| The realism of international politics takes a one-sided view that state's essence is to acquire power and security under the world anarchy. Therefore it's difficult to cooperate among states. With the idea that the emergence of China is a challenge to its hegemonic power, the US strives to contain China's development in high-tech. The theories of endogenous economic growth think that it's necessary for government to invest in R&D directly or subsidize private enterprises for their R&D because externality from knowledge and human capital will bring about under-investment. However, in an open economy, such governmental action will defy the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM Agreement) and lead to high-tech disputes. Scholars who have raised the strategic trade theories claim definitely that a country can shift some of foreign monopoly rents to home country from the other by means of tariff duties, export subsidies, and import protection. This is a beggar-my-neighbor policy provoking violent retaliation from the other part. According to the theories of network externality, multiple standards or low technological standards from market competition in Information Technology (IT) industry under the condition of externality will give birth to market failure. At this time, government intervention is necessary. Positive feedback and winner-take-all will happen under the aegis of government if market scale of enterprises with home standard surpasses critical mass. On the contrary, foreign standard will control market and foreign enterprises will capture monopoly profits if home standard is defeated in competition. Hence, standard competition has a zero-sum characteristic, which results in that foreign enterprises, enterprise unions and their government will certainly take objections and throw obstacles in every possible way if home government supports establishing and popularizing home standard. High-tech disputes are inevitable in IT. So far, the most exemplary cases reflecting completely features and essence of the high-tech disputes are those over the US discriminatory control of export of high-tech products to China, over the China's preferential value-added tax (VAT) on integrated circuit (IC) products, and over the China's WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI).The US has constituted a unilateral and multilateral export control system with an all-sided and complicated feature in order to safeguard effectively its own leader status in high-tech. Since the cold war, the US control over high-tech export to China has gone through 3 stages of the total embargo prior to the Cold War, the gradual relaxation after the Cold War, and rigid control in most cases after the end of the Cold War. The US control over high-tech export to China bears characteristics of high political relationship, certainty and uncertainty, irrationality and instrumentality, and internal disharmony. The long US export control on China has not only impaired China's technical basis of economic and defense development, increased import cost from the third country, decreased income of relevant enterprises, but also made the US itself lose the immense market of China, weakened relatively the competitive power of the US high-tech industry in global market, and enlarged the trade deficit of high-tech products with China. Meanwhile, the long-term US export control on China also embodied the misuse of the clause of Security Exceptions in GATT 1994, which defied the authority of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), spoiled free trading system. To the US, the positive effect of export control on China is limited, mainly because 1) contradiction exists between export control and technological innovation, 2)the mechanism for benefit coordination between the government and military industry is being dying off, 3)multilateral cooperation in export control is facing difficulties, 4)the military cooperation between Russia and China has scored great successes, and 5) the political lobby from the high-tech interest group against the control on China is getting stronger and stronger. In order to break through the US export control on China, the following measures can be taken. firstly, China can't change the idea that only independent innovation can acquire high-tech arms and dual-use items; Secondly, China should try her best to make the US high-tech enterprises of greatest reference to China exert an influence on the US government;Thirdly, China should disintegrate the US-European Union (EU) for export control and push the EU to lift the arms embargo on China early.The integrated circuit(IC) industry constitutes the foundation for modern national defense and information society, and it's a strategic industry of any country. Owing to such characteristics as great financial input, high risks, and high technology intensity, it's impossible to gain competitive advantage only through division and trade based on comparative advantage. The competitive advantage mostly derives from industrial policies and trade policies created by governments. From 2000 to 2002, the government of China worked out and implemented the policies of the preferential value-added tax on IC products. The great influence to the US lay in that export quantum to China would decline for rising price for low-end chips, that, more important, large foreign capital including the US capital flowing into China would directly raise the technological level of chip manufacturing and industrial competitive power, that the US would possibly be in danger of losing base for chip manufacturing, and even that, in the long run, as some US scholars hold, advances in China IC technology would likely destabilize the US predominance in global economy and military affairs. After the negotiation of the two parties, the Chinese government abolished the policies of preferential value-added tax on IC products. There were 3 reasons for this policy change. First, the policies were certainly out of harmony with such principles as the Most-favored Nation Treatment and the National Treatment in the WTO agreements; second, it was rather limited for Chinese native enterprises to benefit from these policies; and third, there existed a contradiction between the domestic sales-oriented policies of preferential value-added tax and the export-oriented policies of export tax rebate, which made the policy purpose of satisfying domestic needs at a big discount.In the domain of high-tech, technical standards have been a chief means of controlling an industrial chain, containing competitors, and securing competitive benefits. It has caused interest clashes against similar standards of developed countries that many high-tech standards have been international standards or international standard motions. From 2003 to 2006, the WAPI disputes rose between China and the US. Just because of the strong rejection from US enterprise unions and the pressures from the US government, the WAPI, as a coercive standard, had to be put off, and finally lost ground in the process of the dash for international standard. On the issue of the WAPI, the two parties of China and the US focused their attention mainly on the 3 problems of whether the technology of the WAPI was advanced, whether the enforced WAPI violated relevant agreements of WTO, and whether the procedure for setting and implement of the WAPI was justifiable. Besides the US'opposition and pressures, another important reason for China's failure in the competition of the WAPI was the enforcement harmed the interests of consumers and relevant enterprises at home and abroad. Therefore, balance and harmony of interests is an important lesson China should draw from this dispute.To cope with the US challenge effectively, China should take a policy of neo-techno-statism. It's a policy that free competition and opening necessary for technological development is under the guidance of the governments. At present, there exists stronger complementarity but weaker rivalrousness in some civilian fields of high-tech. It's necessary and possible for the two countries to cooperate in high-tech. On this account, China should constitute more communicating and harmonizing mechanisms on the existing basis, adjust the policies for foreign trade and foreign capital, promote international cooperation in R&D, abide by international agreements, and strengthen intellectual property (IP) protection. While there's room for high-tech cooperation between China and the US, the room is relatively small. On the one hand, it's impossible for the US to abandon the technological containment against China because the US congress and government pursue foreign affairs policies of neo-conservatism and foreign trade policies of high-tech protectionism; on the other hand, the China-US high-tech cooperation is asymmetrical and in non-core technology, and China don't want to be a high-tech follower for ever. Therefore, China should be constant to take the road to independent innovation, increase export of high-tech products under the condition of meeting the domestic market needs, lay down and implement supporting industrial policies in line with the WTO rules, set up far-flung interest alliances inside and outside the US, make the most of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) to resolve disputes on high-tech of the two countries, and prevent the US from misusing IP protection.The major contributions of my dissertation are as follows: First, the subject selected is relatively important, pertinent, and has had a relatively small amount of studies by preexisting scholars. In recent years, because China's high-tech industrial policy were laid down and implemented, she has made great strides in high-tech, and resulted in an enormous trade surplus in high-tech with the US and the European Union (EU). Thus, China has more and more frequent, intense high-tech disputes with the western developed countries. The Chinese and western disputes over high-tech have become an issue need to be explained and tackled in theory and practice. I decide to choose this subject for study just because the China-US disputes are broadly representative ones in all high-tech disputes between China and western countries and because these disputes will exercise overall influence over political and economical relations of the two countries. Currently, domestic and foreign scholars have theoretically touched few of the issue.Second, the research approach of the international political economy (IPE) is used in this dissertation to make thorough explanations of the China-US high-tech disputes. In view of the particularity in high-tech as a national strategy resource, the dissertation combines international economics with international politics while analyzing the China-US high-tech disputes in order to explain the reasons and the game tactics comprehensively and objectively, and also in order to extend feasible suggestions. Thus, it can be avoided to understand unilaterally and cope with the China-US high-tech with a single method.Third, some valuable viewpoints are brought up in this dissertation. In the part of disputes over export control, I have two discoveries. 1).To the US, the effect of high-tech blockage on China through export control is limited. The limitation is mainly because, in the systems for export control on China, the mechanisms compensating and harmonizing benefits between the US government and the enterprises, and the US and its allies, are getting spoiled. Therefore, it's possible for China to break through the US high-tech blockade from outside. 2).The US discriminative export control on China also embodies the misuse of the clause of Security Exceptions in GATT 1994, which exercises negative influences on free trading system. In the part of disputes over China IC VAT, I think that the main goals of the US accusing China was to increase many exports to China, and, more importantly, to eliminate the extra benefits all foreign enterprises in China, including the US enterprises, acquired from the value-added tax rebates. If so, the US could remove the motivation under which foreign enterprises extended direct investments to China instead of domestic production and export. The US could score two benefits from its accusation, one was that the US enterprises would cut down investment into China with some high-tech transfer; the other was that chip manufacturing bases, an important factor to the US development, could be retained at home. Apart from these, I also find that there existed a contradiction between the domestic sales-oriented policies of preferential value-added tax and the export-oriented policies of export tax rebates, which made the policy purpose of satisfying domestic needs at a big discount. In the part of disputes over WAPI, I hold that the an important reason why China made concession to the US at the eleventh hour was that the profits brought about from China WAPI would be occupied completely by a few Chinese enterprises and would cause damage to many people or groups, including Chinese customers, Chinese telecom operators, and foreign enterprises as Intel, etc.. Therefore, reasons for enforcement of WAPI were insufficient. In the last part of alternative solutions, I revised the two concepts of neo-techno-nationalism and neo-techno-globalism some scholars had raised, and advanced a new concept of neo-techno-statism. I think only neo-techno-statism is a right choice for China to break though the US technological blockage.
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