The news continues to misrepresent export control regulations as some sort of ban. As I explained in my previous post, the restrictions are merely to secure mega profits for a select few licensed exporters while kicking out their competitors. In particular, preferentially giving license to American corporations at the expense of American allies.
The “loopholes” in the restrictions are also never explained. We’re just supposed to take it face value that “cHiNa iS BreAkInG tHe RuLeZ!!1”. From my reading of the US Dept of Commerce’s official Export Administration Regulations, the only “loophole” is that exporters can apply for a license and then they can export. The continuous portrayal of China as a bad faith trade partner is a propaganda tactic to cover up their own bad faith profit driven dealings—wanting to profit from trade with China while directing the American public’s anger at China for the hollowing out of the American chip industry.
The decline of imports is subtly portrayed as a win for the cover narrative that the sanctions are presumably to slow down or stop altogether China’s access to chips. In reality, this is probably due to China building up domestic chip manufacturing—I’ll credit the article for mentioning that revenue from domestic manufacturers rose 39% in the first half of 2023 compared to a year earlier. By presenting it this way, they confuse readers into thinking that this loss (the decline of exports to China) is actually a win.
Respectfully. I’m not sure I buy this. There might be some thinking there but I really think it is the return of chips as munitions that existed in the 90s and the US trying to hurt China’s ability to compete on AI and super-computing and in the defense space. It’s ill advised and doomed to destroy their domestic industries in the end but the evidence including NVIDIA (an American company) begging for export licensing, designing chips around the export ban only to have those then hit with an updated ban and the commerce secretary openly stating she wouldn’t allow them to get around such restrictions and would veto things next day if she had to in order to stop it.
Terminating deals with Netherlands companies to knee them center mass I could see, but these things are attacking American companies.
Along with the fact that there has been all this talk of “clean networks” I really think the US is going to try and cut China out, ban sales to them, then lock in as many countries as they can with talks of Chinese chips being a threat (like they did with Huawei) and possibly passing laws or regulations to the effect that countries (with a few strategic exceptions like India who are too important to lose and will be given exemptions) must choose. Either they get access to US chips, US technology, US high tech products and brands or they choose Chinese and those brands are banned from exporting technology above a certain level to them.
Thing is US sanctions have always had these “loopholes” you speak of because the US wants flexibility to benefit themselves as well as not to drive strategic allies into the arms of others (and that’s what these are for, handing them out to India or in case it’s somehow otherwise beneficial to the plan, it’s not a back-door in 99% of cases just a situation where if you’ve been bribing the commerce secretary all their life and call in a favor they can get your little company a little exemption so you don’t have to deal with the hassle kind of thing).
The fact is they hadn’t handed NVIDIA a blanket exemption as I’d expect they would if the goal was destroying foreign companies. In fact they’ve made life difficult and the NVIDIA CEO has complained that it’s going to badly hurt them in the long-run and that he doesn’t like it. I don’t think the CEO of NVIDIA is being deceptive on this. It makes no sense. What’s the point of a deception so elaborate it encourages the Chinese to invest in replacement for NVIDIA chips? They’re not going to shut all that down if the US one day says “just kidding haha, here” because they’re not about to be trusting of anyone acting like that. Just to fool their lapdog vassals? Not needed as we’ve seen with Russia the US merely needs say jump into the volcano and they ask at what degree of attack and it won’t work, the Chinese will have replacements by the time such an alleged ruse is dropped.
I think what we are seeing here is in fact the industrial vs financial bourgeoisie. Finance being international in nature is fine cozying up to China and this means most tech companies. On the other hand the defense industry, the war-hawks, and the brain-poisoned politicians all have reasons to try and confront and destroy China and this is part of a strategy to do that. A portion of the bourgeoisie, the ones in control of most of the levers of government are convinced it’s necessary to destroy or really contain and restrain China and that short-term pain for that among some industries is acceptable to the whole for its health.
White house advisors have talked about their desires for keeping China 5-10 years behind the US at all times. Not of being able to conclusively beat them or destroy them in the near future but of locking them in the past and making sure if you want the best you have to buy American.
They underestimate China, they’re using an outdated playbook, they think they can get ahead and stay ahead. But it’s reasonable to assume they’re not lying. They usually tell the truth. I mean they’ve been happy to publish the truth for decades on everything including grand geopolitical strategy like their reasons for destabilizing the middle east/west Asia. Sure they don’t say it on CNN but they publish books, give talks at think tanks and basically are very candid about this stuff and always have been in order to get buy-in because there is division among the bourgeoisie and corporations and indeed among their thinkers on this.