Self-reliance goal runs counter to Chinese leaders' globalisation narrative: US diplomat

The goal of self-reliance runs counter to the globalisation narrative of Chinese leaders, a top US diplomat has said, alleging that Beijing is engaged in a state-led, industrial-policy-based, whole-of-nation competitive strategy on acquisition of sensitive foreign technologies by any and every possible means.

The US is placing increasing emphasis upon raising awareness about Chinese efforts and putting up barriers to the proliferation of sensitive technologies which Beijing has been using to build up its military capabilities in support of its ambitious "China dream" of "national rejuvenation" to regain its position as a world leader in a range of fields, including military might, Christopher Ashley Ford, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-proliferation, said.

"China is today engaged in a state-led, industrial-policy-based, whole-of-nation competitive strategy that revolves in crucial ways around the acquisition of sensitive foreign technologies by any, and every, possible mean," Ford said in his address to the US Naval Academy on Wednesday.

"This effort takes advantage of open economies to attempt to ensure China's ability to rely on itself as a source of critical technologies. Ironically, this goal of self-reliance runs precisely counter to the globalisation narrative China's senior most leaders claim to support," Ford said.

"All of these dynamics in turn raise serious questions about China's strategic intentions especially in light of China's own strategic writings about how it is acquiring and diverting such technologies to military applications in support of a geopolitical agenda that challenges US power and influence in the Indo-Pacific region," the diplomat said.

Ford said that the US has just announced that it is doing with regard to civil-nuclear cooperation.

"We are not stopping all nuclear technology cooperation with Beijing, but we are ending cooperation on advanced projects such as small modular reactors or other advanced designs that China could use and clearly plans to use not merely for civilian power generation but to facilitate advances in ballistic missile submarine propulsion, or to power military outposts seized by force in the South China Sea.

"Where once we cooperated all too uncritically with Beijing in civil nuclear power applications, we are now doing so much more cautiously, and will deny licenses for anything that China could use for military purposes under its MCF strategy," Ford said.

If any sensitive technology is accessible to China, and officials there believe it can be of use to the country's military and national security complex as Beijing prepares itself to challenge the US for global leadership, it's a pretty safe bet that it will be used for those purposes, he said.

"Beginning last July at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, we have been publicly drawing attention to the degree to which both licit and illicit transfers have been used to augment Chinese military power, as authorities in Beijing have in a process known in Chinese strategic writings as "Military-Civilian Fusion", and now personally overseen by (Chinese President) Xi Jinping himself systematically worked to routinise military application of know-how acquired abroad," Ford added.