Mouayad Alzoubi
China recently took a decision to ban the products from U.S. Micron Technology, the giant of the microchips industry. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed in a statement that the products of Micron Technology have failed its network security review and China has banned them. Although such decisions fall within protecting China’s national security, which is its right, but it was considered as a response within a series of microchip war between China and the United States.
For more than 4 years, the United States has been fighting Chinese technology companies considering them as a threat to its national security, which many observers regarded it a right, so what has changed when it comes to China? Doesn’t China have the same right to respond to such measures, and to work on the principle of an eye for an eye, especially since at the end of 2022 the current US President Joe Biden’s administration imposed a set of export controls that restrict sales of advanced microchips to China, which include chips designed to run artificial intelligence applications and military supercomputers, as well as chip manufacturing equipment.
The United States has prevented China from participating in international space projects, and although this action delayed China in space progress, it made it a strong and competitive country in the field of space. Today, China owns its own space station and has no competitors in the size, strength, and capabilities of its space program. Preventing China from possessing manufacturing capabilities of microchips, and posing restrictions against its technological companies will make China race against time to achieve its independence in this field. As the whole future is based on the ability to produce, manufacture and develop chips, why should this industry be monopolized by the United States and its allies?
China does not want to enter into a microchips war with the United States, rather, it wants to achieve its independence and develop its skills and companies in this important industry. China, which manufactures everything (literally everything) for the world, needs hundreds of millions of microchips annually, so why doesn’t it seek to protect its interests and the interests of its companies in this field? If the microchips war intensifies in the coming days, China won’t stand idly by. Microchips, as was said above, are not a monopoly of the United States.