According to the American Chamber of Commerce in China, China should enforce its commitments to fair international business treatment and reject “implicit” guidance on replacing foreign goods with domestic alternatives.
The Chamber, also known as AmCham, which represents 900 businesses, invited the United States and China to collaborate on climate change and public health in an annual white paper released on Tuesday.
The relationship between the world’s two largest economies has deteriorated rapidly in recent years, with trade tensions ranging from Chinese responses to the COVID-19.
According to AmCham China President Greg Gilligan, US companies are seeing weaker enforcement of regulations promising fair treatment for foreign companies, which has an effect on the acceptance of investment projects and market access as relationships deteriorate.
“We believe that local officials react to the degree of tension in the relationship simply by taking the safer route of prioritising domestic industry,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday.
He added that American businesses should be “rightly worried” about the threat of Chinese consumer boycotts and should prepare for them.
H&M and other international brands faced an angry online backlash and boycott in March after raising questions about forced labor in Western Xinjiang, China.
According to the report, both countries should reduce their “unhelpful rhetoric” and reopen lines of communication.
Inconsistent use of fair justice
For several years, foreign companies in China have complained about restricted market access, ambiguous regulatory processes, preferential treatment of domestic and state-owned champions, and a lack of intellectual property rights.
Beijing has consistently stated that international and domestic corporations are handled fairly and that it encourages foreign investment. Meanwhile, the government is attempting to promote domestic ingenuity while reducing reliance on international markets and technologies.
The report only applies inconsistent legislation that guarantees fair treatment for foreign and domestic firms, and it also calls for multinational corporations to be allowed to participate in new technologies such as cloud computing.
“The government should discontinue the tacit, unpublished, or internal directives to substitute domestically manufactured substitutes for US or other foreign-made products/services,” the report said.
According to US President Joe Biden, the US’s greatest external obstacle is its rivalry with China. Both Democrats and Republicans took a tougher stance against Beijing.
According to AmCham’s March study, 78 percent of companies surveyed saw US-China tensions as a barrier to doing business in China.
Last week, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said that the US will meet with Chinese officials “in the near future” to evaluate the implementation of the two countries’ Phase 1 trade agreement, potentially impacting Washington Punitive Tariffs in Beijing’s fate.
Following the tariff war, Tai and other senior Biden administration officials will conduct a thorough analysis of US-China trade policy in 2018. In January 2020, Washington and Beijing signed the Phase 1 trade agreement.
The agreement, which expires in late 2021, requires China to raise its US export purchases by $200 billion over a two-year period, a commitment Beijing falls far short of due, in part, to the coronavirus pandemic.
China has also promised to strengthen intellectual property rights and to expand access to agriculture, biotechnology, and financial services for US firms.
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