Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. From
sanctions to
hacking and
prosecution, the United States and some of its allies have tried everything to kill off Huawei Technologies. Yet, China’s pre-eminent national tech champion comes back stronger every time. If Washington with its hubris had learned to leave China and its tech industry alone, companies like Huawei might have lagged behind and become also-rans.
Now, though, across entire fields from artificial intelligence (AI) to semiconductors, these tech giants are helping China to close the tech gap, and even lead. With national prestige and more at stake in this tech war, Beijing must ensure Chinese giants like Huawei prevail over America’s malfeasance.
Huawei’s latest achievement is a
new method to produce the most advanced chips now denied to China. Its Tau Scaling Law can be used to bypass the extreme ultraviolet lithography process monopolised by Dutch company ASML, which has been
barred from supplying its most advanced machines to China. Huawei aims to scale up production of chips with transistor density equivalent to 1.4-nanometre processes by 2031.
The more you sanction and restrict China to slow down its technological development, the better it gets. It’s no longer about the need for tech self-sufficiency but dominance as the nation is not just playing catch-up but leading with innovation in more tech fields.
It is perhaps no accident that Huawei made the breakthrough public not long after US President Donald Trump left Beijing after an underwhelming state visit.
This is becoming a familiar routine. Huawei shocked the global market when it
launched its Mate 60 Pro smartphone, powered by a home-grown 7-nm 5G processor – the Kirin 9000s by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) – during the 2023 China visit by then US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, a tech sanctions hawk. She ought to go down in history for making China’s technology great again.
