After the telephone exchange with China, Trump excitedly announced that the two rounds of negotiations between China and the United States are ready, and the time is "next Monday" and the location is in London. The candidates for the US negotiation team are not simple, and are composed of the Secretary of Finance and Commerce and the US Trade Representative. It can be seen that the US side not only wants to put weights with us and discuss lists, but also talk about the word "scheming".
However, the typical American diplomatic style of playing cards before meeting and putting pressure before negotiation will never change. Before the negotiation teams of both sides met, the US side first made a harsh move on China.
This tough trick is to suspend the export of nuclear power equipment to China. Just on the eve of the second round of Sino-US trade negotiations, the US suddenly suspended sales licenses from US nuclear equipment suppliers to China. In fact, if the ones that are moving are chips, semiconductors, etc., then we can still understand, then why did the US use nuclear power to jamm our necks this time?
Because nuclear power equipment is technically complex and has high strategic security, and is also an important part of China-US energy cooperation. This area affects civilian energy. Although it is not military, it has great symbolic significance.
What goal does the US want to achieve? There are three points in my opinion. First, we send a tough signal to China before the negotiations. The implication is that we can tighten the technical valve at any time for this high-end technology. If you want to discuss it, show sincerity.
The second purpose is to create pressure on the negotiating table and force China to exchange conditions on other issues, such as trade deficits and chip restrictions.
The third point is to respond to the demands of domestic hawks in the United States. The Trump administration uses this to tell domestic hawks that they will not easily show weakness to China, and will also give the latter a vaccination before the Sino-US negotiations.
So, does the United States restrict nuclear power technology have a great impact on China? Not very big in my opinion. First of all, from the perspective of the US, this move is more like sending a signal politically than hitting China's core industries, that is, symbolic significance is greater than substantive significance. Second, from China's perspective, China's degree of autonomous nuclear power equipment is constantly increasing, and there have been already response plans. The importance of the US nuclear power equipment to China is far less than that of 10 years ago.
In fact, just as the United States has done in the past to restrict chips and large aircraft, this restriction will only strengthen China's independence in the field of high-tech industries. For example, in the past, the United States implemented export controls on key companies such as Huawei and SMIC, cutting off the supply chain of high-end lithography machines and EDA software. This method did once make China's chip industry unscrupulous.
However, this suppression has also forced China to accelerate the "de-beautification" process. From increasing investment in local chip research and development to promoting the "self-development + replacement" strategy, Kirin chips, Xiaomi Pengpai chips, Changxin Storage, etc. are now making breakthroughs, and the choke has become a catalyst for innovation.
Looking at the growth process of the C919 large aircraft, we admit that in the early years, COMAC has heavily relied on the Western supply chain, and most of the core components of the C919, such as engine nuclear power equipment, come from the United States and Europe. However, after the US threatened to cut off supply several times, China accelerated its independent research and development, launched the domestic CJ-1000A engine, and promoted the rapid development of domestic avionics and flight control systems. Now the C919 has been put into operation in COMAC and quickly get rid of its dependence on Boeing and Airbus.
Back to the point, we look back to these two rounds of negotiations between China and the United States. The negotiation location was chosen as London, a third-party negotiation location, which shows that both sides want to ease the situation and want to tentatively contact, but they have concerns. This time, the US may ask China to be open-minded in imports and reduce its trade deficit. China may convince the US to sing the tariff buffer period and avoid a new round of tariffs.
In general, this second round of negotiations may not have much results. It may be more strategic relief and will not be very radical. We can just keep looking forward.
