The U.S. on Tuesday accused China of continuing a campaign of intellectual property and technology theft supported by the state as the world’s largest economies have descended into a tariff war, Bloomberg informed.
The new accusations came in a detailed report announced by the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s office before the meeting of President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“China fundamentally has not altered its acts, policies, and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation, and indeed appears to have taken further unreasonable actions in recent months,” the report said.
The U.S. accused China of cyber-attacks on American companies that were both intensifying and subtle.
China’s Ministry of Commerce did not immediately respond to a faxed request for a comment on the issue.
As an example, it cited an October 2018 report by experts from the U.S. Naval War College and Tel Aviv University that found that China Telecom may be engaging in a “malicious” campaign to “hijack Internet traffic and direct it through Mainland Chinese servers for possible collection and analysis.”
The report accused China of responding to the U.S. government’s concerns over its “Made in China 2025” policy to lead the world in sectors such as artificial intelligence and robotics by waging a propaganda campaign to play down its significance rather than making substantive changes.
“Despite this transparent attempt to de-emphasize Made in China 2025 in public, China continues to implement this industrial policy on a large scale,” the report said.
According to the updated USTR report, Beijing had made only incremental changes to its restrictions on foreign investment in certain sectors in China since the U.S. first released an original March report used to justify the tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports imposed by the Trump administration.
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