今年，距微软老板比尔·盖茨和中国共产党总书记江泽民首次见面，已经整整过去二十年了。这次会面（后来双方有过多次会面）让美国开始深入地参与中国网络力量发展。尽管近年围绕网络安全，美中两国技术民族主义甚嚣尘上，但过去二十多年两国信息和通信技术（ICT）领域关系的不断深化让双方获益匪浅。

除非继续培植这一关系，否则中国难以实现2050年前建成先进信息社会的雄心。而美国大公司也把中国当成未来发展的重要部分。1998年在北京成立的微软亚太研发实验室，目前是微软在美国以外最大研发中心。不过到目前为止，中国对美国的依赖仍远远大于美国对中国的依赖。

没有美国的善意，没有美国对中国开放大多数高科技产品贸易，中国网络实力将远远低于目前水平。不过，对两国在网络领域相互依赖的详细分析还很少。这种关系不仅是买卖，还涉及技术转让时的商业体制、法律架构和国际规范。就这一点来说，人们更容易关注中国商业间谍窃取美国公司机密的事件。这的确是重要问题，但它仅仅是一个更大、总体更积极故事中的一小部分。这个更乐观的故事不必非得平稳发展，美国向中国转移信息和通信技术的历史充满颠簸和挑战，如今依然如此。仅仅在2014年，微软就在中国境内遭遇多起行政和司法诉讼。

在北京，有一个鲜为专家圈子以外人士所知的组织，它对中国与美国企业在该领域的合作非常有影响力，是合作关系成功的象征。该组织名称是“美国信息技术办公室”（USITO），1995年作为非盈利组织在中国正式注册（它的成立一定程度上得到美国政府首肯）。这是一个会员制游说团体，代表着美国四大行业（半导体、信息技术、软件和通信）的顶级企业，以及另外50多家独立的、在中国ICT领域有商业利益的公司。除推动中国对美国技术产品开放市场外，它的主要任务之一是推动中国出台开放贸易的适用法律，包括知识产权保护等。USITO定期就中国国内立法草案发表看法，并且是美国ICT行业和中国代理间的主要政策桥梁。它在自己网站上自称是一家值得信赖的组织，此言倒也不虚，部分是因为它在中国活动的深入性和连贯性，包括与中国公安部就密码和源代码进行敏感谈判。

本周有新闻报道说，中国即将发布新操作系统，以尽快取代外国操作系统。这听起来像技术民族主义一个固步自封的愿景，它试图减少或弱化中国在ICT领域对美国的依赖。但也有完全相反的新闻，包括本周中国电信和IBM宣布就云计算服务达成新合作协议。据联合国2012年统计，中国（包括香港）是全球最大ICT出口国（按金额计占全球总量41%），但同时中国也是全球最大ICT进口国（占29%）。这些粗略的统计掩盖了大量细节和微妙之处。要真正衡量提升网络实力所需要的贸易，不能只看这一领域的商品贸易数据。网络力量取决于多种行业（如医疗、农业、交通和航空）的现代化设备所使用的电脑技术，而这些是没有列入ICT贸易统计的。此外，就像IBM和中国电信的协议所显示，在包括信息技术教育的服务贸易领域，美国对中国的出口依然对后者的现代化至关重要。正如习近平2014年2月所说，“没有信息化就没有现代化”。习近平是第一个领导网络领域“领导小组”的总书记。

提出互相依赖的目的是强调，尽管中国和美国在网络空间管理上的政策偏好有很大不同，但两国在技术（包括知识、设备或基础设施）上的依赖关系应被更好地理解。正如我在本月出版的新书《中国的网络政策》（Polity出版）中所讨论的，习近平政府事实上可能需要增加对美国的依赖，但如果它想增强网络实力，那么就需要接受“信息技术友好”型价值观。

This year is the 20th anniversary of the first meeting between Bill Gates, then the Microsoft boss, and a General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, at the time Jiang Zemin. This meeting, one of several between the pair, was a launch pad for a deeper American involvement in the development of China's cyber power. For all of the techno-nationalist heat coming out of both the United States and China on issues of cybersecurity in recent years, the two countries have in the main benefited from a deepening relationship in the ICT sector for more than two decades.

China cannot achieve its ambitions of becoming and advanced information society by 2050 unless it nurtures this relationship. Leading American corporations see China as an essential part of their future. Miscrosoft's Asia Pacific R&D lab, set up in Beijing in 1998, is now its biggest such center outside the United States. Yet to date, the level of dependence of China on the United States has been higher than in the reverse direction.

Without U.S. good will and open trade in most high technology products with China, the latter's cyber power would be much more backward than it is today. Yet there is little analysis in detail of the interdependence between the two countries in the cyber domain. The relationship is not just about buying and selling, but about the business regimes, legal structures and international norms under which technology transfer occurs. In this regard, it may be tempting to focus on the issue of industrial espionage from China on U.S. corporate secrets. That is an important issue but it is only a small part of a much bigger and on the whole more positive story. This more upbeat story is not necessarily one that involves a smooth ride. The history of U.S. transfer of information and communications technology to China has been a very bumpy and challenging road, and that remains the case. In 2014 alone, Microsoft has become the target of a number of administrative and legal actions inside China.

There is an organization in Beijing little known outside specialist circles which has been a forceful influence on China's ability to work with U.S. corporations in this sector. The organizations stands as a metaphor of the success of the relationship. It is the United States Information Technology Office, formally registered in China in 1995 as a non-profit organization. (It was established in part with a U.S. government grant.) It is a membership- based lobby group representing four industry peak bodies in the United States (semiconductors, information technology, software, and communications) and an additional 50 individual firms with business interests in the ICT sector in China. One of its main missions, apart from promoting the opening of the China market to U.S. technology, has been to promote the development in China of appropriate laws for open commerce, including intellectual property rights protection. USITO comments regularly on draft domestic legislation in China and is the main policy interface between the ICT sector in the United States and Chinese agencies. The claim on its website to be a trusted organization is one that can be taken at face value in part because of the depth and consistency of its engagement, including on sensitive negotiations with China's Ministry of Public Security on cryptography and source codes.

News this week that China will soon release a new operating system with the aim of quickly displacing foreign models sounds like the entrenchment of a techno-nationalist vision that portends the decline or weakening of China's dependence on the United States in the ICT sector. There is however considerable countervailing news, including a new partnership, also announced this week, between China Telecom and IBM on cloud computing services. Based on UN figures for 2012, China (including Hong Kong) led the world in ICT exports (41 per cent share by value), but it also led the world in ICT imports (29 per cent share by value). These gross figures disguise a multitude of detail and subtlety. But the real measure of trade in those things on which cyber power depends cannot be measured just by statistics on traded goods in that sector. Cyber power depends on the computer technologies in a variety of modern equipment in many sectors (health, agriculture, transport, and aerospace to name a few) that are not included in ICT trade statistics. Moreover, as the IBM/China Telecom agreement suggests, trade in services, including education services in information technology, from the United States to China remains essential for the latter's modernization. As Xi Jinping said in February on 214, when he became the first General Secretary to head the appropriate Leading Group, “there can be no modernization without informatization”.

The intent of raising this question of interdependence is to highlight the proposition that in spite of large differences in policy preferences between China and the United States on management of cyberspace, the two countries have a relationship of dependence in the technologies (knowledge as well as equipment or infrastructure) that needs to be better understood. As argued in my new book released this month, Cyber Policy in China (Polity Press, Cambridge UK), the government of Xi Jinping may actually need to increase its dependence on the United States, and adopt more “information friendly” values if it wants to increase its cyber power.