The United States expanded its semiconductor ban on China and issued a China-focused “National Security Strategy” five days before the beginning of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) party congress on Oct. 12.
Experts believe these unprecedented moves will accelerate the United States’ decoupling from China and that the “new Iron Curtain” may have fallen.
Chip Ban Extended to ‘Talents’
The U.S. Department of Commerce announced (pdf) on Oct. 7 that it imposed new export restrictions on advanced semiconductors and chip-manufacturing equipment to prevent American technology from being used for China’s military development.The sweeping ban also effectively prohibits U.S. persons from supporting the development or production of chips covered by the restrictions. Under this rule, U.S. nationals in Chinese chip-related companies will face a choice between losing U.S. citizenship or quitting their jobs in China.
U.S. export controls to China for years have only been on technologies, products, companies, or organizations, and the new ban extends export controls to individual U.S. citizens and green card holders for the first time. It is considered to be the most restrictive ban on China’s semiconductor industry.
According to Radio Free Asia, on the day the ban took effect, hundreds of Chinese-Americans working in semiconductor companies resigned from Yangtze Memory Technologies, Changxin Memory Technologies, Shanghai IC R&D Center Jiading Factory, Hefei Changxin Memory Technologies, and others.
Chiou Jiunn-Rong, an economics professor at National Central University in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times on Oct. 14: “It’s very likely to form a trend. Previously, capital was leaving China, and the next trend is technology professionals leaving China.”
Chiou said that the indirect effect is that after the chip industry is hobbled, China’s overall economy will be impacted, which will affect other fields, and even people in the field of business and business management will probably also leave China.
The United States also announced the National Security Strategy on Oct. 12, which focuses on the CCP and Russia, calling the latter an “immediate threat” and that the CCP was the only competitor with the intention and ability to reshape the international order.
Decoupling Accelerated
Tsai Ming-fang, an Economics professor at Tamkang University, told The Epoch Times on Oct. 12 that from the new ban it can be seen that the trend of decoupling between the United States and China is more clear and certain. He predicts that “Taiwan factories will no longer help Chinese manufacturers but will help more brands in democratic countries.”Shen Rongqin, a professor at York University in Canada, told The Epoch Times that the Biden administration has attached great importance to technological sanctions of China from the very beginning. Republican lawmakers have used the entity list to contain the CCP before. But what Biden has done is more radical and comprehensive than many Republican congressmen have suggested. “Starting from the Trump administration, now Biden has accelerated the trend of decoupling between China and the United States in semiconductor technology,” said Shen.
U.S.-based current affairs commentator Li Linyi told The Epoch Times on Oct. 14 that the Biden administration’s actions this time are much tougher than before.
He said: “These measures are likely to be just the beginning for the U.S. government. If these measures are extended to other fields such as finance, biotechnology, etc., it will really become a headache for the CCP. That is the U.S.–China decoupling is really happening.”
Chiou Jiunn-Rong pointed out that the tension between the United States and China seems to be very high now, but not in the military situation unlike the U.S.-Soviet relationship during the Cold War. The first will be economic wars and technological wars.
