measures” relative to the US representative’s efforts to create a dialogue atmosphere in Beijing. The most prominent manifestation of this is the sudden emphasis on the rare earth issue by US President Donald Trump in late July.
On July 22, Trump had suddenly ordered the US Department of Defense to “accelerate the production of rare earths and magnets for electronic consumption, military hardware and medical research”, and also said that the United States would not have enough rare earth reserves, and that national defense would Will suffer damage.”
Just during the July 31st China-US trade talks, Trump also talked about the issue of “purchasing Mongolian rare earths” during the meeting with visiting Mongolian President Battulga Khaltmaa. Considering that Mongolian cargo cannot be bypassed by China and Russia, and China, Russia and the United States have seen each other, this makes the outside world laugh.
It must be acknowledged that Mongolia, close to China, Russia and Kazakhstan, Kobu Duo province and other regions are rich in oil, natural gas, coalbed methane, rare metals, rare earth minerals, precious stones, marble, granite, mica and other minerals. Its development status is currently very limited. The local rare earths have been found to be rich in reserves, including 100,000 tons of heavy rare earth elements and 1 million tons of rare earth oxides.
However, the area also belongs to the “Altai region” with frequent economic ties between China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The region known as “four countries and six parties” has been deeply involved in Chinese mining companies since 2008. This seemingly busy mistake in the United States also shows Washington’s irritable strategic material issues.
In contrast, the Beijing market strategy relies more on capital activities and does not confront the US side. China relied on strategic actions made inadvertently to create unexpected breakthroughs outside the field of confrontation.
Also around July 30, the Chinese official media Xinhua News Agency disclosed that the Chinese railway enterprises have upgraded the Tanzania-Zambia Railway and connected it to the Benguela Railway. At this point, the four railways of Tanzania, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola have been interconnected for the first time, and China has thus established a railway corridor between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. This is undoubtedly a major positive news for companies in various countries that are developing in Africa.
However, the success of China’s railway construction in Africa cannot conceal the frustration of similar investment. In Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, the experience of Chinese enterprises often faces public pressure.
For example, the Hanoi Light Rail Line 2A, which was contracted by China Railway Sixth Bureau Group Co., Ltd., although it completed various tests in September 2018, the project has been widely criticized on social networks such as Facebook since its operation; this line is hereafter. In the 11 months, it has not been able to operate due to the various “1%” handover problems. This situation has become a powerful weapon affecting the image of Chinese investment in Southeast Asia as a social platform.
It is undeniable that China-US trade and economic cooperation has broad prospects for cooperation and strong complementarity. This is what both China and the United States have confirmed in the past year. This makes the two sides have the basis for dialogue, and also allows Beijing’s response to trade confrontation to remain at the level of “adding tariffs”. However, as the content of the parties involved is more and more targeted and professional, this will make the future “disciplinary front” of the two countries more extensive.
