In the Battle for Global Supremacy, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping Tell Us That This Decade Will Be Crucial.
America will do everything to maintain its technological superiority over China.
In the merciless battle that America is about to wage against China for the unofficial title of the world's first superpower, Joe Biden wants to alert American opinion to the urgency of the situation when he says that America has ten years at most to prevent China from becoming the number one technology of the future.
Xi Jinping replied: "You are wrong, in this field as in others, the CCP is capable of performing miracles.
The front line is now microprocessors. System versus system: who will be the best incubator of the future? In a document on the country's “national security strategy,” published on the eve of the 20th CCP congress, in mid-October 2022, the White House presents the next ten years as “the decisive decade.” “Our priority is to maintain our competitive advantage over China,” the Biden team explains.
Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, and more: mastering the technologies of the future will make the power of tomorrow. What is true for the economy is also true for the battlefield, as the Russo-Ukrainian war shows. The preponderance on the international scene is played out, very largely, in startups and laboratories. The political-strategic weight of the United States, if not unequaled, at least decisive, says the document, depends on its ability to preserve its technological lead over China.
The Chinese are not saying anything different from what Joe Biden is saying - but for themselves.
At the 20th CCP Congress, Xi Jinping set a course to become a “great modern country” by 2035 to be “the world leader” by 2049 - the regime's 100th anniversary. Beijing has launched the “China 2025 program” to create national champions in the same sectors as the Americans.
Global trade war
The confrontation is not an academic competition. It is not a race for the Nobel Prize in science, an all-out contest, it is a battle for power. The White House writes that “China intends, and each day is increasingly able, to shape an international order that is favorable to China” - meaning that the influence of the United States would be singularly diminished.
This episode in the Sino-American confrontation recalls a particular moment in the Cold War in the early 1960s. When the Soviets placed the Sputnik 1 satellite in orbit in 1957, the United States felt challenged and threatened: we were going to be overtaken by the USSR! They create NASA and launch a richly endowed space program.
On Sunday, October 16, 2022, while Xi Jinping is indulging in a quasi-religious apology for the CCP, the New York Times publishes an investigation into the policy pursued by the Biden administration to delay China's technological progress. Under the signature of Ana Swanson and Ed Wong, the newspaper paints a picture of a global trade war. It is a campaign to slow, if not break, the pace at which China is integrating its technological advances into its weapons systems - including hypersonic missiles and stealth devices.
The ambition is to prevent the Chinese from acquiring the most sophisticated semiconductors and other electronic components they need and do not yet produce. All the American companies that could supply the vast Chinese market with even a few of these components, or even software, are listed.
The goal is to impose a total embargo on these companies' sales to China. The same pressure is exerted against European or Asian high-tech companies present in the Chinese market.
The conflict is not total
Xi Jinping's response is his speech of October 16, 2022, an ode to the CCP, portrayed as the sole and exclusive guarantor of China's future - a party that must be placed more than ever at the center of everything and protected from dissidence and other bad influences. The party, in its granite-like Leninist purity, is the only centralizing power capable of mobilizing China, says Xi Jinping, and enabling it to outperform liberal democracies - in technology as elsewhere.
Xi Jinping's faith in the irreplaceable necessity of the party is reinforced by his belief in the inevitable decline of the West.
Is this a sin of pride, a moment of hubris on the part of a leader of a country facing innumerable economic, demographic, and other difficulties, to say nothing of his inflexible approach to the treatment of Covid-19? Should we imagine the decoupling of the world's two largest economies? In high technology, certainly - and this is a major turning point in the globalization of trade.
But at the end of August 2022, the United States and China signed an agreement guaranteeing the continuation of the American activities of Chinese companies - excluding high-tech - listed on Wall Street. The negotiation, which had been dragging on for some time, focused on the required accounting documents and transparency of capital ownership for any company soliciting American capital markets.
In the antagonism between China and the United States, the conflict is not total.
There is an effort to “behave” according to the issues. At least that is what the White House hopes to accomplish. The American semiconductor war should be able to coexist with bilateral cooperation on climate, health, nuclear non-proliferation, and world hunger.
It is not clear, however, that the CCP is enthusiastic about this.
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