Business as usual just got more difficult with China. The House Intelligence Committee will formally call for the ban of two giant Chinese telecommunications companies, Huawei and ZTE, from operating in the U.S. market.
A draft report says those two companies can’t be trusted to be free of Chinese state influence and so pose a security threat. It’s a charge the two firms deny. Last month, President Obama stopped a Chinese-owned company from buying four wind farms in the United States, also citing national security concerns.
Shaun Rein is author of the “End of Cheap China” and runs CMR, a consultancy based in Shanghai.
“It’s important that people aren’t naive. There is increased tension between the United States and China, so people should be worried about security concerns,” Rein says. “However, the level of anti-China hysteria that’s emerging in the United States from both President Obama and Mitt Romney is something that all Americans need to be concerned about, because it’s going to cost jobs creation in the United States.”
Shaun Rein agrees with the Mayor of Toledo that the anti-China rhetoric is worrisome, especially as it escalates during the election season. “By causing them to think twice about investing in America, you definitely are losing thousands of American jobs.”
“We have to have a serious discussion,” Rein says. “China does pose a threat, in some ways, but we can’t exaggerate it.”