Unfounded allegations and scare stories about Chinese companies appear on news channels in the US and UK every day. Chinese businesspeople are arbitrarily arrested while in transit at airports. Countries are threatened and put under economic siege if they do business with Chinese technology companies. It appears that western governments are hell-bent on undermining and weakening China.

The British and other western governments have done this before and there are very clear lessons in history. Prior to the 1839 opium war, British and Americans smugglers shipped opium into China in defiance of a Chinese ban. Their actions, and the subsequent wars, weakened China for more than a century. The actions of the same western countries in targeting and stifling Chinese technology bear echoes of the opium wars and the Western powers’ wish to keep China weak.