Leaders gathered here this week against the backdrop of the largest ground war
in Europe since World War Two. Sanctions imposed on Russia for its
invasion of Ukraine prevented any Russians from actually attending.
And China was represented by its vice premier heard her, not its president.
As in years past. But China, nevertheless, was very much a
topic of conversation at the World Economic Forum.
Has little of her actually left Davos to go over to Zurich to meet with Janet
Yellen, the US treasury secretary, raising the prospect of maybe better
relations between the United States and China?
We asked. U.S.
Trade Representative Catherine Tai about her take on what was accomplished by
that meeting with respect to trade. I think that expectations for everyone,
workers, families, businesses in America, in China, around the world
should be that President Biden is committed to bringing a thoughtful,
deliberate, strategic and ultimately effective approach to the challenges
that we have, as well as the opportunities that we have in this
profoundly consequential trade relationship.
WTO director and Jose on Kojo WALA is encouraged by possible fighting between
the United States and China. There is quite a bit of optimism that
has been attached to the opening up of China, and I think that made me kind of
villain. And Lou is a good sign, but I think we
should also keep it in check. Mary Callahan, overdose of J.P.
Morgan says she's seeing some hopeful signs out of China already having come
back from Hong Kong just a few weeks ago.
You can just see the pent up demand of what's there.
People wanting to go in country, people wanting to come out of country to travel
around the world. I think the opening up of China.
Well, while it will have its ups and downs, it will hopefully be a net
exporter of deflation, which would be good for the world.
Getting all of those kinks out of the system and really bringing back growth
in a positive way. So I'm looking forward to that.
I just say for us that JP Morgan getting to see our people who are on the ground
in China and have been working so hard throughout these many years of us not
being able to travel. And we're really excited about that.
We're looking forward to lots of good reunions and the like.
But people are really excited. And I think it means a lot of things, a
tone that you're hearing from many that are that are either going in already and
or are just listening to some of the conversations here today are really
positive about what could be happening. And of course, there's all sorts of
negotiations that have to happen to make sure that people do things in the right
way, that people work forward to cooperation on a fair and even playing
field. And I think that those are the important
conversations that had to that have to be had.
But now that we can do them in person, it's going to be a hell of a lot more
fruitful to be able to do it that way than to try and do these things on some
kind of a flat screen where you're not you're not able to have those personal
connections that are so important when you're going through to these
negotiations. But the WTO director general is concerns
about trade do not end at China, as she says that the WTO has calculated just
how much the global economy would be hurt if we move from a global economy to
one broke up into trading blocs, the costs of the world fragmented into two
trading blocs very high. We've actually done some simulations of
they said the WTO, and we've seen that if we break into two trading blocs, the
world global GDP is going to decrease by 5 percent in the longer term.
It's not just trade that has people's attention when it comes to globalization
or the lack thereof. We talked with Nick Clegg.
He's president of Metta Global Affairs. He's the former UK deputy prime minister
about whether we were headed toward a world where China is separated from the
rest of the world when it comes to the Internet.
I think they really have bifurcating. We don't have.
We don't have a global Internet. People keep talking about the global
Internet. It doesn't exist.
You have a Chinese Internet which fights on its own terms, is highly successful.
It's walled off from the rest of the world.
It's it's subject to a great deal of internal surveillance.
But it doesn't it doesn't welcome. For instance, Facebook is not allowed to
operate in China whilst articles Chinese social media companies are allowed to
operate in the United States. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tick,
tick, tick, tick, tock. How big a risk is that a national
security risk? Because many in Washington think it
really is. Look, I'll leave that to the national
security experts. What I would observe, though, to your
earlier question, which is, you know, that there isn't a level playing field
in Chinese social media. Companies are able to operate it both in
China and in Europe and America. We're able to operate in American
Europe, but not in China. So, you know, at the moment, there's an
imbalance, imbalance there, which doesn't, I think, in the long run make a
make a whole lot of sense. And they and it's partly because the the
approach to data, the approach to privacy is just very, very different
culturally and legally and politically in China than it is.
Elsewhere. And then there are slightly more subtle,
narrower differences between the EU and the US as well.
And one of the interesting dynamics you have is that you have the European Union
now leading on new rules, need leading on you regulation, but not leading
technologically or commercially. You don't have all the big tech giants
either in the United States or China. And yet it's Europe that doesn't have
the big tech giants that is inventing the rules for them.
So it's a very interesting jigsaw where I would I would actually add a fourth
element. I think India.
I think you have Europe, America, China, India.
Those are the four great big sort of jigsaw pieces that make up how the
Internet operates in the modern world.