The US China trade war is many things that covers many industries but one thing you don’t think of when you think trade war is Blockchain. So perhaps Blockchain is a good place to start a fruitful discussion to understand cultural differences and how to solve them. Companies like BiKi are maintaining a positive dialogue by helping US companies list their tokens on a Chinese crypto exchange (although it’s based in Singapore).

Let’s get a bit of history here. First, the US has been a close friend to China for a very long time. But during World War 2, the US saved China from obliteration by an aggressive Imperial Japan. China was grateful and so was open to a US President Nixon who would visit 20 years later for a historic economic deal that created the Forex market and the China that we know today. Before the US-China deal China was primarily an agricultural society. Although Nixon isn’t credited for opening up China, mostly due to a poor understanding of his internal policies and his deteriorating popularity, Nixon’s meeting with Mao was the first event of its kind that finally led to economic reforms that enabled China to grow into what it is today:

Beginning in the late 1970s, China reversed the Maoist economic development strategy and, by the early 1980s, had committed itself to a policy of being more open to the outside world and widening foreign economic relations and trade. The opening up policy led to the reorganization and decentralization of foreign trade institutions, the adoption of a legal framework to facilitate foreign economic relations and trade, direct foreign investment, the creation of special economic zones, the rapid expansion of foreign trade, the importation of foreign technology and management methods, involvement in international financial markets, and participation in international foreign economic organizations. These changes not only benefited the Chinese economy but also integrated China into the world economy. In 1979 Chinese trade totaled US$27.7 billion - 6 percent of China's GNP but only 0.7 percent of total world trade. In 1985 Chinese foreign trade rose to US$70.8 billion, representing 20 percent of China's GNP and 2 percent of total world trade and putting China sixteenth in world trade rankings.

Today, almost every American company has a business, factory, or other operation in China. Many of them such as Wal-Mart, Apple computer, and others rely heavily on Chinese manufacturing. China needed a customer to grow their economy: USA. USA needed cheap labor, and a place where factory bosses would look the other way. Growing workers rights in USA were making manufacturing expensive. Offshoring became the go-to solution and China was the engine. So they weren’t really ‘stealing’ they were ‘learning’ – so it’s a little unfair when Trump wants to enforce Intellectual Property (IP) law when it was the lack of law that forced US companies to go there in the first place. This is what’s not being discussed in the larger picture of the trade war.

BiKi is a great example of one company keeping the relationship alive, as referenced by Forbes:

In 2018, Asia was one of the leading regions in terms of growth of blockchain jobs, cryptocurrency usage, innovation, and general openness. Despite some early woes with China banning ICOs, China still produces nearly 70% of crypto mining activity. Headquartered in Singapore, BiKi.com is a global cryptocurrency exchange ranked Top 20 on CoinMarketCap. BiKi.com provides a digital assets platform for trading more than 150 cryptocurrencies and 220 trading pairs. Since its official opening in August 2018, BiKi.com is considered one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency exchanges in the world with an accumulated 1.5 million registered users, 130,000 daily active users, over 2000 community partners and 200,000 community members in under a year. BiKi’s competitive advantages include helping projects with marketing, influencers, brand awareness, and community growth in the Chinese markets and abroad. With a global approach, BiKi also helps Chinese companies go global and international companies penetrate Chinese markets.

This type of two way collaboration is a good step to solidify the relationship between China and the world. Many people see this as a US-China issue but it’s actually a China vs. the world issue. China has internal domestic problems such as fraud, a bad reputation, demographic problems, and a lack of willingness to conform to global norms. Chinese still cannot send money freely out of China. There are 2 million internet police in China:

China has around two million people policing public opinion online, according to a state media report that sheds light on the country's secretive internet surveillance operations. Dubbed "public opinion analysts," they work for the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department, major Chinese news websites and commercial corporations, according to The Beijing News.

China is different than the west. But like the Silk Road, there is always a common economic tie that binds. China is part of planet Earth as we all are, so we need to look at projects like BiKi that are creating synergies, not tensions, if we are to stop the trade war once and for all.