To restrict China’s advancement in the military race, the US government has this week passed an executive order limiting American investment in certain types of Chinese tech firms.
This includes restrictions on investing in sensitive technologies like semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, whose advancement may pose a national security threat to the US one day. This is the latest move to shame China after sanctioning several Chinese firms in the US.
Limiting Certain Chinese Firms
The US government has long been adamant about China’s growth in the technology space, mainly when it’s based on American resources. But since China is growing anyway, the US government is crafting new plans regularly to limit the South Asian country’s advancement.
The latest in this pursuit is an executive order signed by President Joe Biden this week that limits American investment in certain Chinese tech firms. This includes companies working on sensitive technologies like semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, which may pose a security threat to the US one day.
Well, the White House has reasoned these new restrictions are to contain potential national security risks, as they could help China make “sophisticated weapons systems, breaking of cryptographic codes, and other applications that could provide these countries with military advantages.”
While the execution of this new order lies in the hands of the Treasury Secretary, the implementations won’t kick in until at least 2024. This would add to the US orders to limit China’s growth in the technology space, where previous sanctions cut chip export and even blacklisted some Chinese firms in the US.
We’ve seen the case of Huawei, China Telecom, Hikvison etc., and even the persuasion of ByteDance to sell its popular short-video platform, TikTok, to a local US firm.
