HASas the Chinese Communist Party completed preparations for its 20e Congress, the United States announced, on October 7, new technological restrictions against China, which went relatively unnoticed in Europe. However, they mark a major turning point in the Sino-American rivalry, which will not be without consequences for the Europeans.
These new controls severely restrict the export to China of high-end semiconductors, and the equipment and software needed to manufacture them. Washington is thus depriving China of essential elements for the development of future technologies, particularly artificial intelligence and supercomputers.
After the various sanctions handed down by the American authorities since the Trump years, these measures may seem to be just the umpteenth step in a list destined to grow. In reality, they represent a real break with the doctrine of the United States for more than twenty years, by the technologies they target but also by their very nature.
A double break
Regulations issued this month by the US Department of Commerce demonstrate a double rupture.
First, they target one country in particular, China, where export control regimes since the end of the Cold War have tended to target more weapons-related technologies (especially those of mass destruction).
Hence the second break: they target mainly commercial technologies.
These measures materialize the change of direction announced on September 16 by Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to Joe Biden: the American objective is no longer as before to maintain a technological gap of two generations with China, but to maintain “A lead as wide as possible”…and therefore to stem Chinese technological progress in key sectors.
With these restrictions, the United States assumes its intention to curb the development of “indigenous” Chinese production capacities. While Washington emphasizes that these targeted measures do not represent a generalized “decoupling” program, they mark the American desire to freeze Chinese capabilities in semiconductors, in order to preserve American technological leadership, a real national security imperative.
What rightly worries Americans is the “multiplier effect” of advanced technologies – advanced semiconductors, supercomputers, quantum, artificial intelligence… – and the Chinese strategy of civil-military fusion.
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