Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its economic and/or diplomatic engagement with the People’s Republic of China



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1NC Solvency Frontline

  1. Diplomacy fails to fix military relations



Li and Yanzhuo, 2015 [Xue and Xu, Director of the Department of International Strategy at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Xu Yanzhuo received her doctorate from Durham University (UK) in December 2014 and studies international responsibility, South China Sea disputes, and Chinese foreign policy. “The US and China Won't See Military Conflict Over the South China Sea”, June 19, http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/the-us-and-china-wont-see-military-conflict-over-the-south-china-sea/]
At the beginning, the United States tried to stop China through private diplomatic mediation, yet it soon realized that this approach was not effective in persuading China. So Washington started to tackle the issue in a more aggressive way, such as encouraging India, Japan, ASEAN, the G7, and the European Union to pressure Beijing internationally. Domestically, U.S. officials from different departments and different levels have opposed China’s ‘changing the status quo’ in this area. Since 2015, Washington has increased its pressure on China. It sent the USS Fort Worth, a littoral combat ship, to sail in waters near the Spratly area controlled by Vietnam in early May. U.S. official are also considering sending naval and air patrols within 12 nautical miles of the Spratly Islands controlled by China. Washington has recognized that it could hardly stop China’s construction in Spratly Islands. Therefore, it has opted to portray Beijing as a challenger to the status quo, at the same time moving to prevent China from establishing a South China Sea ADIZ and an EEZ of 200 nautical miles around its artificial islands. This was the logic behind the U.S. sending a P-8A surveillance plane with reporters on board to approach three artificial island built by China. China issued eight warnings to the plane; the U.S. responded by saying the plane was flying through international airspace.

  1. No Solvency: The US and China cooperate all of the time. There’s nothing that makes this plan any different. The status quo is enough to solve the harms. Also, the aff would have to cooperate over military matters, not economic ones.




  1. China will say ‘no’ to the plan—they’re resistant to foreign companies



The Hill, 2015 [Political news organization, “Bilateral investment treaty with China more than a 'BIT' of trouble”, October 29, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/258486-bilateral-investment-treaty-with-china-more-than-a-bit-of]
China is discriminating more intensely against foreign companies, with an eye toward continuing to extract technology. Early this year, Qualcomm was fined almost $1 billion for supposed antitrust violations even as China simultaneously maintains a slew of state monopolies. More recently, Western Digital finally received Chinese approval for its global acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage, three-and-a-half years after initial consideration. This step, however, was only taken after Western Digital agreed to sell a 15 percent stake to a Chinese SOE. France's Alcatel learned from this and inked its China joint venture early in its own approval process. It should go without saying that competition policy which extorts multinationals is not compatible with being a good BIT partner. Another problem is far worse. China's policies with regard to its SOEs are antithetical to a core principle of the BIT — that foreign firms should receive the same treatment as domestic (national treatment). Multinationals may receive the same treatment as private Chinese firms but they are nowhere close to receiving the same treatment as SOEs. SOEs are protected from competition in two dozen sectors. They are not allowed to fail for commercial reasons. They receive huge sums of what are essentially costless loans. These are established Chinese policies and the fall 2013 Communist Party meeting was supposed to inaugurate a new era of pro-market reform. But the principal corporate reform was allowing private firms to take minority stakes in SOEs. This is the exact opposite of what needs to occur, which is more competition between SOEs and the private sector. The SOE reform guidelines issued last month affirm this harmful notion of "reform." Remarkably, this failure was so blatant as to be recognized in the official press. It is odd that the U.S. is even negotiating with a country with such policies. A possible explanation is that the China BIT can be connected to an even bigger international economic initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Not coincidentally, BIT negotiations with China quickly turned serious after Japan joined the TPP. There is a chapter in the TPP concerning SOEs — this could provide a template for how to blunt bad policies. Unfortunately, it appears as if the opposite is true with regard to China: The TPP leaves the door wide open to more predatory behavior. Final TPP text is not yet available, but a New Zealand government fact sheet indicates a number of flaws that will be exploited by governments committed to using SOEs as core economic actors. For example, under the TPP, monopolies can (apparently) behave in non-commercial fashion when fulfilling the terms of their designation, as assigned by their government. This is acceptable for countries that have no desire to hand out mandate after mandate to SOEs, but there should be no doubt that China will do exactly that. In addition, services supplied by SOEs in their own territories are (apparently) allowed to be subsidized. This could block access to the Chinese market for American services firms. Another vital issue that cannot be evaluated at present is that of nonconforming measures, the exceptions granted in specific areas. The nonconforming measures of a China BIT must be extremely limited. With countries such as Singapore and Vietnam boasting large SOEs, this weakness is a drawback for the TPP. However, it would undermine the point of any agreement with China — certainly including a BIT. With few effective restrictions on what is by far the world's largest state sector in absolute size, the opportunities truly unlocked by a China BIT would turn out to be minimal. The TPP does not appear to provide anything close to a sufficient framework to restrict Chinese SOEs. The Obama administration will need to deliver an improbably strong BIT for it to deserve consideration.


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