Geopolitics: USA Inc versus Made in China 2025
The Trump presidential administration in the US was, perhaps, known more for its bark than its bite, as countless promises and rhetorical flourishes failed to translate into political reality, whether that be border walls or immigration, infrastructure or healthcare reform. One exception was in its attitude to China. While many people recall the ugly, noisy rhetoric from President Trump himself around China and COVID-19, it is worth noting that under the Trump administration, there were at least two significant developments in relation to intellectual property and China.
Both shine a light on the fraught geopolitics surrounding IP in general, and trade secrets in particular. Arguably IP is the outrider for a larger geopolitical struggle in which two superpowers jostle for position and influence.
The China Initiative
In 2018, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the ‘China Initiative’, suggesting that “Chinese economic espionage against the United States has been increasing—and it has been increasing rapidly,” and that “This Initiative will identify priority Chinese trade theft cases, ensure that we have enough resources dedicated to them, and make sure that we bring them to an appropriate conclusion quickly and effectively.”
The threat, Sessions explained, was “not just taking place against traditional targets like our defence and intelligence agencies, but against targets like research labs and universities, and we see Chinese propaganda disseminated on our campuses”.
The DoJ lists 58 cases on its website as examples of those prosecuted under the China Initiative, which was dropped in February 2022 in the face of criticism that it unfairly targeted Chinese academics in US universities and those of Chinese heritage more generally. Of those, many are trade secrets cases, and several resulted in guilty pleas or convictions for executives or companies related to trade secrets theft.
The MIT Technology Review has put together a rather more comprehensive database of cases that might be deemed to fall under the China Initiative, finding that, as of December 2021:
