As a Taiwan-born Chinese living in the United States, I had no problem picking sides when watching the highly anticipated “ debate ” between Trish Regan, anchor of Fox Business Network’s Primetime , and Liu Xin, host of CGTN’s The Point . I secretly rooted for Liu, not only out of empathy and respect for someone speaking up in a second language, but also because I knew she faced an uphill battle proving her case without sounding like a demagogue. In Regan’s opening statement, she referred to Liu as a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a characterisation that Liu immediately disputed. Although they talked past each other during this exchange, that looked more like a function of delays in satellite transmission than fighting over the microphone. But two hours after the conclusion of the programme, the top trending hashtag on Weibo, one of China’s biggest social media platforms, was, “Liu Xin was interrupted by Trish at least three times in 30 seconds”, with related posts generating 11 billion views and 15,000 comments. Regan sought Liu’s views on China’s intellectual property (IP) violations by confronting her with a rolling on-screen roster of notable examples of IP theft by China. Liu conceded: “I do not deny that there are IP infringements, there are copyright issues, piracy or even theft of commercial secrets. That’s something that has to be dealt with.” While Regan took this to be an admission of China’s IP infringements, it is equally important to listen to Liu’s qualification: “I think that’s a common practice probably in every part of the world and there are companies in the United States who sue each other all the time over infringement on IP rights, and you can’t say simply because these cases are happening that America is stealing or China is stealing or the Chinese people are stealing.” We should recall the genesis of this on-air encounter: a week ago before their televised exchange, Liu picked on Regan for comments on China’s IP violations, trashing Regan’s remarks as “economic warmongering” and “all emotion and accusation supported with little substance”. Liu called on Regan to hire a better research team. The timing and combative tone of Liu’s offensive were intriguing as it coincided with a series of essays on America’s approach to US-China relations published by People’s Daily in May, dubbed by commentators as the “nine new critiques”. Two of the essays defended China against the charges of IP theft and forced technology transfer . Written under the pen name “Zhong Sheng” ( bell toll ), a pun on “voice of China” , these essays allude to the original “Nine Critiques” from 1956, masterminded by Mao Zedong and drafted by Deng Xiaoping, which discussed a complete split between the Communist Party of China and the Soviet Union and criticised Khrushchev’s “revisionism”. In the wake of the trade war truce struck during the G20 summit in Argentina, China had not openly challenged the US’ accusation of systemic, and sometimes state-enabled, IP rights violations. But with the newly hiked tariffs and trade talks in limbo , China has again dialled up the defence of its IP rights record. US accusations of Chinese IP theft just don’t add up Liu getting prime-time exposure on US President Donald Trump’s favourite television network was a big coup for China, especially in light of the stand-off in trade talks. Reading from a teleprompter on her own show, Liu sounded more combative. She had clearly dialled down her assertiveness on Regan’s show as the latter also softened her approach. When asked how she understood “state capitalism”, Liu pointed out that 80 per cent of employees, 80 per cent of exports and 65 per cent of technological innovations came from the private sector. But she failed to acknowledge that state-owned enterprises, through subsidies in land, rent, interest rates and pricing, receive a disproportionate allocation of resources but deliver sub-par output. I also question her characterisation of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as the market playing a dominant role in allocating resources. The economic reality and the recent political rhetoric have tilted towards government controlling allocation. The most interesting question posed by Regan was about Huawei: what if Huawei was asked to share its own technological advances with its US counterparts? Liu replied that in the spirit of cooperation, mutual learning, legality and paying for the use of IP, why not? The question remains whether Huawei and the other Chinese companies have paid a fair price for the intellectual property generated by the American companies. This, along with subsidies, opening the market further and the digital economy, should be the focal points of the next debate, if there is one. Although we do not need to see mudslinging, I do hope a future debate would go beyond polite conversation and Liu would also get to ask some tough questions. Chiu-Ti Jansen, with advanced degrees from Yale and Columbia, is the founder of multimedia platform China Happenings and a former corporate partner of international law firm Sidley Austin