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Prior to the signing of the Phase-One Agreement, USTR Lighthizer reiterated his emphasis on a “trust but verify” approach to ensuring compliance. “Much still needs to be done before an agreement is reached, and, more importantly, after it is reached, if one is reached (Rosenbaum, 2019). That foreshadowing proved telling, in that President Biden’s appointed USTR, Katherine Tai, expressed a continuing commitment to protecting American manufacturers’ IP and lamenting that the Chinese have yet to make good on the Phase-One Agreement (Cohen, 2022). The bipartisan exasperation has resulted in a budding consensus that strategic decoupling of the two economies might be in the United States’ best interest. Such an approach would require a careful, case-by-case assessment of the costs and benefits of continuing to jeopardize IP rights versus the financial rewards that accrue to companies making those decisions.

The most sensitive cases involve matters of national security. As a result, the U.S. government has expressed a prerogative to prohibit trade in the event it deems the trade to involve an unacceptable risk to U.S. defense concerns. Writing in the conservative National Review, American Enterprise Institute China expert Derek Scissors points to a protocol that requires technology transfers to the Chinese military from the civilian tech sector:

If successfully implemented, smart courts could substantially alter China’s judicial system and advance economic and social development. First, China’s push for smart courts signals a step toward “controlled transparency” by the CCP, as court cases and documents are increasingly available to the public. While transparency could decrease corruption, the SPC has ultimate oversight over published material, which allows sensitive information to be carefully filtered. Second, e-courts could create a more accessible judicial system, allowing individuals in rural areas who would otherwise travel hours or days relatively easy access to the system. Additionally, when courts are no longer physically accessible in extenuating circumstances like a pandemic, smart courts would allow judicial activities to continue. However, online courts do not guarantee accessibility to adequate technological equipment or education around the judicial system. Third, e-filing and digitalization offer increased efficiency through reducing judges’ and clerks’ workload, while also notably decreasing individual judges’ oversight. Fourth, like-case recommendation systems offer a more standardized and consistent judicial decision-making process; outlier decisions are flagged for further inspection, which could serve as a tool to increasingly monitor judges.

In addition to such advances, smart courts could also increase the CCP’s control over the judicial system. For one, smart courts further consolidate the CCP’s political power by moving judicial control away from local authorities and into more centralized ones; the SPC’s heightened scrutiny over case standardization and like-case recommendation systems keep case decisions consistent with the party line, which accordingly decreases individual judges’ discretion. Additionally, legal experts note that this increased, controlled transparency and tightened judicial oversight could loop the judicial system into Xi’s hallmark anti-corruption campaign. As such, the CCP could use smart courts to effectively ensure that judicial outcomes are consistent with and supportive of CCP goals and related policy initiatives. While situated soundly within the CCP’s framework propelling development through technological innovation, Chinese smart courts also signal an increased oversight over the judicial system that could serve as a tool to improve party outcomes. Perhaps more notably, if successfully implemented, Chinese smart courts could set a precedent for the digitalization of courts worldwide.

As previously mentioned, the 206 System is an AI-based trial-assistance system developed by the ICT company iFlyTek and Shanghai People’s High Court. Initially, it was an integrated criminal-cases processing system with functions of automatically examining and connecting the dots in the evidence chain, matching the case facts with similar cases, sorting out the applicable laws and doctrines, and assisting the judges to apply the law methodically to the key factors in facts as revealed by evidence. Therefore, its full name is “Shanghai intelligent case-handling system for assisting judges in criminal cases.” Now, it has been expanded to cover certain types of civil- and commercial-law cases. Because iFlyTek is a leading company in NLP, the 206 System applies cutting-edge NLP technology to identify the semantic meaning of legal and evidentiary texts. It also uses mature technologies such as Dual Iterative Pattern Relation Extraction (DIPRE) and bootstrapping to simultaneously extract templates and examples from labelled samples and then train the machine to annotate texts automatically. The result is a fully functioning system deployed in Shanghai courts.

In a courtroom equipped with the 206 System, there are telescreens in front of the judge, the prosecutor, the defendant, or the parties in civil cases, and lawyers. With the progress of the trial, relevant information, such as arrest warrants, witness statements, interrogation records, video clips, etc. will be displayed on the screen automatically, prompted by the voice-recognition function of the system. The system not only displays information; it also analyzes the information automatically. After displaying the evidence, it will give an evaluation on whether the evidence forms a chain meeting the statutory standard of proof.

Blockchain technology has emerged as the underlying technology of Bitcoin, and it is a decentralized infrastructure and distributed computing paradigm.1 Specifically, blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that employs a chain of blocks to timestamp transaction data. Each data block is bundled to the previous block in the blockchain through the cryptographic hash of the previous block and synchronized across all the users, thereby ensuring the data is irreversible; that is, data cannot be changed once the network has accepted that data.2 Such technology will dramatically reduce transaction costs, and once applied on a large scale, it will reshape the economic model.3 In other words, blockchain can be a disruptive technology to promote future economic growth in the new global technological and industrial revolution round. The integrated application of blockchain technology plays a vital role in new technological innovation and industrial transformation.4 Cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and 5G are thriving. With the development and advancement of China's Internet Courts5 and Smart Courts,6 blockchain electronic evidence is making a more significant contribution to judicial practice, especially in the digital copyright industry. In June 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court announced a case of first impression involving blockchain evidence preservation, Huatai Yimei v. Daotong Technology.7 Since then, the application of electronic evidence stored on the blockchain in copyright cases has dramatically increased. According to the statistics published by ‘China Judgments Online’, between June 2018 and August 2023, there were 1430 cases of intellectual property ownership and infringement involving blockchain evidence, of which 1191 cases were copyright cases, and about 70 % of these cases regarded the infringement of the right of communication through an information network.8 We realize that blockchain evidence preservation technology is widely used in the era of digital copyright.

In the digital environment, the copyright owner's proof of ownership of his work, the defendant's infringing contents, and the damages are all in the form of electronic evidence. However, as a kind of evidence fixed in electronic equipment and formed with electronic technology, electronic evidence has flaws that are easily distorted or modified but difficult to detect.9 In addition, the creation time of online works is hard to determine, and the infringing contents are easy to delete, contributing to the critical issue of “difficulty in collecting evidence”10 in the cause of electronic notarization. Nevertheless, relevant legal practice11 and research12 have shown that blockchain technology can be adopted to collect, store, and fix related electronic data (Blockchain evidence) in online copyright disputes. As a result, blockchain evidence has remarkably become the most significant way for facts finding in Internet court trials.13

The Hangzhou Internet Court has already accepted Blockchain evidence in a copyright litigation.® Even though there has been no trademark case involving Blockchain evidence, Blockchain technology could potentially apply in this area.

Since the timestamp is as immutable as the data, Blockchain can verify an assertion at a given time. For trademarked products, accurately recording information about a product’s history can be of value, particularly by using the time of record entry for evidence of first use and adoption of a trademark. For example, when two or more applicants apply to register an identical or similar trademark for the same goods on the same day, Blockchain can help prove who is “first in time and first in right” (article 31of PRC Trademark Law)>. Also, Blockchain evidence might possibly assist by strengthening an argument to oppose or invalidate a third party’s trademark (article 32)% if the third party has infringed upon an existing prior right. Evidence of use recorded on Blockchain may also be helpful to prove “prior use” (article 59 paragraph 3)* in a variety of trademark conflicts and could possibly assist in “famous and well-known mark” proceedings (article 14)7. In these instances, Blockchain could potentially be used to simplify and verify the available evidence, in turn helping trademark examiners and judges.

Evidence lies at the heart of many challenges in enforcing intellectual property rights online. When a copyright work is made available online, it is often difficult for right holders to track down pirated copies, due to the sheer scale of unauthorised copies on the Internet. When trademarked goods are sold online, it is often difficult for consumers, right holders and platforms to track down where the goods have come from and to figure out whether the goods are counterfeits or pirated. The anonymity of Bad Actors on the Internet exacerbates the difficulty of tracking down the source of counterfeits or pirated goods.

China is currently at the forefront of realising Blockchain’s potential in intellectual property enforcement, especially in evidence collection. In 2018, the Hangzhou Internet Court accepted Blockchain-authenticated evidence in a copyright infringement case, the first court to do so anywhere in the world.®” In this case, the Blockchain-based evidence preservation service “Baoquan” was used to securely capture and store a snapshot of a website. The snapshot proved that the defendant in the case had unlawfully disseminated the claimant’s copyright material.” The value of the Blockchain tool here was to enable the claimant to prove that the evidence of infringement — the snapshot of the website — was authentic and had not been tampered with. In the instant the snapshot is captured, a copy is digitally signed and “hashed” with a timestamp before being stored on the Factom Blockchain. This copy functions as a secure record that cannot be altered.”" The tool thus allowed the court to compare the evidence presented by the claimant with the secure Blockchain record, establishing that it had not been tampered with and could be relied upon.”” The Hangzhou Internet Court went to considerable trouble in the course of its verdict to explain the credibility and trustworthiness of Blockchain technology itself.”

For example, recently, customers in China have been able to buy Blockchain chickens.® Chinese insurance company ZhongAn has used Inchain* and ToT® to enable consumers to track the chickens they purchase, giving them peace of mind that the chickens are truly free-range and authentic®. “Gogochicken”, as the product is called, allows consumers to examine the chicken’s age and rearing location, how far it walked each day, the degree of air pollution in its environment, the quality of the water it drank, when it was quarantined, when slaughtered, and other details. All of this is recorded in a secure digital ledger based on Blockchain’. As the company boasts in its advertisement, the tech is intended “to bring you and your family visible assurance®. French supermarket chain Carrefour SA® has successfully employed Blockchain technology to record the provenance of their chickens, and similar supply-chain data systems are being explored by Alibaba and JD, two China-based e-commerce giants.

Last year, Alibaba Australia launched a Blockchain-based initiative called Food Trust Framework to improve cross-border food supply chain traceability'®. Alibaba joined forces with Australia Post, Blackmores Limited and PwC in 2017 to explore the use of Blockchain technology to address supply-chain fraud in the food industry.!! The system, which is being piloted in Australia and New Zealand, aims to ship food, especially dairy products, from Australia and New Zealand to China via Alibaba’s Tmall Global platform. The system enables online shoppers on Taobao and Tmall to verify the authenticity of food products and avoid potentially dangerous counterfeits.'> In 2018, Tang Ren, Cainiao’s senior technical expert for international logistics, promised: “With logistics data being uploaded from all parties, such as retailers and customs officials, buyers can cross-reference every detail of their purchases. Any attempts to conduct data fraud or add in counterfeit products will be as difficult as landing on Mars.”'?

Moreover, writers who use an online pseudonym may well have difficulties proving authorship in future, with the accompanying risk that their work is considered to be an orphan work. Orphan works present significant difficulties, not just for their authors, but for any third parties who might be interested in buying those works. Since a time-stamped fingerprint on a Blockchain provides evidence of existence at a given time, this is where Blockchain potentially comes into play via official or private copyright registries. Time will tell whether private registry certificates will be accepted by the courts.

Registrations are also taking a serious look at Blockchain technology. Blockchain is being used to maintain registries of vehicle-ownership rights: the Danish Customs and Tax Administration, for example, is exploring the use of Blockchain to facilitate the registration and transfer of ownership of vehicles.”> When vehicles are sold, sellers must currently trust buyers to notify authorities about the change in ownership. Unscrupulous buyers who fail to re-register their vehicles expose sellers to liability for parking fines and speeding tickets, while avoiding paying tax. Blockchain provides a mechanism for the sellers’ transfer of ownership to be conducted securely and automatically, while allowing buyers to ascertain the authenticity of a vehicle and examine its history.

A strategy combining both a public-sector approach through a nation’s bilateral economic relations with Russia and a private-sector approach with companies’ litigation in Russian courts could prolong Russia’s status as a “pariah economy.” 181 Rather than succumb to pressure from unfriendly countries and their entities, Moscow could accelerate its withdrawal from the global economy in favor of strengthening its ties with major players such as China and India.182 As hundreds of Western businesses left Russia, Chinese and Indian firms eagerly replaced them and their services in the Russian market.183 Meanwhile, Russian exports of commodities such as oil and minerals to China and India kept the Russian economy afloat in the face of crushing sanctions.184 If such trends continue, the Putin regime would not recognize an incentive in seeking a bilateral understanding with Western nations and resolving grievances put forward by Western businesses.185 Russia has even sought to expand its economic reach to new markets in Latin America and Africa, and has found officials at minimal willing to lend an ear to prospective trade.186

Even as the quality of goods deteriorates and domestic production levels stagnate, the Kremlin believes that the Russian consumer can bear the steep economic cost.187 In effect, the Kremlin is buying its own propaganda as it did during the early 1980s, when leaders ignored signs that the Soviet economy was faltering, weakened by its internal failings and pressure from U.S. export controls of high-technology products.188 Rather than focus on the Russian economy’s structural deficiencies, Putin and his inner circle believe it is the West’s own failings that will eventually allow them to prevail.189 They steadfastly believe that democracies are inherently feeble because they can succumb to public opinion pressure that festers in times of economic crisis.190 Therefore, instead of favoring an understanding with Western nations by assuaging their economic concerns, including protecting IP rights, Putin and his inner circle’s reasoning could outlast the West in a prolonged waiting game.191 For Western entities seeing to enforce their IP rights and hoping to maintain a semblance of a presence within Russia, dealing with a political-military leadership influenced by such a hostile outlook towards the West may not be worth expounding the time or effort of maintaining a commercial presence in Russia.192

Cyber attacks have become a tool of statecraft in this technology-driven age. Today, nations succeed or fail in large part based on how effectively they develop, implement and protect new technologies.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed details of an extensive nation-state cyber espionage campaign targeting non-military entities such as universities, businesses and government agencies. The government alleges that nine hackers associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accessed and compromised intellectual property (IP) that cost the victim organizations $3.4 billion to develop.

Law-abiding businesses around the world are increasingly under attack by elements of the Iranian regime engaging in the theft of intellectual property (IP). In an effort to deceive and manipulate businesses, Iranian entities routinely misrepresent themselves to have relationships with some of the world’s leading firms in nearly every sector of the economy. Researchers at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) routinely identify and investigate instances of these threats to the reputational integrity of businesses in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Some of firms have even pursued legal action against the Iranian entities following UANI investigations.

Last month, UANI located an Iranian avionics commerce website, Persia PilotShop, touting its ties as an exclusive dealer of products sold by ultralight aircraft manufacturers such as Blackshape and Blackwing, aircraft engine manufacturers like BRP Rotax, and aerospace companies including Airbus and Boeing.

Cyber attacks have become a tool of statecraft in this technology-driven age. Today, nations succeed or fail in large part based on how effectively they develop, implement and protect new technologies.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed details of an extensive nation-state cyber espionage campaign targeting non-military entities such as universities, businesses and government agencies. The government alleges that nine hackers associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accessed and compromised intellectual property (IP) that cost the victim organizations $3.4 billion to develop.

Populist pressures might tempt the party leadership to encourage diversionary nationalism. The logic of this concern is straightforward: the Communist Party might seek to distract a restless domestic population with adventurism abroad.19 The Xi administration wants to appear tough in its defense of foreign encroachments against China’s interests. This need stems from a long-running narrative about how a weak Qing dynasty was unable to defend China in the face of European imperial expansion, epitomized by the Opium Wars and the subsequent treaties imposed on China in the nineteenth century. The party is particularly sensitive to perceptions of weakness because much of its claim to legitimacy—manifested in Xi’s Chinese Dream campaign today—stems from the party’s claims of leading the restoration of Chinese greatness. For example, the May Fourth Movement, a popular protest in 1919 that helped catalyze the CPC, called into question the legitimacy of the Republic of China government running the country at that time because the regime was seen as not having effectively defended China’s territorial and sovereignty interests at the Versailles Peace Conference.

Diversionary nationalist frictions would likely occur if the Chinese leadership portrayed a foreign adversary as having made the first move, thus forcing Xi to stand up for China’s interests. An example is the 2012 attempt by the nationalist governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, to buy the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from a private owner.20 Although the Japanese central government sought to avert a crisis by stepping in to purchase the islands—having them bought and administered by Ishihara’s Tokyo metropolitan government would have dragged Japan into a confrontation with China—China saw this move as part of a deliberate orchestration by Japan to nationalize the islands. Xi seemingly had no choice but to defend China’s claims against an attempt by Japan to consolidate its position on the dispute.21 This issue touched off a period of heated tensions between China and Japan, lasting more than two years.22 Such dynamics are not limited to Japan. Other possible areas of conflict include, but are not necessarily limited to, Taiwan, India, and the South China Sea (especially with the Philippines and Vietnam).

Should the CCP undergo some sort of dramatic transformation – whether that be significant reform or complete collapse, as some radical China scholars predict2 – the implications for international and US national security are vast. Not only does China and the stability of the CCP play a significant role in the maintenance of peace in the East Asian region, but China is also relied upon by many members of the international community for foreign direct investment, economic stability and trade. China plays a key role in maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula as one of North Korea’s only allies, and it is argued that instability within the Chinese government could also lead to instability in the already sensitive military and political situation across the Taiwan Strait. For the United States, the effect of instability within the CCP would be widespread and dramatic. As the United States’ largest holder of US treasury securities, instability or collapse of the CCP could threaten the stability of the already volatile economic situation in the US. In addition, China is the largest trading partner of a number of countries, including the US, and the US is reliant upon its market of inexpensive goods to feed demand within the US.

It is with this in mind that China scholars within the United States and around the world should be studying this phenomenon, because the potential for reform, instability or even collapse of the CCP is of critical importance to the stability of the international order as a whole. For the United States specifically, the potential - or lack thereof - for reform of the CCP should dictate its foreign policy toward China. If the body of knowledge on the stability of the Chinese government reveals that the Chinese market is not a stable one, it is in the best interests of the United States to look for investors and trade markets elsewhere to lessen its serious dependence on China for its economic stability, particularly in a time of such uncertain economic conditions within the US.

Global attention has focused on the plunge in the Shanghai stock market and mounting evidence that China’s economic growth is slowing dramatically. Moreover, the contagion appears to be spreading, characterized by extreme volatility and alarming declines in America’s own equity markets. Those worries are compounded because there always have been doubts about the accuracy of Beijing’s official economic statistics. Even before the current downturn, some outside experts believed that Chinese officials padded the results, making the country’s performance appear stronger than it actually was. If China is now teetering on the brink of recession, the political incentives for officials to conceal the extent of the damage would be quite powerful. The focus on the possible wider economic consequences of a severe Chinese economic slowdown is understandable, since the ramifications could be extremely unpleasant for the U.S. and global economies. But we should also be vigilant about how such economic stress might affect Beijing’s diplomatic and military behavior. It is not unprecedented for a government that feels besieged to attempt to distract a discontented public by fomenting a foreign policy crisis. In Henry IV, Shakespeare pithily described that process as the temptation to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.” China’s leaders likely feel increasingly uncomfortable. The implicit bargain that has been in place since the onset of market-oriented reforms in the late 1970s has been that if the public does not challenge the Communist Party’s dominant political position, the Party will deliver an ever-rising standard of living for the people. The bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 was a graphic reminder of what happens if the Party’s position is challenged. However, until now, the economic portion of the bargain seemed secure, characterized by breathtaking, often double digit, rates of growth. It is uncertain what happens if the Party can no longer maintain its part of the implicit bargain, but it is likely that a dangerous degree of public discontent will surface. Beijing might refrain from deliberately provoking a major foreign policy crisis, since the Chinese economy depends heavily on export markets, and access to those markets would be jeopardized by war. However, the need to preserve and strengthen national unity and distract the public from mounting economic troubles is likely to impel Chinese leaders to adopt very hardline policies in at least three areas. And all of those situations entail the danger of miscalculations that could lead to war. One issue is the South China Sea. Beijing has made extraordinarily broad territorial claims that encompass some 90 percent of that body of water. China is pressing its claims with air and naval patrols and the building of artificial islands. Those policies have brought Beijing into acrimonious disputes with neighbors such as Vietnam and the Philippines, which have rival territorial claims, and with the world’s leading maritime power, the United States, which resists any manifestation of Chinese control over the South China Sea and the crucial commercial lanes that pass through it. The conditions are in place for a nasty confrontation. Chinese leaders have already stressed the country’s alleged historical claims to the area, and made it clear that it will not tolerate being subjected to humiliation by outside powers. Such arguments are designed to gain domestic support by reminding the Chinese people of the country’s long period of weakness and humiliation in the 1800s and early 1900s. A second issue is Taiwan. Beijing has long argued that Taiwan is rightfully part of China and was stolen from the country in the Sino-Japanese war in 1895. Although Chinese leaders have exhibited patience regarding the issue of reunification, relying in large measure on growing cross-strait economic ties to entice Taiwan to eventually accept that outcome, Beijing has also reacted very sharply whenever Taiwanese officials have pushed an agenda of independence, as during the administration of Chen Shui-bian from 2000 to 2008. The danger or renewed confrontation is rising, since public opinion polls indicate that the nominee of Chen’s old party, the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, will be Taiwan’s next leader. A new crisis in the Taiwan Strait would be extremely serious, since the United States has obligated itself to consider any Chinese efforts at coercion as a “grave breach of the peace” of East Asia. Yet there is little doubt that there would be widespread domestic support on the mainland for a stern response by the Beijing government to a Taiwanese attempt to enhance its de-facto independence. Indeed, there might be more political danger to the regime if it did not take a strong stance on that issue. The third possible arena for crisis is the East China Sea. China is increasingly adamant about its claims to the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, which are under Japanese control. From China’s perspective, those islands were stolen by Imperial Japan at the same time that Tokyo took possession of Taiwan following the 1895 war. And ginning up public anger against Japan is never difficult. China just finished celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, which is touted in China as “the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.” Recalling Japan’s invasion of China, and the resulting atrocities, was a prominent theme of the various commemorative events. But the animosity is not based solely on historical grievances. Anger at Japan over the ongoing East China Sea dispute and other matters has already produced anti-Japanese riots in Chinese cities, characterized by attacks on Japanese businesses and automobiles. There is a powerful incentive for Chinese leaders to take an uncompromising stance on the Diaoyu/Senkaku feud, confident that the Chinese people will back such a stance. All of this suggests that the United States and its allies need to proceed cautiously about dealing with China, especially on these three issues. Now is not the time to press a Chinese leadership that likely feels beleaguered by the country’s economic woes. The last thing we should do is give those leaders further temptation to distract the Chinese people with a foreign policy confrontation. Such a strategy entails the grave risk of miscalculation and escalation, and that would be a tragedy for all concerned.

Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk of war between major powers. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly, i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative moves. The greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but that changes in the world economy alter those circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational production networks, provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This could have unforeseen consequences in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.

We’ve spent decades worrying about the dangers of China’s rise. We should worry even more if that rise is coming to a halt.

Tensions between the two countries are as high as they’ve been since the 1980s. And things are likely to get worse. One of the few points of agreement between Republicans and Democrats is that both want to decrease American dependence on Chinese manufacturing. On China’s side, friction over Taiwan is intensifying. Taiwan’s status as a stable democracy is a constant challenge to a Chinese Communist Party that wants to assert control over the island. At the same time, American policymakers are stepping up their support for Taiwan, driven both by the desire to counter China and in response to the country’s critical importance to the world economy stemming from its dominance of the manufacture of advanced semiconductors (as brilliantly described in Chris Miller’s Chip War).

Over the past few decades, China has pulled off the greatest heist ever. More than 600 billion dollars every year is stolen from right under the noses of Americans, but the government is unable to do anything about it. China has been prospering, but Americans have been suffering, having their ingenuity turned against them. The problem is this: U.S. trademarks, copyrights, and patents have no authority over the Chinese government or businesses.

Nothing can stop China from taking any intellectual property (IP) you have. Your writing, music, inventions, or anything you create is protected domestically, but there is no legal action the U.S. government can take against sovereign nations regarding IP.

China is now an undeniable economic superpower. It has attained this status through endless dishonesty and a simple combination of lying, cheating, and stealing. The Chinese Communist Party has deployed a full array of economic weapons, including intellectual-property theft, corporate espionage, forced technology transfer, widespread product dumping, and currency manipulation.

Intellectual-property theft is China’s most blatant, lucrative, and consistent act of economic warfare. The PRC is the world’s most prolific IP thief many times over. China commits up to 80 percent of all intellectual-property theft against the United States, produces over 70 percent of all counterfeit goods shipped into our country, and is the subject of nearly half of all FBI counterintelligence cases involving economic espionage. China steals the equivalent of Arkansas’s economy in intellectual-property theft at least twice every year.

Myth 2: China’s Real Estate Crisis Threatens Future Growth Momentum

Real estate remains a crucial pillar of the Chinese economy, especially as projections suggest that over the next decade, a staggering 100 million people will migrate to urban areas, driving demand for real estate development.