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2023.08.31 13:57 GMT+8

Reality Check: What's the impact of U.S. bans on China's tech investments?

Updated 2023.08.31 13:57 GMT+8
Reality Check

How should we view the U.S. efforts to control outbound investments in certain Chinese entities? Experts suggest that China leads in some sectors, and the U.S. aims to curtail China's progress. Such sanctions are emblematic of strained U.S.-China relationship.

William Lee: One of the things that we have to realize is that China is a leader in a lot of high-tech leading-edge technologies, like facial recognition and artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, already.

So, I think one of the things that the United States is trying to do, is really playing a game of catch-up and trying to re-direct a lot of our investment into our own work in the same area.

Daryl Guppy: I think it goes beyond trying to play catch-up. To use a football analogy, they're running ahead, but the hand is out behind them, stopping China from advancing.

And we can't discount the impact that this is going to have on China's economy and China's development.

America is, for all intention and purposes, trying to undermine China's advances across the board in terms of particularly developments around technology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and so on.

The objective there is not to outcompete. That would be fair enough. The objective there is to hobble, to disable, to make it more difficult. That's not competition.

James Heimowitz: I think that what it is more, these sanctions are really more emblematic of the state of the relationship than they are directional.

So, if you look at the specific sanctions and things that have been put in place, I personally believe they are very unlikely to have a broad-scale impact based on the nature of what the sanctions in the order say.

What's really worrisome to me is that they are emblematic of the state of affairs and the state of the relationship. And they're basically saying America is not trusting. We're very nervous and concerned about depending on China as a partner.

To me, this is the most worrisome part of it because that needs to be fixed.

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