Liu He will be in DC this week to continue the trade negotiations and Trump has declared that he is working on a reprieve for ZTE: A reprieve for ZTE is something Xi has made a priority and looks like a U.S. concession though we do not yet know what, if anything, Trump got in return. Regardless of how this particular episode plays out, the ZTE case has only reinforced China’s official fears about its excessive reliance on U.S. technology and its determination to accelerate efforts to achieve indigenous technology independence, as well as focusing the broader PRC population on the nation’s vulnerabilities.