Determining boundaries necessary to prevent overstretching of 'national security' concerns: China Daily editorial

Officially, the Joe Biden administration's China policy is, in the words of United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, "competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be".

Unfortunately, the assertion means that the US does not seek decoupling only applies when it comes to sectors deemed to be irrelevant to national security.

As the latest developments in Washington indicate, the overwhelming consensus there, from the executive to the legislative branches of the US government, is to make sure China lags far behind the US in high technology on the grounds of national security concerns.

On Friday, the US Commerce Department released the "Know Your Customer", or "Customer Identification" program for public comment. The proposal requires US cloud companies to identify and report to their government which foreign entities are using US data centers to train AI models. The main target of the move is China.

"We can't have non-state actors or China or folks who we don't want accessing our cloud to train their models," US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told Reuters. This was a follow-up to previous moves by her department aimed at denying China access to advanced chips, related equipment, materials, technology, and investment. The idea is to "shut down every avenue that the Chinese could have to get access to our models or to train their own models", as Raimondo said in an interview last month.

"It is a big deal," she said. So big that some believe it signals the next stage of Washington's technology war against China. But as many in science and technology have observed, it also marks a significant setback for international scientific and technological collaboration.

Washington, however, seems ready to do whatever it takes to make sure China lags far behind the US and damn the consequences.

This was also evident from the fact that both chambers of the US Congress saw bipartisan bills on Thursday aimed at banning Chinese genomics company BGI in the US market. BGI has been a leading supplier of genetic sequencing equipment in the US. The bills, backed by leaders of a House Select Committee on China and the Senate Homeland Security Committee, accuse BGI of gathering genetic information about Americans and others in ways that could undermine US national security.

During his meeting with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Bangkok on Friday and Saturday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi again raised Beijing's concerns about Washington's national security abuses. Each country has national security concerns, Wang said, but they must be just and reasonable.

Since both sides reportedly agreed to further discuss the boundary between national security and economic activities, they should begin those discussions as soon as possible.