Dr Fu Yuning is the Chairman of China Resources Holding and a member of the National Committee of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CCPPCC).

In this interview with James Chau, he talks about the transformed role of state-owned enterprises in China, and lends his insight on how foreign-owned businesses can continue to leverage opportunities in China, especially around healthcare.

This interview was recorded at the US-China Trade and Economic Relations Forum in Hong Kong on 9-10 July, 2019.

Neil Bush is the Founder and Chairman of the George HW Bush Foundation - named for his father, the 41st President of the United States.

In this interview with James Chau, Bush recounts the stories from his own interactions with China, beginning with his first visit to Beijing in 1975. He also reflects on the modern development of China and advocates for "deeper dialogue" between the U.S. and China - a dialogue that must be globally inclusive, he says.

This interview was recorded at the US-China Trade and Economic Relations Forum in Hong Kong on 9-10 July, 2019.

Americans are generally in favor of trade - 56% of U.S. adults said that free trade agreements have been good for the country as a whole, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center poll. Trade lowers consumer prices, leads to a greater selection of products, and opens new markets for Americans to sell their products. 

However, 62% of Americans believe trade with China is unfair, and that America has drawn the short end of the stick.

Since January 2018, China and the United States have been embroiled in a trade war, as President Trump has argued that China has unfairly tilted the playing field against U.S. businesses and encouraged a harmful U.S. trade deficit. 

Now, President Trump has once again hiked tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products from 10% to 25%. He has also threatened to slap that amount onto another $325 billion worth of goods. 

So, what will this mean for U.S.-China trade, and who will end up paying these tariffs?

According to Trump, the tariffs will be paid by the Chinese and the revenue will be used to help American farmers who have lost their lucrative export market for soybeans, pork, and other products due to retaliatory tariffs imposed by China. Already, the U.S. government is handing out billions of dollars of aid to soften the economic blow on farmers.

But studies show that the opposite of Trump’s sales pitch is true. 

Rather than China footing the bill, Trump’s tariffs are actually paid by U.S. import companies, who often pass the tax on to U.S. consumers and manufacturers by increasing prices. In fact, tariffs on Chinese products, ranging from diapers to iPhones, could end up costing the average American family more than $2,000-- far more than the average tax benefits received from Trump’s 2017 tax reform.

The pain will be felt most acutely by lower-income voters and farmers – the core of Trump supporters.

As the 2020 Presidential election nears, Trump is doubling down on tariffs as a success strategy, making the case to Americans, particularly farmers selling their agriculture to China, that the long-term goal of the trade war far transcends the short-term pain.

If the tariffs do go into effect and the U.S.-China trade war drags on, Wall Street will brace for impact, and the global economy will likely suffer until the two nations reach a deal to end the war. 

I. M. Pei, one of the most revered architects in the world, died in New York on May 16, 2019. He was 102.
Pei’s best known designs are the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre in Paris.

While in his ancestral country of China, he is also known for designing the Fragrance Hill resort in Beijing, the iconic Hong Kong landmark of the Bank of China tower, as well as the Suzhou Museum in Jiangsu.

What he valued the most in architecture, he said, was that it “stands the test of time.”

Pei was born in Guangdong in 1917 and brought up in a well-to-do household that was steeped in Chinese tradition.

His father, Tsuyee Pei, was one of China’s leading bankers. The junior Pei spent summers in a country village, where his father’s father had lived for more than 500 years, learning the rites of ancestor worship — and Western sophistication.

Pei moved to the U.S. at the age of 18 to study at Pennsylvania, MIT and Harvard.

Mr. Pei never played down his connections to China. His children were all given Chinese names, and when he won the Pritzker Prize in 1983, widely viewed as the highest honor a living architect can receive, he used the $100,000 award to establish a scholarship fund for Chinese architecture students.

Pei did not go back to China until 1974, and he didn’t hesitate to criticize the banal, Soviet-influenced architecture that he saw. He urged the Chinese to look back at their own traditions.
The Chinese government offered him a rural site outside the city and asked him to design a resort hotel there.

The end result is the Fragrant Hill, a group of resort buildings combining the geometric modernism with traditional Chinese architecture elements.

In 1982, Pei would have a very different kind of opportunity in China when the governors of the Bank of China in Hong Kong, the bank his father had once run, travelled to New York to meet with Tsuyee Pei, who had long since left China and was living in Manhattan. Their mission was to ask the senior Pei, in a demonstration of traditional Chinese etiquette, if he would agree to allow them to invite his son to design a new skyscraper headquarters for the bank in Hong Kong. Senior Pei said yes.

It would turn out to be one of Pei’s most notable towers.

The Chinese Embassy building located in the northwest of Washington DC is also a design work by I.M. Pei.

After his death, Jame C. Jao, a co-founder of the I.M.Pei Foundation, wrote:

“Whereby I.M. Pei has been a renowned world architect who always cared about the preservation of art, culture and local heritage by integrating every element thus to inspire world architecture in modern design.”

(The above text is based on the I.M.Pei obituary The New York Times published on May 17, 2019 and a commemorative article by James Jao The China Daily published on May 17, 2019.)

The video is based on the remarks made by C.H. Tung, founding chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, at a panel discussion titled “What’s Next for the World Ahead” during the Milken Institute’s 2019 Global Conference in Los Angeles on April 29, 2019.

A good US-China relation is good for China.  It's also good for America. But one other thing we must remember, good US-China relations is good for the world at large. 

There are many, many complicated issues the world needs to face. And I cannot imagine these problems can be solved by either America or by China. But together, there is a better chance.  

The China-US trade is really becoming more and more complementary. America is the largest producer of oil and gas in the world. You guess who is the largest buyer, that it's China. America is the largest producer of farm products. Who are the buyers, the largest buyer, it's China today. America is the largest producer of consumer goods of all kinds, who are the buyers, China today. So it's all happening. It's all happening very naturally, and the people in the business, they feel it. And that's why I'm also optimistic with my colleagues on the stage that I think that there is going to be hopefully a resolution.

What I'm saying is that the world is changing. But what China wants to do is to take advantage of this opportunity, make a better world for Chinese people. But also, importantly, make a better world for all of us. And may I add: do it together with the United States of America.

If China and the US is confrontational, and when there is no reason to be confrontational, you will be sure that all the other problems will be very difficult to solve. 

We have to be careful. So what I want to say to my American friends, is that US-China relations are too important. We got to figure out how we can solve this thing. It's too important for us.

Harvard Professor Joseph Nye discusses the need for the U.S. to adjust its foreign poicy attitudes. “We can’t think just of power ‘over’ other countries, we have to think of power ‘with other countries,” he asserts.

“ Whether it be transnational terrorism or whether it be cyber-relations, whether it be global pandemics, these are issues where nobody is going to be able to accomplish it by themselves, so we're going to have to develop these networks of cooperation if we're going to govern and manage these types of processes,” he says during an interview with James Chau, Editor-at-Large of China-US Focus.

And that means that “we're condemned to cooperate, because if we don't, we are really just condemned,” he says.

In an interview with James Chau Editor-at-Large of China-US Focus, Harvard Professor Joseph Nye likens the current state of the U.S.-China relationship as a “cooperative rivalry.” He says that there are going to be elements of rivalry— take for example, issues like the South China Sea, but there are going to be areas of cooperation, areas like climate change. “We have to learn to realize that the relationship is going to be complex, but if we lose sight of the cooperative part of the relationship, we're all going to be the worse off for it,” he says.

Nye also dismisses the assertion that China is an existential threat to the United States. “I think in the long run, the US and China do not present existential threats to each other. Neither of us is trying to destroy the other. And that means that the rivalry is something we can manage.”

He Yafei argues that the balance of power is shifting in favor of emerging markets, causing anxieties among US elites that “the world is not theirs anymore.”  Nobody can live about the rules in a world of shared interests and responsibilities and shared destiny, he asserts.

He Yafei, Former Vice Foreign Minister of PRC. 

At a meeting on the margins of the G20 in Argentina, President Xi Jinping of China and US President Donald Trump agreed not to escalate the trade tensions between the two largest economies and give time for negotiators to reach a deal. Veteran Chinese diplomat He Yafei gives his takes on what lies ahead.

He Yafei, Former Vice Foreign Minister of PRC.

Key words: US-China trade war, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, G20 Buenos Aires summit