What an Even More Hawkish China Policy Could Look Like

Competition with China has become the biggest through line of a highly polarized Washington over the past decade, and a bipartisan commission that advises U.S. lawmakers on China is calling for some drastic measures to help the United States win that competition.  

Among the 32 recommendations from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s annual report to Congress, published on Tuesday, are revoking China’s bilateral free trade privileges; barring the import of technologies, including “autonomous humanoid robots,” from China; and creating a Manhattan Project to achieve artificial intelligence capable of surpassing human cognition. 

The commission argues that those measures, along with a further tightening of export controls on Chinese technology and increased restrictions on outbound U.S. investment into China, are vital to winning a conflict that it says the Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping will inevitably escalate. “With few remaining avenues for dissent and a political system that demands absolute loyalty to the individual leader, it has become unlikely that anyone could dissuade Xi should he decide to take actions that risk igniting a catastrophic conflict,” the report says. 

One of the commission’s key recommendations is the repeal of China’s permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) designation, which gives Beijing the same trade status and tariff exemptions as U.S. allies. Many in Washington say that China has abused those privileges—which were granted more than two decades ago when China was preparing to join the World Trade Organization—to flood the United States with Chinese goods, deplete U.S. manufacturing, and steal intellectual property. The commission echoed those concerns—also reflected in legislation put forward in the House last week by Rep. John Moolenaar—and advocated for “more leverage to address unfair trade behaviors.” 

The move appears primed for the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly vowed to slap tariffs on a wide range of Chinese imports. But in a briefing with journalists in Washington on Monday, multiple commissioners stressed that their recommendations are agnostic on who occupies the White House. The commission’s report was concluded in October this year, several weeks before the election. The commission, created in October 2000, comprises 12 members who can be appointed by the speaker of the House, the House minority leader, or the president pro tempore of the Senate (upon recommendation from the Senate majority and minority leaders) for a minimum two-year term that can be extended. The current commissioners represent a mix of industry, academia, and government.

“Repealing PNTR provides the president with the authority to review and change China’s status as most favored nation; it doesn’t trigger an automatic increase in tariffs,” said Jacob Helberg, one of the commissioners. “There have been broad efforts underway on a bipartisan basis to reshore supply chains—a key to reshoring supply chains is increasing tariffs on Chinese manufacturing goods.” 

Given Trump’s often prickly relationships with U.S. allies during his first term, including NATO and the European Union, many have questioned how multilateral export controls on China might fare once he returns to power. The commission’s report stressed the need for a “clearly coordinated, U.S.-led effort to build a coalition of like-minded countries” to counter China. “It’s clear that many of the problems we discuss can only be dealt with effectively if there is a significant level of cooperation with our allies,” another commissioner, Aaron Friedberg, told reporters. 

According to his colleague Michael Wessel, however, drawing a distinction between Trump’s rhetoric and his first administration’s actions is also important. “I’m a Democrat,” Wessel said. “There clearly was an impression that some have—I don’t think there was enough credit for the engagement that did occur on things like Huawei to try and build coalitions. So, I think it’s important to not only listen to what’s said but to watch what’s done … I think we will find that the China challenge is going to be met with resolution on a bipartisan basis.”

There are few arenas that animate China concerns in Washington as much as technology, and AI has been a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to blunt Chinese technological progress. The commission views AI as an unbridled arms race and advocates for the U.S. development of artificial general intelligence or AGI, which refers to AI that is smarter than humans. The commission recommended a government-funded effort along the lines of the Manhattan Project—which produced the atomic bomb—to acquire AGI capability before China does. 

The United States and China have sought to place guardrails around the use of AI in military applications, with President Joe Biden and Xi agreeing during a meeting in Peru on Saturday to restrict the role of AI in the use of nuclear weapons. “That kind of dialogue is a platform to discuss concerns and try to put forward what we think best practices are,” commissioner Randall Schriver said, “but the reality is that both sides are racing.” 

A number of the commission’s recommendations also focus on strengthening existing technology curbs on China, such as export controls on China’s semiconductor industry and restrictions on outbound investment into Chinese technology that were put in place by the Biden administration. Specific applications such as “autonomous humanoid robots”—the import of which the commission recommends barring—from China were mentioned, as were specific sectors such as biotechnology. “I don’t think people realize how badly we are losing in the biotech space, and that absent some dramatic investments by the government to accelerate innovation in that space, we’re going to be in a very dark place in the coming years,” said commissioner Michael Kuiken.  

During a briefing on Monday, some commissioners critiqued the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence” approach  that places strict restrictions on a small base of emerging technologies. “My basic view is that we’re in a techno-economic war with China, and so as China increases the number of fronts on which it’s waging its war, that automatically has to drive and determine the different fronts that we have to respond to,” Helberg said. “We’re not really going to be successful if we maintain a small number of yards that we want to defend ourselves against.” 

The commission’s report and recommendations reflect that “perhaps the yard should be a little broader,” Wessel said. 

The commissioners noted that their strident approach to curbing China’s rise predates the hawkishness against Beijing that has come to dominate discourse in Washington, and it is driven almost solely by China’s behavior in the global arena. 

“The breakdown in dialogue, to the extent it’s occurred, is unilateral and not shared by the United States,” Wessel said. “There is renewed engagement we all hope that will yield results, but we have to be realistic about China’s attitude and practices.”