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Research: Economics and Trade

Research
The Chinese government has a comprehensive, long-term industrial strategy to build internationally competitive domestic firms and replace foreign technology and products with domestic equivalents first at home, and then abroad. This issue brief serves as a primer on the policies in the Chinese government’s toolbox for achieving its technonationalist targets, to include localization, massive subsidies for R&D, government procurement, China-specific standards, foreign investment restrictions, recruitment of foreign talent, state-directed acquisition of foreign technology and intellectual property, and, in some cases, industrial espionage.
Research
China’s direct financial linkages with the United States have been growing but remain very modest when compared to the two countries’ trade linkages. Beijing has taken steps to gradually open its financial sector to foreign investors, but U.S. investors have displayed little interest since the reforms are happening as Chinese policymakers impose tighter restrictions on foreign currency conversions and outbound capital flows. Economic and financial developments in China can affect U.S. financial markets more substantially through indirect channels, as was evident in the reaction of U.S. equities to China’s stock market crashes in 2015 and 2016. More broadly, the impact of China’s slowing growth and economic reforms on trade, commodities demand, and investor confidence affects global financial markets, which in turn influence U.S. financial markets.
Research
This two page issue brief lays out the U.S. statutory test for determining whether a country is a market economy, and assesses China’s eligibility based on those criteria.
Research
The report examines Chinese investment in U.S. aviation and related university connections with Chinese entities and assesses the implications of the resulting technology transfer on U.S. national security and aviation industry competitiveness. This report was prepared for the Commission by the RAND Corporation.
Research
Chinese imports account for a disproportionately high number of product safety recalls in the United States, and China’s position as the largest supplier of U.S. consumer imports challenges U.S. safety regulatory agencies who must apply finite resources to screen out risky products. This staff paper explores unique product safety problems posed by Chinese imports, including legal difficulties associated with holding China-based firms accountable for unsafe products, gaps in China’s safety regulatory structure, and difficulty in identifying Chinese products that have been shipped through third party countries. The report also summarizes U.S. import safety procedures followed by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the resources available to these agencies to detect unsafe imports.