Straight News: The U.S. Department of Commerce has added 13 Chinese companies to the "Unverified List", compared with the "Entity List", why has the U.S. used the "Unverified List" tool more and more frequently for Chinese companies recently?
Yu Xiang, Special Expert, Center for Strategic and Security Studies, Tsinghua University: We know that according to the current US export control system, there are four major lists, the first is the entity list, the second is the unverified list, the third is the rejected list, and the fourth is the military use list. The Entity List and the Unverified List are the two major lists that are frequently used by the U.S. Export Control Department. The Entity List and the Unverified List have in common that they are both used to control the export of high-tech products and technologies from the United States, but the difference is that the Entity List has a higher threshold and is then more enforceable.
Obviously, the arbitrariness of the unverified list is relatively low and its threshold is relatively low, and the characteristics of such a list determine that when the U.S. government uses it to manage export controls, it has a relatively lower threshold and stronger practicability. So that's why we're seeing more frequent and frequent use of unverified lists since the Biden administration took office.
There are two more important reasons. The first is that the Biden administration hopes to continue to suppress the development of China's high-tech industry, which also reflects the so-called policy of suppressing China's high-tech export policies by the Biden administration in the early stage, but in fact did not achieve its expected results, and the second is because we know that the Chinese and US heads of state have held a meeting in Los Angeles in November, which has pointed out the direction for the future development of China-US relations between the two sides. However, the US side clearly wants to separate the stabilization of Sino-US relations from the suppression of the development of China's high-tech enterprises, or to divide them into two sections. On the one hand, we hope to stabilize China-US relations and hope that the overall pattern will remain unchanged, which is in the interests of the development of the United States as a whole and the interests of the Biden administration. But at the same time, it also hopes to suppress China's high-tech development, which is also the strategic goal that the Biden administration hopes to achieve before. From the perspective of the Biden administration, it is hoped that China will continue to become a consumer market and a raw material supply market for the United States, but at the same time, it will curb China's strategic intention to climb higher than the high-end of the supply chain.
Straight news: The 27th China-South Korea Trade Practice Meeting was held in Seoul on the 19th. The two sides exchanged views on common concerns such as plans to create new growth points for deepening trade and investment cooperation, and agreed to strengthen docking and cooperation in maintaining the stability and smoothness of industrial and supply chains. Previously, South Korea had also cooperated with the United States in the "decoupling" of China's economy and trade, what information did China and South Korea release this time to strengthen cooperation in maintaining production and supply chains?
Yu Xiang, special expert of the Center for Strategic and Security Studies at Tsinghua University: Because we know that after the Yoon Suk-yeol administration came to power, the entire South Korean strategy towards the United States has been to follow the trend and actively cooperate with the United States in a strategic containment of China, so it has not hesitated to sacrifice some exports to China, including high-tech export restrictions.
But we also know that from the actual results, in fact, the impact on the South Korean economy is still very large, we see that South Korea's economic growth rate this year is downgraded, and next year will also be lowered. Personally, I think this reality is a very big lesson for the South Korean government, which makes it realize that when it is pursuing some unrealistic slogans and so-called values and concepts, it should actually pay more attention to the development of its own economy and respond to the people's demands for a better life.
Straight News: What do you think can be seen from the "urea shortage" in South Korea about the deep ties between China and South Korea in economic and trade relations?
Yu Xiang, a special expert at the Center for Strategic and Security Studies at Tsinghua University: "The urea shortage" is more of a warning to the South Korean government or the South Korean economy. It is the current policy of South Korea to actively cooperate with the United States in encircling China, which will actually have a huge backlash effect on the South Korean economy.
South Korea has chosen to fully follow the United States and China to "decouple and break the chain", so such a situation will lead to the lack of imports of these raw materials and intermediate goods in South Korea itself, thus endangering the development of other industrial chains in South Korea. I believe that if the South Korean government continues to implement such a policy, there will be more and more such intermediate goods or basic raw materials, or even sales market shortages, or mismatch problems in South Korea will become more and more serious.
And then we have to see that South Korea's current economic structure is, because of its geographical location, and its entire domestic economic structure, South Korea is highly dependent on foreign exports. So if South Korea pursues its own policies or formulates policies in the future, if it is simply unrealistic, or pursues some so-called values and concepts, and only looks forward to some unrealistic strategies, I think it may have a greater negative impact on its own economy in the future.
Therefore, I think I can draw a relatively big conclusion from this, any country may formulate its own foreign strategy or policy implementation policy, it may have to formulate a series of policies based on its own stage of economic development and its own economic structure, and at the same time, the final implementation and implementation of its policy depends on whether this policy is necessary to maintain its own economic development and improve the living standards of the domestic people. Therefore, it should be used as a guide for their policies, rather than pursuing some unrealistic slogans, values or strategies.
Yu Xiang is a special expert at the Center for Strategic and Security Studies at Tsinghua University
Editor丨Wang Zhijing, editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News