U.S.-China digital Iron Curtain only comes with downsides

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Again, Washington has expanded the list of banned Chinese imports. On Monday, the U.S. Commerce Department announced a sweeping initiative to ban China-developed software and hardware from internet-connected vehicles in the United States.

In face of China's rapid tech growth, the world's superpower had long attempted to build a digital wall against the country that it deems as a rival. As early as 2019, the U.S. put China's telecom company Huawei on the entity list, prohibiting American corporations from supplying foreign firms that pose "potential security threats."

Washington's anti-Beijing barrier then expanded to popular Chinese social media platforms and China-made cranes operating at American ports. This year, the Biden administration targeted Chinese electric vehicles (EVs). Not long after announcing 100 percent tariffs on China-made EVs, Washington announced the cutoff of Chinese software and hardware inside vehicles. This latest decoupling of Chinese products is likely to be made a permanent rule.

Clearly, a digital Iron Curtain is dropping between the world's two largest economies. As the world's hegemonic power, the U.S.'s thirst to dominate emerging technologies has escalated unfair competition and thereby tensions with other countries, especially China. Just like the arms race of the Cold War, a race for technological supremacy has been unveiled by the U.S. against China.

It is the quest for supremacy, not so-called national security concerns, that is behind Washington's repeated discriminatory actions against Chinese firms and products. National security is an easy tool with which the U.S. can abuse market principles and crack down upon rivals.

The U.S., since its unilateral move against Huawei in 2019, has not yet provided any single piece of evidence of China's "threat." Hypes about Beijing's potential to remotely manipulate connected vehicles on U.S. roads and to insert code into American power systems and critical infrastructure in a time of crisis are ridiculous.

"I think that the U.S. government may be projecting the kind of malware (that it) itself plans to install in some connected systems," Jeffrey Sachs, an economics professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University was quoted by Xinhua as saying, adding that "there is absolutely no evidence that China is doing so."

Banning Chinese products from American soil, the U.S. has been enthusiastically selling its products across the world. Microsoft 365, for instance, is used by over a million companies worldwide, according to Statista. America's EV market, as Statista estimated, could achieve a revenue of $94.9 billion this year.

Apparently, Washington's efforts in kicking China out from global supply chains are clearing barriers for more sales of American products. Is this fair competition as the U.S. has been advocating? Absolutely not.

Worse still, data breach is no stranger in the United States. According to a U.S.-based Security Intelligence website, private data of 2.9 billion American citizens, including full names, social security numbers, addresses and even information about their relatives was published on the dark web this August – from a single breach of U.S. National Public Data. If Washington is sincere about security, it should at least address its domestic problems before discrediting others.

By discrediting and decoupling from rivals, Washington wants to secure its supremacy. But its relentless pursuit of hegemony will only come with significant downsides. China has unrivalled advantage in the production of EV batteries, and this means American automakers, as The New York Times warned, risk "falling behind if they do not have access to the latest technology."

Just as no one benefitted from the Iron Curtain that divided the world into ideological blocs in the Cold War era, the separation of the global tech ecosystem will only lead to multi-loss scenarios in the era of global integration.

Tech governance requires cooperation. Setting barriers to disadvantage rivals is like squandering 800 to kill 1,000 enemy soldiers.

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