Daleep Singh on America’s economic statecraft

THE BIDEN administration is determined to challenge China’s high-tech aspirations. After a series of smaller moves, it has in recent months launched new export controls that broaden and deepen its denial of semiconductor technology to China in dramatic fashion. The rules add three big restrictions. First, they go beyond targeting specific companies and now start by denying exports to China of any chips that perform above a certain threshold. Second, they prevent any American citizen, green-card holder or company  that does not have a licence to do so from working with any Chinese company to manufacture chips. Third, the new rules restrict the use of American tools, equipment or software anywhere in the world to manufacture and export advanced chips to China.

Some criticise the Biden administration’s actions, calling them tantamount to a declaration of an economic cold war. Arguments against such a war claim that it could accelerate Beijing’s drive for technological self-sufficiency, alienate American allies who resent the extraterritorial application of American economic force and push the world into rigid and separate technology ecosystems.