The US Pledged to Rein in China’s Tech Ambitions. It’s Struggling

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China is making steady progress in its quest to dominate key industries of the future, despite years of US tariffs, export controls and sanctions. 

On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha talks to Bloomberg’s Rebecca Choong Wilkins about how the US is struggling to curb Beijing’s technological advances, and whether the upcoming election could change the dynamic.

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Further listening:

• How China’s BYD Became King of the Affordable EV

• On Friday, Odd Lots will dig into Bloomberg’s research on the Made in China plan, and why it largely succeeded in spite of US efforts. Subscribe here.

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Below is a lighted edited transcript of the conversation:

K. Oanh Ha: The US presidential election is a week away, and the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could not be tighter. The two candidates are going head-to-head on everything from the economy to immigration. But one area they agree on is the need to curb China’s rise.

Donald Trump: We got hundreds of billions of dollars just from China alone. And I hadn’t even started yet. But tariffs are two things, if you look at it, number one is for protection of the companies that we have here…

Kamala Harris: A policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century, which means focusing on the details of what that requires. Focusing on relationships with our allies. Focusing on investing in American-based technology.

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Ha: So how is the US doing versus China? Which superpower is leading the race for dominance of the 21st century? Rebecca Choong Wilkins, Bloomberg’s Asia Government and Politics correspondent says a good way to try to answer this question is by looking at the key emerging technologies that China identified as its priority — back in 2015 when it announced its Made in China 2025 plan. And when you look at that plan now — nearly a decade later, new research by Bloomberg Economics and Bloomberg Intelligence shows that Made in China 2025 has largely been a success.

Rebecca Choong Wilkins: So of the 13 key technologies tracked by Bloomberg researchers, China has achieved a global leadership position in five of them and is catching up fast in seven others.

Ha: Welcome to the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I’m Oanh Ha. Every week, we take you inside some of the world’s biggest and most powerful economies, and the markets, tycoons and businesses that drive this ever-shifting region. Today on the show: How did China get ahead in key technological advances – despite US efforts to prevent that from happening. And would a Harris or Trump administration change that? 

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Ha: Rebecca says back in 2015 when the Made in China plan was announced by the Chinese Communist Party – it was all about helping the country achieve two big goals.

Choong Wilkins: One is this self-sufficiency, not wanting to be reliant on other countries and is preparing for any kind of scenario where, for example, China might be cut off from, say, its energy supply or whatever it might be, and China more broadly does have a sort of preoccupation or prevailing concern with preserving its own security. So standing on its own two feet. And the second is becoming increasingly competitive and, in fact, a global leader in some of these key strategic areas. So there’s both a sort of inward and an outward element to the Made in China plan.

Ha: The plan highlighted 10 priority sectors for the nation to focus on, including aerospace equipment, energy-saving cars, bio medicine and high-end machine tools and robots. And now almost 10 years later – according to the analysis by Bloomberg – China has in fact become a global leader in many of these key areas. 

Choong Wilkins: So those sectors include solar panels, unmanned aerial vehicles — those are drones – graphene, which is a coating material that’s used in tons and tons of sectors, high speed rail, and electric vehicles. 

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Ha: Now does China have any natural advantages that makes it possible that it’s been able to take leading positions in these sectors? Or is this simply by design and the will of Beijing?

Choong Wilkins: Well it’s worth saying that even in 2015, China, as we determine, was already a global leader in three of these sectors – in graphene and solar panels and in unmanned aerial vehicles. So, they had a sort of, somewhat of a head start in any case. But the other important element here to remember, I think, is that when Beijing does signal out an area for support, when it signals out a key policy priority, it really is able to throw the full weight of its economy, essentially, behind that.

So for example, if it decides that electric vehicles are a priority, say, it can ask banks to lend it credit cheaply. It can get local governments to lease it land cheaply or perhaps even at no or low cost. It can also get large state-owned enterprises to use the sort of full force of its resources, its talents and direct it towards those industries. So you know, Beijing has an incredibly sort of powerful basis here, an incredibly powerful set of resources to direct towards these industries when it has selected these priorities.

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Ha: But there is one key area where China hasn’t caught up to the US – and that’s in advanced semiconductors. That’s in part because of some key things the US has done to keep its rival from catching up.

Choong Wilkins: There’s sort of three big tools for economic statecraft that we’ve seen. One of them is tariffs, imposing these high costs for imports coming into the US, sometimes prohibitively high. The second are export controls, essentially trying to prevent the transfer of US technology, goods, services overseas to other parts of the world. And the final part of that are financial sanctions.

The big area where we can say that some of the US export controls and so on have been more effective is in sort of high, advanced semiconductors. And it’s important to remember in this context, there’s just a handful of companies involved in this kind of really advanced semiconductor tech manufacturing. And it’s fair to say, the Biden administration, they have been successful in building consensus among allies, among other countries trying to contain China’s access to semiconductors. And so we saw Dutch companies, Japanese companies essentially falling in line in preventing China from accessing the actual products needed to manufacture these types of chips.

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Ha: And in light of that of the US having allies to support its approach to trade on China and its approach to contain China. What has China done to make sure it has access to the technologies it needs?

Choong Wilkins: China essentially has been stockpiling like mad. That’s a sort of fundamental basis of this. They’re stockpiling a record amount of semiconductor equipment, and that includes these high-end Nvidia chips. It’s preparing essentially, for a number of further curbs. It’s looking further out thinking, if we see these kind of moves accelerate, if they’re expanded, where will we be? And how do we try and future proof against that?  

Ha: But it’s not just semiconductors where the US is trying to use export controls to slow China down. After the break: a look at the other tools the US is using and will a new administration keep them going.

Ha: The US has leaned on its allies to limit China’s access to advanced technologies like semiconductors. Meanwhile, the US is also concerned about its ability to be a leader in other sectors as well. Some of these areas were outlined back in 2022 by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

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Jake Sullivan: Computing-related technologies, biotech, clean tech are true “force multipliers” through the tech ecosystem. And leadership in each of these areas is a national security imperative. We’re investing in the industries of the future and strengthening the resilience and security of our supply chains.

Ha: Sullivan calls these technologies a “national security imperative”. Bloomberg’s Rebecca Choong Wilkins says that’s an important thing to take note of, because over time she’s seen a change in the way the US talks about the need to restrain China.

Choong Wilkins: Yeah, I think in the early days of the trade war, a lot of the focus was on the sort of, wrongdoing as they alleged of Chinese companies. But over time that has really morphed into this whole discussion over national security and increasingly this focus on China’s preparedness for a war. And in fact we’ve almost seen the true real concerns at the heart of some of these economic policies, over sort of military might essentially.

It’s this question of deterrence, whether or not Beijing and Washington will essentially adopt this idea that the costs of this trade conflict and trade war and the cost of this increasing competition are worth it or not. It comes, sort of, I suppose, to this fundamental question of to what extent both sides feel that their own national security is fundamentally at risk.

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Ha: On the campaign trail, Trump and Harris have advocated different approaches toward China, even as both agree on the need to thwart its rise. I asked Rebecca what Trump currently has in mind here.

Choong Wilkins: Well, we just, in a way, have just seen an amplification, perhaps unsurprisingly, of some of his previous policies. He’s mentioned this possibility of 60% tariffs across all Chinese imports into the US. 

Ha: That would be crazy high. 

Choong Wilkins: That would be crazy high, and it would really hurt the Chinese economy. One bank, for example, estimates that it could essentially halve Chinese GDP growth. So it would really be a significant hit to China, but also a significant hit to the US if that then results in a higher cost of goods.

Ha: Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait pressed Trump on that point in an interview earlier this month.

John Micklethwait: …You’re talking about 60% trade on that, 60% tariffs on that. You’re talking, as you said, 100, 200% on things you don’t really like. You’re also talking about 10, 20% tariffs on the rest of the world. That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy. And yes, you’re going to find some people who will gain from individual tariffs. The overall effect could be massive in terms of the economy.

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Trump: I agree. I agree, it’s going to have a massive effect. Positive effect. It’s going to be a positive, not a negative.

Micklethwait: Well just… 

Trump: Let me just no, no..

Micklethwait: Give me an example. 

Trump: I know how committed you are…

Choong Wilkins: The other thing to remember with Trump is that he has taken a more protectionist stance writ large. He’s not just concerned about Chinese imports, but he’s concerned about imports from everyone, including, for example, the European Union.

Ha: What do we know about Harris’s approach if she wins?  

Choong Wilkins: Well Harris’s approach, we expect to be more consistent with the Biden administration’s. I will say she too has focused on this idea of jobs and sort of American industrial policy, trying essentially to build up some of those manufacturing bases again. She’s been critical of Trump’s proposed tariffs. But she has been quite firm on some of the national security risks that the US faces. 

Ha: So Rebecca, is either approach really doing a great job in containing China’s tech development? 

Choong Wilkins: Well if we look at the success of the Biden administration, and we look, just going back to the beginning at some of those Made in China targets, for example, we can see that actually, they aren’t successful, or they haven’t been successful in certain key areas. If we exclude semiconductors, actually, trade has found a way to get through. Sanctions haven’t been hugely successful. So that’s one question for Harris that this need to perhaps recalibrate the approach.

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Ha: Despite the US efforts to slow down China, the world outside the US is increasingly driving Chinese EVs, surfing on Chinese smartphones, and powering their homes with Chinese solar panels. And Rebecca says there might be better approaches for the US to maintain its competitiveness.

Choong Wilkins: One approach to thinking about what would be more effective than sanctions is this idea that Adam Posen from the Peterson Institute has mentioned, which is suction, not sanctions. Essentially that the US should be making use and taking up talent, resources, innovation coming from China and partnering with it in order to advance its own industries and its own key sectors. 

Ha: So basically, taking away all the talent so that the US makes use of it. 

Choong Wilkins: Taking the best of what China has developed and then building on that to develop and innovate at a faster pace.

(Updated the transcript)

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