America hopes to use TPP as a model for a similar deal with China, so America has insisted on a bunch of rules you'd only expect in a trade deal with a banana republic - like investor-state dispute settlement.
At present, "Chinese officials have learned to tackle multinational companies, often forcing them to form joint ventures with [Chinese companies] and transfer the latest technology in exchange for current and future business opportunities" [1] which is good for China but bad for America. America wants a treaty with China that will stop them doing that.
Personally I'd be surprised if China went for such a deal, regardless of what happens with TPP.
The TPP is actually supposed to exclude China and create a competing trade bloc. It was even called the "everybody but China deal" by some people. All part of Obama's "pivot to Asia"... supposedly.
However, given the contents of the treaty, I don't think this exclusion is something that really bothers China.
China wanted in on the WTO bad. Real bad. China doesn't really care about the TPP.
It's been going on a long time. General Butler, who got Medal of Honor twice & led many wars, straight up said in his confession (War is a Racket) they hit countries to enforce American capitalism while pretending it was about liberty, etc. I can also direct you to some resources covering how much people in Iraq and Afghanistan appreciate how America doesn't do imperialism any more. Oh, wait, I don't know any...
Well, ISDS – which, obviously, is a way to give up parts of sovereignty (not necessarily bad) – has some specific exceptions that make it unlikely it can be used against the US, instead mostly against the other partners.
This gradient of power reminds of the colony-empire relationship of one entity having might over another. (though not nearly comparable, I used it as hyperbole)
In a good treaty both the US and any partners – like Japan, Singapore, or New Zealand – would get the exact same rights.
Yeah, but they say that in order to appeal to us voters, who are assumed all to be ignorant jingoist buffoons, ready to support any idiocy so long as it can be imposed on foreigners. It's actually like many other political efforts in this country, in that only the interests of the very richest donors, corporations, and lobbyists are considered.
Obama sees the TPP as a key part of his legacy (along with Obamacare). I think that sentence might have been as much about self-aggrandizement as it was jingoism.
He really seems to think that the TPP is a key plank in shoring up American power in Asia.
Since Microsoft and Apple spend hundreds of millions developing that code. To let a country 'inspect' it is to put valuable intellectual property at risk. Would you trust China to inspect your source code for a project you spent millions developing a unique technology? Should Boeing open source their aircraft wing designs? To suggest such is ludicrous. Do you really want governments with access to everyone's source code?
I'm not sure I'd want to allow China to sell a "secure operating system" to government agencies - and not be able to demand source code access as part of the bidding process.
I'm not sure I'd want a US company to supply hardware/OS to schools, and not be able to stipulate source code availability in the contract.
I'm not sure if this is the kind of things that this makes illegal -- but I wouldn't be surprised if it is.
At present, "Chinese officials have learned to tackle multinational companies, often forcing them to form joint ventures with [Chinese companies] and transfer the latest technology in exchange for current and future business opportunities" [1] which is good for China but bad for America. America wants a treaty with China that will stop them doing that.
Personally I'd be surprised if China went for such a deal, regardless of what happens with TPP.
[1] https://hbr.org/2010/12/china-vs-the-world-whose-technology-...