Will China dominate the world of semiconductors?

America and its allies are crafting rules to try to prevent it

During Mr Donald Trump’s presidency, many people looked afresh at China’s technological prowess. Some concluded that it posed a threat to Western economies, and perhaps even to global security. In news headlines Huawei, a brilliantly successful manufacturer of telecoms equipment, became the face of that threat.

America accused the firm of acting as a conduit for Chinese government surveillance and control. In 2018 America clobbered Huawei. It banned the export to the Chinese firm of American microchips essential for its products. This seems to have had the desired effect. Last year Huawei’s revenues shrank for the first time in a decade, by almost a third.

It was unprecedented for a state to stymie so huge a tech company. Huawei’s revenues were about as big as Microsoft’s. But the feat was not without costs. Because the Trump administration acted without cooperating closely with America’s friends, it prompted investors from far and wide to add missing links to parts of the semiconductor supply chain that are beyond the reach of American law.

Japanese firms, among others, have started quietly marketing their products in such a way as to evade America’s Export Administration Regulations, qualifying them as “ear-free”. American firms, many of which sell billions of dollars of equipment to China every year, began looking for neutral territory from which they might continue to export supplies. Singapore and Malaysia led the way. “Who would willingly sign up to be restricted by the US government?” chuckles a lawyer in Washington, who has been navigating tech clients around the new restrictions.