Piyush Singh

Piyush Singh is a Research Associate at The Takshashila Institution. He completed his undergrad from Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur and is interested in all things China.

US should get more tough on China!

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The United States struck a deal with ZTE with a penalty of $1 billion and $400 million in an escrow account to end the sanctions imposed against them. The deal also includes a putting in a new compliance department in the company which will report directly to the new chairman.

The consensus is that United States is letting ZTE, go away without getting too much in return. At least they could have imposed a larger penalty to send signals to companies looking to do business with North Korea, Iran, and Russia about the costs of doing so.

Moreover, this will not only harm long-term US interests in the technological space but also give a signal to the Chinese that the United States is willing to compromise on any future conflicts including trade if token solutions are provided directly to President Trump.

Not only that, the US government has mixed in different fields of trade, domestic law enforcement, and national security, without giving clear details on what are the national security risks of letting in ZTE back into the US.

The larger picture is of China challenging the United States in each and every sphere for global dominance and will lie, cheat and steal its way to essential technology, Intellectual Property to further strengthen itself. It’s upon the United States to take more proactive measures to curb this while it still has time, otherwise, it will be too little too less.

 

US Congress should bring in legislation on Taiwan Issue!

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The naming issue of Taiwan is heating up between the US and Chinese governments as the deadline approaches in China for airline companies to comply. The Chinese government has asked airlines to remove any reference to Taiwan as an independent country and address it as Taiwan, China. Many international airline companies have already made the change, and US-based airline carriers are the only major holdouts, as they seek clarity from the US government. The US government has already called it ‘Orwellian nonsense’ and is in consultation with its allies such as Australia and UK on the issue.

The solution for this is for the US Congress to bring in legislation on the issue, and debar the US-based airlines from changing the name by law. This issue has blown up way beyond China’s regular diktats against private companies, and should be challenged by the United States and its allies.

Not only that, the US Congress should force by law, the Chinese airline carriers to list Taiwan as a separate country on their international websites in a tit for tat measure.

Obviously, there will be economic consequences for US airlines for not toeing the Chinese diktats, but by bringing in US laws on the naming issue, Chinese airlines will also suffer. Furthermore, if Chinese airlines do cave into the naming of Taiwan as a separate country on their US and international websites, it will be tacit acceptance of the status quo by the Chinese government since most of them are state-owned enterprises!

This kind of retaliatory measure will hopefully put some sense into China to steer clear of the naming issue in future.