China fighting an economic war with US: Sun Microsystems co-founder

Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy told FOX Business Thursday he disagrees with former Vice President Joe Biden's claim that China is not a competition for the U.S, and that he has spoken to a lot of CEOs who continue to stress the challenges they face with China.

"It's an economic war. China is certainly fighting it, and they actually map out their game plan for all to see," McNealy told Neil Cavuto on "Cavuto: Coast-to-Coast."

McNealy urged CEOs to find out if their company is in an industry being targeted by China's "Made in 2025" platform, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence.

"It's have lunch or be lunch. If I am a CEO, it doesn't matter if the jobs are being taken by a competitor in the U.S. or one in China, but you better pay attention to China. They don't play by the same fair and open rules that we do with the rest of the world," McNealy said.

McNealy also stressed the Chinese market remains tough for businesses to crack.

"I tell companies that unless they are really big, don't even bother trying to get in there. If you do have to go in there, often they force you to do a joint venture. We don't force that when people come to the United States to do business. We are much more open," McNealy said.

McNealy said he worked with the Chinese to create the first Internet in China before they were able to access all of the technology and closed off their markets, now fundamentally running their own technology to run the Internet.

When asked about his outlook for the China trade talks, McNealy said he personally prefers governments stay out of business decisions, but says the only choice the Trump administration has is to go do aggressive bilateral conversations with all of our key trading partners.

"The challenge we have is that we have elections every four years, so they are just going to wait us out until the next administration. The next administraion may not have as much focus on development, business and all the rest," McNealy added.