Edward Tse's Op-ed in the South China Morning Post of 4 February 2019 points out that –

• "the picture of American firms being victimised in China is exaggerated – In the tech sector, pundits lament that Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China, but neglect to mention Apple, Amazon, Bing, LinkedIn, eBay and Airbnb are not".
• "Last April, Beijing set a timetable for phasing out foreign ownership limits in the automotive industry. It is also easing curbs on sectors such as banking, securities, insurance, agriculture and aircraft manufacturing. Recently, BT Group became the first non-Chinese telecom company in China to get a nationwide operating licence. S&P Global’s Beijing-based wholly-owned subsidiary was also given a green light to enter the Chinese bond rating market".
• "To boost the private sector, Chinese President Xi Jinping met entrepreneurs last November, and China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission chief Guo Shuqing followed up with a statement that no less than 50 per cent of new loans should go to private businesses."
• "China is stepping up mixed ownership reform, that is, diversifying the ownership of parts of the state sector. According to the National Development and Reform Commission, 100 more state-owned enterprises will join the mixed-ownership reform programme. Along the way, many “zombie” enterprises will be eliminated."
• "To improve the protection of intellectual property right, China’s top court has started to rule on intellectual property cases since the beginning of this year; laws are also being drafted to ban forced technological transfer."
• "China’s innovation – the fast-evolving consumer demand patterns, rapidly developing government policies and regulations, increasingly prevalent tech-enabled business innovations, and the emergence of bona fide innovative and competitive local companies – has led many foreign multinationals to the realisation that what they have learned in the West won’t give them an advantage in the local market any more. Their success in China is no longer guaranteed if they rely only on what they already know. They will need to learn how to innovate in China, for China, and also in China for the world – and this won’t be easy for many."

China already started to implement reforms and changes that tally China's own development trajectory with demands from the Trump administration. That's why I was realistically optimistic about a measured outcome by the 2 March dealdine for the current US-China trade negotiations. Click here

However, as I pointed out earlier, trade is only a part of an all-out US strategy to push back against a rising China's threat to a US-led order on multiple fronts, including the South China Sea, military and space technology, Taiwan, human rights, and ideology. So, even with a historic, multi-faceted US-China trade deal, rivalry between the two superpowers is likely to carry on for decades to come.