Jamie Metzl on Tensions Between the U.S. and China

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And what did the West, if I could put it this way, get a little wrong about what economic empowerment and embracing capitalism would actually mean to China? I mean, did they think it would open it up in ways that the West would recognize?

JAMIE METZL: Absolutely. There was this idea that as societies developed there was a certain per capita income level. At that time, I think it was at around $6,000 or equivalent per person, when middle class society started demanding their rights and forcing the change of political system. So, a lot of people thought that. And people thought that if the U.S. invest in that kind of growth, it was inevitable that China would need to open up. And certainly, the beginning of the information revolution and the advent of the internet made people feel that even more strongly, that people in China and around the world would have access to information and that would be empowering. And what people got wrong was, one, the ability of the Chinese government to manage the kind of economic growth while maintaining its centralize political control. And two, was that these technology systems, including the internet and information technology tools were, in many ways, politically agnostic, that in certain environments they could feed openness but in other environments they could be used to repress or at least surveil a society in some very significant ways.

AMANPOUR: So, again, George Bush as president, was there — during that awful night in 1989 where people did rise up, they did want to little bit more of that openness that they thought came with capitalism and the state crackdown with a ferocity that people hadn’t expected, that in a way was the turning point, right? It was China putting the world on notice that we like your economic system, we don’t like anything else about you.

METZL: Tenement Square was a turning point for everybody, for the Chinese, it was a turn away from this kind of creeping openness. And for the West, there was a big choice at that time and there was — there were people of two minds. So, the business community was very much for a continued engagement with China, the human rights community, as you know, was pushing for being tougher on human rights. And for a while, the business community prevailed and the U.S.-China relationship was primarily about business opportunities. But then, later in the process, the business community started to sour on China because they recognized that there — that they were being robbed in many ways of their intellectual property,