American business leaders should be cautious about Chinese investments, warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Blinken sounded the alarm on Tuesday while speaking at Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit.
“re is no distinction between a so-called private enterprise and the state,” he said. “If a private Chinese enterprise makes the investment, the state has access to whatever that enterprise has access to.”
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can gain access to private companies in a number of different ways. In China, most companies, institutions, schools, and other entities have party branches or party cells embedded in them—allowing party officials to keep a tab on their operations and get hold of their confidential information.
Chinese laws also grant CCP officials sweeping authority to collect data. For example, China’s Cybersecurity Law, which went into effect in 2017, requires all companies operating in China to store their data within the country’s borders.
Additionally, China’s Counter-Espionage Law compels individuals and companies to “truthfully provide” information to assist state security organs in their investigations.
Blinken said he was not calling for the U.S. economy to decouple from China, but for Americans to be “on guard.”
“re are very specific critical areas that have strategic importance, security importance, where we have to be on guard,” he said.
One Chinese company that has come under international scrutiny in recent years is Chinese tech giant Huawei due to its extensive ties to the CCP and the Chinese military. company is banned from supplying 5G telecommunications equipment to U.S. networks. Huawei equipment has also been found to have numerous security vulnerabilities.
Blinken also warned about the Chinese regime wanting to replace the current world order.
“ challenge is that the world order that China would prefer is a profoundly illiberal one, as opposed to a liberal one,” he explained. “If China is doing the challenging, we’ll stand up.”
“We are going to be much more effective if we’re doing it in concert with allies and partners who are similarly aggrieved by some of China’s actions.”
secretary said if the United States teams up with its allies—a combined economic clout of about 40 to 50 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP)—it would have “a much heavier weight” and “more impact” on China.
“Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to stop trade and investment,” Blinken said. “Our purpose is to uphold the international order.”
“We have a very profound stake in upholding the order, making sure to the best of our ability that countries—whoever they are, wherever they are—actually play by the established rules, the norms, [and] meet the standards.”
Pezou : Blinken Says US Business Leaders Should Be ‘On Guard’ About Chinese Investments