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The View | US-China tech war: how Washington’s approach of all tactics, no strategy could be its undoing
- China continues to play a long game, whereas the US tactical assault on Chinese technology is all about short-term gains
- As long as the US is trapped in a political system that places little value on strategy, there is no guarantee it will prevail in an existential tech conflict
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Why you can trust SCMP
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Technology is ground zero in the conflict between the United States and China. For the US, it is about the leading edge of geostrategic power and the means for sustained prosperity. For China, it holds the key to the indigenous innovation required of a rising power.
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The tech war now under way between the two superpowers could be the defining struggle of the 21st century.
Huawei quickly became the lightning rod in the tech conflict between the two. Feared as a threat to US telecommunications infrastructure, it has been cast as a modern-day Trojan horse, complete with a potential back-door threat in its world-class 5G platform that would make the mythological Helen smile.
Supported by circumstantial evidence – a few espionage charges that have nothing to do with the suspected back door and the presumption of nefarious motives from the military service of its founder, Ren Zhengfei – the US case against Huawei is laced with false narratives.
The real issue in dispute is the murky concept of tech fusion, specifically advanced technologies’ dual use for military and civilian commercial purposes. The US authorities are convinced there is no such distinction in China.
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In their view, China’s state and, by inference, its military ultimately owns everything that falls under the purview of its tech sector, from hardware and software to big data and the surveillance of those at home and abroad. That is also the essence of the growing outcry over the social media platform TikTok.
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