Legal Services: Lessons of a Technology Lawyer in China

Through over 17 years representing US and Chinese technology companies in Shanghai, Don has learned important lessons about China’s innovative technology sector, IP environment (still challenging to navigate, but rapidly evolving and improving) and legal industry. These lessons inform an analysis of current US-China relations. Recent US escalation of the US-China Tech War—the opening salvo of which was fired by the Chinese government in 2008, when it began to block American technology companies such as Facebook, Google/YouTube, and Twitter from operating in China—risks significant damage to the US technology sector by effectively reducing or shutting off most Chinese investment. This has limited not just the flow of cash, but also the opportunity for US companies to learn from and access cutting edge IP from Chinese companies. Each country’s apparent quests for hegemony across key technology sectors and economic independence—and each one’s concern that its former pattern of engagement with the other risks both quests—exacerbated by aggressive steps to achieve these goals and a mismatch of economic systems, leaves them hurtling toward potential conflict. A path forward for the United States and China should be founded on both countries’ (1) acceptance of competition, interdependence, and different systems; (2) defining national security narrowly and reacting only when necessary to defend it; (3) engaging in regular dialogue and efforts to work together in areas of shared interests to develop trust; and (4) renouncing conflict and actions likely to induce it, absent exceptional circumstances.