Can China Challenge the Technological Supremacy of the United States: Current Standpoint and Perspectives
Can China Challenge the Technological Supremacy of the United States: Current Standpoint and Perspectives

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to project the future dynamics of US-China relations and assess the associated risks of bifurcation of the global economy between the two blocs. The United States and China face a strategic paradox in their long-term competition to research, develop, and acquire new and emerging technologies. In the commercial sphere, the two nations’ research and development (R&D) of emerging technologies is now deeply integrated, potentially providing mutual benefits to each country’s markets. However, despite their commercial interconnectedness, national security planners in each country continue to view each other as potential adversaries. By using the methods of explanatory research and an inductive approach for analysing the management of technological innovation and economic development, the authors argue that China’s economic transformation towards the upper end of global industrial value chains and the seizure of entire product ranges or supply chains have put at risk the US’s hegemonic status. By imposing export sanctions, the United States is trying to force technological decoupling and disable the functioning of global supply chains in the domains critical for Chinese high-tech in order to slow down or contain China’s technological and economic rise. Consequently, the conclusion drawn is that the United States will continue its efforts to maintain primacy over China in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and nanotechnology, by mobilising investments in research and development as well as by using export bans and other kinds of sanctions. In this way, it is likely that a state of cohabitation between the two trading blocs will be developed, which would create the conditions for the evolution of the strained relations between the US and China.

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