Sure. First of all, this is reflected at both societal and governmental levels. The hardening I was referring to referred to the governmental level, but in fact if you look at public opinion polls and surveys of the American public over the last two to three years, you also see an increased percentage—now up into the mid-60s, I believe—of Americans who see China in a so-called unfavourable light.
The suspicions about China are reflected at both governmental and societal levels, I would say, although when I travel across the United States, I, at least, notice a substantial variation in those levels of suspicion. The further west you go, interestingly, the less suspicious Americans are. Those on the west coast—Washington State, Oregon, California—can't get enough of engagement with China, particularly economic and cultural. I don't want to spend much time on this. If you go into the Rocky Mountains, the central south or the upper Midwest and then certainly into parts of the east, you find varying perceptions of China, but overall now, a majority of about two-thirds of Americans see China unfavourably.
The hardening I was referring to, though, is manifest across a number of policy areas. It started under the Obama administration but has really increased during the Trump administration. Export controls have been substantially ramped up. American companies are now forbidden to sell certain items such as chips and other items that go into various electronics, which you know about very well.
We don't really have that much of a controversy in our country about Huawei, strangely enough. We just ban them. We don't allow them to bid on our networks. That's my understanding. Unlike your country and Europe, which are undergoing a big debate on that, we're not really having a debate about it.
There are new executive branch policies about Chinese investment into critical infrastructure. The review procedures of CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, have also been strengthened. There are an increasing number of Chinese cases in front of CFIUS, and increasing FBI surveillance, if that's the right word, or FBI monitoring, of Chinese espionage on American campuses, in American laboratories and throughout the private sector. China is by far, if you read the statements of FBI director Wray, the most egregious infringer of American technology theft.
In the defence realm, Bonnie can speak to this more. That's more long-standing and predates the Trump administration. You saw what happened last week. It was referenced in this morning's session about the new caps put on Chinese journalists here in the U.S. for four state agencies. There are others, such as screening of visas, for example, of Chinese scholars coming to the United States. The Trump administration has really ramped these up. I wouldn't necessarily call these “retaliatory”, but rather sober-minded policies to more carefully monitor the extent of the interactions between Chinese and Americans inside the United States. That's to say nothing about the long-standing concerns about American business, American academia and American government, including public diplomacy.