Exclusive: Facing U.S. blowback, Beijing softens 'Made in China 2025' message

[June 25, 2018]   By Michael Martina, Kevin Yao and Yawen Chen

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing has begun downplaying Made in China 2025, the state-backed industrial policy that has provoked alarm in the West and is core to Washington's complaints about the country's technological ambitions, diplomatic and Chinese state media sources said.

With a full-blown trade war looming amid U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to impose tariffs on up to $450 billion in Chinese imports, his administration has fixed on Beijing's signature effort to deploy state support to close a technology gap in 10 key sectors.

Beijing is increasingly mindful that its rollout of the ambitious plan has triggered U.S. backlash.

The Trump administration is considering rules that would bar companies with at least 25 percent Chinese ownership from buying U.S. firms with "industrially significant technology," a U.S. government official said on Sunday.

A senior western diplomat told Reuters that in meetings Chinese officials have recently begun downplaying Made in China 2025. The officials have stressed that the aspects that have raised the most ire abroad were simply proposals by Chinese academics.

Employees work to assemble computed tomography (CT) scanners at a production line of a company manufacturing medical equipment in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China March 16, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

And state news agency Xinhua, which made more than 140 mentions of Made in China 2025 in Chinese language news items in the first five months of the year, has not done so since June 5, a search of a public database found.

The diplomat said some Chinese officials have gone so far as to suggest it was a mistake for the government to have pushed the plan so forcefully and publicly because it had increased pressure on China.

"China is apparently starting to adjust to the blowback caused by the heavy propaganda," said the diplomat, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"They won't stop doing it," the diplomat said, referring to Made in China 2025. "The way they talk about it is changing."
 

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