Policies Harris would inherit from President Joe Biden “are more long-term, coordinated and predictable, which may bring more stable but longer-lasting challenges to China’s semiconductor industry”, the editorial read.
Trump’s unpredictability is borne out in statements and social media posts. He expressed willingness during his presidency to reverse course on measures he took against Huawei and peer ZTE. During his current campaign, he has railed against a ban on Chinese-owned social media app Tik Tok that he himself proposed while in office.
A July editorial in EETop, an information platform and forum for Chinese electronics firms, said Trump’s criticism of US trade relations with allies such as Europe, Japan and South Korea – which in turn have interests in China – could jeopardise cooperation. That would mean, “especially in the globalised semiconductor industry chain, unilateral suppression by the United States is ineffective”.
“It’s possible that Europe and the Netherlands would deliberately make it easy for us (to circumvent restrictions) then we would be able to import EUVs,” the editorial read. China relies on foreign extreme ultraviolet lithography machines and is barred from the most capable.
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
Irrespective of who wins the election, China’s tech sector is far more domestic-focused and self-sufficient than when Trump or Biden took office, according to analysts and a Reuters review of data.
The trade war has seen a miscellany of tit-for-tat strikes, such as Chinese export restrictions related to rare earth resources, but it also prompted China’s tech industry to insulate itself from sanctions.
In 2016, China had four government procurement projects worth over 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million), replacing foreign hardware and software with domestic alternatives, showed a Reuters review of tenders. This year, it had 169 such projects – 75 involving over 50 million yuan in state funds.
As such, even if Trump or Harris ratcheted up export controls, domestic manufacturers are now far less dependent on foreign technology and are better prepared to deal with the fallout of change in trading environment.
“We have slowed them down on semiconductors, but the other sectors like robots, you can dream on,” said Robert D Atkinson, president of Washington DC-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. “They can get everything they need internally.”
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