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Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
China came ready for this trade fight, and the US has a lot to learn
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Under President Donald Trump , the US has launched a multipronged attack on China 's economy. Since Chairman Mao Zedong's reign, China has seen it coming. A US system built around the ideal of openness and interdependence is facing off against a Chinese counterpart constructed as a fortress of control. Both sides have powerful resources. Only one has been preparing for the fight for the beginning of Trump's first term in 2017, the US stance on China has swung from constructive if increasingly cautious engagement to something between fierce rivalry and outright hostility. China's exports to the US face duties running close to 40%. Supply of bleeding-edge semiconductors for China's technology companies has been curtailed. The country's science, technology, engineering and math students, once welcomed into US university labs, are checked at the border. The social media app TikTok, owned by Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd., is on a stay of execution in the US assumption in Washington is that China must now be floundering. Isn't it hooked on US customers and technologies? It's only a matter of time, surely, before President Xi Jinping picks up his red phone to call the White House and concede reality is rather different. It's certainly true that Trump's policy pivot is a problem for Beijing. Bloomberg Economics calculations show tariffs at the current levels would erase more than 50% of sales to the US. But it's far from the end of China's development exports to the US equal about 3% of gross domestic product—down from a peak of 7% two decades ago, after a campaign to diversify away from American consumers that's been every bit as deliberate as US efforts to reduce reliance on Chinese supply chains. That means even if half of China's exports to the US get wiped out, the blow to the overall economy is just 1.5%. Not good news, to be sure, but far from a the US starting a trade war against not just China but everyone else as well, its losses may well be around the same size. Model-based estimates from Bloomberg Economics flag a hit of about 1.6% of GDP as import prices rise and supply chains algorithmic outperformance of DeepSeek (China's answer to ChatGPT) shows its coders are smart enough to work around the US embargo on semiconductor supplies. Control of rare earth elements critical for manufacturing and defense industries has given China an export-controls weapon of its own—one it's used in this year's negotiations in Geneva and London to extract concessions from the upshot: Even after almost a decade of US efforts to contain its manufacturing might, China's share of global exports remains is China proving so resilient? Because for more than a century, from the last gasp of the Qing dynasty, through a short-lived Republic, to the chaos of Maoism and the progress of the reform era, there's been one outstanding constant: preparation for the struggle now playing started in the late 19th and early 20th century, when, after humiliation from foreign invaders, China's thinkers started to aim at 'self-strengthening' through modernization. Born in 1854, and graduating from the British naval academy, intellectual and educator Yan Fu translated into Chinese the works of Western scholars such as English biologist Thomas Huxley and Scottish economist Adam Smith. From Huxley he introduced the idea of 'survival of the fittest,' making the case that nations, like species in the natural world, must continually build themselves up to avoid falling prey to more powerful the 1930s struggle between Mao's Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, Mao's promise of effective resistance against the Japanese invaders, as much as the dream of a more egalitarian society, was the center of his appeal. In power from 1949, he instituted a forced-march approach to industrialization that ended in the graveyard for many Chinese. The path was winding, but the aim was unwavering: Stave off foreign threats. 'The American imperialists have always wanted to destroy us,' he the reform era that began soon after Mao's death in 1976, the self-strengthening objective remained the same, but the policies to deliver it were vastly improved. In the 1980s and '90s, He Xin—a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scholar whose work circulated among top leaders—warned that as China rose, 'developed countries feeling threatened by the increase in competition will seek to hold China down.' He had a plan to respond: 'With the constant threat of being destroyed, building a fully self-reliant industrial system should naturally be the most realistic option for China.'Such thinking was behind successive waves of development plans. In 1983, Deng Xiaoping introduced the State High-Tech Development Plan, aiming to close the gap with the US in information technology, automation and other areas. In 1994, Ren Zhengfei, founder of telecommunications equipment champion Huawei Technologies Co., told then-President Jiang Zemin 'a nation that does not have its own switching equipment is like one that lacks its own military.' Ren's lesson on the link between industrial self-sufficiency and national security is one the US is only now beginning to Jiang's successor Hu Jintao, the priorities were 'indigenous innovation' to bring foreign technologies in and a 'Great Fire Wall' to keep Western influence out. More than a decade before the US debate about TikTok's influence went viral, Google, Facebook and Twitter found themselves on the wrong side of the wall and effectively frozen out of the China market. Blocking the US giants opened space for China's own tech companies—Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba and others—to the top job since 2013, Xi unveiled his 'Made in China 2025' plan to extend Beijing's technology ambitions from self-sufficiency to global leadership in industries including IT, robotics, high-speed rail and electric vehicles. His 'Belt and Road' initiative aimed to diversify export markets, reducing dependence on the US consumer and extending China's global influence through investments in ports, rail networks and roads. While neither plan has been an unequivocal success, there have been tangible wins, including surging EV and solar panel exports and stronger ties with other emerging markets. Trump eyes the expanding BRICS coalition—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, as well as several more countries—as an anti-American the US, meanwhile, policy was shaped by post-Cold War hubris. The collapse of the Soviet Union convinced leaders that democracy and capitalism had won and the days of authoritarianism and state control were numbered. President Bill Clinton called support for China's membership in the World Trade Organization 'the most significant opportunity we have had to create positive social change in China since the 1970s.' His successors George W. Bush and Barack Obama did little to change the on the next quarterly earnings report, US multinationals shifted their supply chains to China's low-cost factories. An implicit bargain was struck: access to the world's most populous consumer and labor market in exchange for blueprints for vital technologies that power modern industry. Automakers including Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG were welcome so long as they signed on to joint ventures with homegrown Chinese companies. Starbucks Corp. and KFC opened thousands of outlets. But access to strategic upstream industries such as power and steel remained strictly walled a first-best world of free trade and market competition, the dynamism of the US approach should win every time. In the second-best world of protectionism and economic statecraft in which we now find ourselves, China's planned approach still carries significant costs, but the benefits are also easier to theory of the second best, expounded by economists Richard Lipsey and Kelvin Lancaster in 1956, holds that if one of the conditions for perfect markets is missing, sticking with the others—rather than finding a second-best accommodation—only makes things worse. China's state planners have spent decades developing tools for a second-best world. Their counterparts in the US haven' course, the US isn't entirely bereft of sticks and devoid of carrots. Control of the intellectual property behind advanced semiconductors, and the biggest consumer market in the world, might not enable Washington to deliver a hammer blow against China, but it can certainly land some painful punches. Investment pledges running into the hundreds of billions of dollars from the likes of Apple Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. suggest Trump's attempts to bring manufacturing home are gaining at least some traction. As a free-market democracy, the US has a capacity for course correction that is missing from China's state-controlled, single-party China's slow-motion real estate collapse, burgeoning industrial overcapacity and sky-high debt mean the blow from Trump's tariffs is hardly coming at an auspicious moment. The European Union following suit with its own protectionist measures threatens to compound the problem. Brussels has imposed tariffs on China's EVs, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's recent remarks on China 'flooding global markets with cheap, subsidized goods, to wipe out competitors' echo Trump on substance, even as the tone hews closer to diplomatic protocol.'I don't blame China,' Trump said shortly after his April 2 tariff extravaganza. 'I blame the people that were sitting at that desk in that beautiful Oval Office for allowing it to happen.' His solutions might misfire. Tariffs and export controls could end up causing more problems for Silicon Valley than they do for Shenzhen. On diagnosis of the cause of the problem, though, Trump has a point. The US thought free trade would change China's leaders; in fact, it empowered them. Now it's the US that faces a wrenching transition.
Malaysian Reserve
15-07-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
TikTok urgently pitches Canada security solution to avoid shutdown
TikTok is trying to talk with Canada about security solutions that would spare the popular video app from a looming order to shut operations in the country. So far, its pleas have fallen on deaf ears, said Steve de Eyre, director of TikTok's government affairs for Canada, in an interview. 'We are still looking to get to the table,' he said. TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance Ltd., started this month to freeze spending on cultural programs and sponsorships, following a November directive to close its Canadian unit, which cited national security concerns. TikTok would still be available on app stores for Canadians to use after the shutdown. 'Time is running out,' de Eyre said, though the company declined to share its deadline. TikTok has challenged the order in court. TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Melanie Joly on July 2 requesting an urgent in-person meeting within the next two weeks. According to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg, he wrote: 'The windup process is rapidly approaching a critical juncture where, unless you intervene, TikTok will be forced to fire all of its Canadian employees' as well as halting investment and support for creators. De Eyre confirmed the contents of the letter, and said the company hasn't yet received an official response. The Industry Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In other countries where it's faced concerns, TikTok has set up systems to fence off user data to prevent it from being sent to China. These were dubbed Project Texas in the US and Project Clover in the EU. Asked if TikTok has pitched Canada an equivalent like 'Project Maple,' de Eyre said: 'Maybe it would be Project Maple. But we need to sit down, understand the concerns that Canada has, and we want to build a solution that would provide greater data security, greater oversight and accountability where there are these concerns.' In the UK, TikTok hired a British firm to audit its data controls and protections to allay concerns. Right now, TikTok says it stores Canadian user data in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company said it paid C$340 million ($248 million) in Canadian tax from 2019 to 2024, employs about 350 people across Toronto and Vancouver, and has 14 million Canadian users. 'We've had people who have unfortunately left for other opportunities because of this order being out there, and we haven't been able to rehire for those roles because of the order,' de Eyre said. He argued the ban was enacted by a different government, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, 'in a different time,' and that things have changed in the US, where Donald Trump has delayed a more comprehensive order for ByteDance to sell or shut down the app. Last month Trump said he's found a buyer for the US operations. The irony of Canada's order if it goes through, de Eyre argues, is that the country loses 'the accountability of having a TikTok entity within Canada's legal jurisdiction, having employees who are directly accountable to parliament and regulators and law enforcement,' even though the app will remain available. –BLOOMBERG
Calgary Herald
14-07-2025
- Business
- Calgary Herald
TikTok Urgently Pitches Canada Security Solution to Avoid Shutdown
Article content (Bloomberg) — TikTok is trying to talk with Canada about security solutions that would spare the popular video app from a looming order to shut operations in the country. Article content So far, its pleas have fallen on deaf ears, said Steve de Eyre, director of TikTok's government affairs for Canada, in an interview. 'We are still looking to get to the table,' he said. Article content Article content TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance Ltd., started this month to freeze spending on cultural programs and sponsorships, following a November directive to close its Canadian unit, which cited national security concerns. TikTok would still be available on app stores for Canadians to use after the shutdown. Article content Article content 'Time is running out,' de Eyre said, though the company declined to share its deadline. TikTok has challenged the order in court. Article content Article content TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Melanie Joly on July 2 requesting an urgent in-person meeting within the next two weeks. Article content According to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg, he wrote: 'The windup process is rapidly approaching a critical juncture where, unless you intervene, TikTok will be forced to fire all of its Canadian employees' as well as halting investment and support for creators. Article content De Eyre confirmed the contents of the letter, and said the company hasn't yet received an official response. The Industry Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Article content In other countries where it's faced concerns, TikTok has set up systems to fence off user data to prevent it from being sent to China. These were dubbed Project Texas in the US and Project Clover in the EU. Article content Article content Asked if TikTok has pitched Canada an equivalent like 'Project Maple,' de Eyre said: 'Maybe it would be Project Maple. But we need to sit down, understand the concerns that Canada has, and we want to build a solution that would provide greater data security, greater oversight and accountability where there are these concerns.' Article content In the UK, TikTok hired a British firm to audit its data controls and protections to allay concerns. Article content Right now, TikTok says it stores Canadian user data in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company said it paid C$340 million ($248 million) in Canadian tax from 2019 to 2024, employs about 350 people across Toronto and Vancouver, and has 14 million Canadian users. Article content 'We've had people who have unfortunately left for other opportunities because of this order being out there, and we haven't been able to rehire for those roles because of the order,' de Eyre said.
NDTV
02-07-2025
- Business
- NDTV
Elon Musk's X To Deploy AI To Write Community Notes, Speed Up Fact-Checking
Elon Musk's X will start to publish Community Notes written by artificial intelligence agents, a move to increase the speed of the social network's fact-checking product and expand it to reach more people. Developers will soon be able to submit their own AI agents for review by the company. Those AI agents will write a series of practice notes behind the scenes, and if the company deems them helpful, the bot will be deployed to write notes that will appear publicly on the service. Humans will still review those AI-generated notes, and the note will only appear if people with a wide variety of viewpoints find them useful, said Keith Coleman, a product executive at X who runs the Community Notes program. That's the system in place for notes written by X users. AI notes could start to appear later this month. "They can help deliver a lot more notes faster with less work, but ultimately the decision on what's helpful enough to show still comes down to humans," Coleman said Tuesday in an interview. "So we think that combination is incredibly powerful." There are currently hundreds of notes published to X every day, Coleman said, and while he doesn't have a target for how that might change once AI is involved, there could be a "significant" increase. X first debuted a crowd-sourced fact-checking program when the company was still known as Twitter, and well before Musk's 2022 takeover. But its focus on Community Notes has increased under Musk's ownership, and has recently been adopted by other companies, including Meta Platforms Inc. and ByteDance Ltd.'s TikTok. Musk himself has said Community Notes serves as a bulwark against false information, calling it hoax kryptonite, but he is also regularly flagged by the fact-checking process for posting misleading information. Earlier this year he also suggested the system could be "gamed by governments & legacy media." Coleman said that other companies adoption of community notes is evidence that it's the best fact-checking system available. He's also hopeful that asking humans to review the AI notes before publishing them will create a "feedback loop" that will improve the bots as well. "It's a new feedback cycle," he said. "The model can be improved not just by one random human's feedback, but by feedback from a diverse audience." AI agents can be powered by any technology, Coleman said, not just Grok, the bot that was created by Musk's AI startup xAI.
NDTV
30-06-2025
- Business
- NDTV
"Have A Buyer For TikTok," Says Trump But He Won't Divulge Name
President Donald Trump said he has identified a buyer for the US operations of TikTok, the social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., but he won't provide details for two weeks. "We have a buyer for Tiktok, by the way. I think I'll need probably China approval and I think President Xi will probably do it," he said, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in an interview on Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. "It's a group of very wealthy people." The interview, which aired Sunday, was taped on Friday. Trump earlier said he would extend for the third time a deadline for ByteDance to sell the US portions of TikTok, which would give the company 90 days beyond June 19. Congress passed a law last year requiring the divestiture, citing national security concerns. Under the law, the president was allowed to invoke one extension. Movement on a deal has largely stalled with US-China trade relations swept up in larger tensions over tariff negotiations. Before Trump announced widespread tariffs in April, a deal was reportedly close, advanced by a consortium of US investors including Oracle Corp., Blackstone Inc. and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The White House didn't respond to a request for more details on Trump's latest remarks.
