If China can’t get American tech, maybe US allies will be more open to supplying chips
- Industrial powerhouses such as Germany or the Netherlands might be less inclined to ‘blindly follow the United States’ amid growing calls for cautious policies on China
- Turning unilateral export controls on China into multilateral controls looks to be a major challenge and a ‘key White House diplomatic priority’
With the US ban on critical computer chips threatening to derail China’s development in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and supercomputers, analysts say that enhancing coordination with American allies could prove decisive for Beijing.
Electric vehicle batteries, artificial intelligence systems and the IT industry are widely expected to be affected, as export controls on semiconductors will send shock waves through other industries that also rely on chips in their end-product, or downstream in their production chain.
“Whether and to what extent US allies and partners join the ban will have a bearing on the impact of this recent policy,” said Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at Brookings Institution’s Centre for East Asia Policy Studies.
Gregory C. Allen, director of the artificial intelligence governance project and a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the US needs to make sure that all of its allies are “rowing in the same direction when it comes to keeping China’s semiconductor industry down”.