US and China to keep talking about chip bans, just not when they'll end

The US Commerce Department said on Monday that it's reached an agreement with Chinese authorities to facilitate the exchange of export control enforcement information – a pact that means the two nations will talk about tech export bans, without seeking to alter them. The agreement was made during a meeting between US secretary …

[TheInstigator]

What is the point of this agreement?

I think both parties know exactly what the aim of any chip/material bans are.

From the US's side it's to ensure that the Uyghur Muslims have religious freedom and are not oppressed in any way and to ensure all Chinese companies do business in a fair and open manner and are not associated in any way with the Chinese Government. Also to let US companies participate in the Chinese market in a fair and open manner.

From the Chinese side, any measures they take are pretty much purely retaliatory in nature and all they're doing is making life more difficult for the world until they get taken over as the 51st state - oops - that the UK - I mean 52nd ...

Seriously speaking for a moment - looking at the bigger picture, I'm sure the end game of this financial and technological end game is :

a) For the US isolationist policies - a trend which started before WW2 - to continue to come to fruition in the form of full self reliance

b) For sufficient financial disconnection to take place with China to place them on the Sanctioned Countries list

What the US and West doesn't realise is that the countries they are now moving their manufacturing bases to are either ex colonies or are fully aware of what Western power looks like if you're at the wrong end of it - so whilst it may all be smiles and pancakes on the top level, underneath they will be pursuing their own agendas - but with a smile and bow.

[martinusher]

Its npt gpong tp emd. Ever.

We've been fiddling with entity lists and bans for decades -- I was first aware of them in the early 80s, for example -- so why the specifics may blow hot and cold depending on the political climate the overall scope and direction will not change. We -- the US -- have generated a huge and growing bureaucracy designed to identify, propose and enforce sanctions and bans and like all bureaucracies its not going to work itself out of a job. Especially as significant amounts of Congress are lined up to supporting it.

The logical end point is that China will just carry on doing what China does and will effectively ignore us. We may seek to 'decouple' but realistically its not a satisfactory solution because its piecemeal. (Decoupling may occur as a result of industrial development in third countries but that development is likely to be the result of BRICS membership than some temporary 'alliance' with the US, especially as many of those countries have been on the receiving end of the US's wrath for being too competitive with the US.) We'll just become a bit of a backwater, one that certainly retains industrial and scientific capability but overall of limited relevance to the world as a whole.

Its not really just China. Careless application of sanctions and tariffs in the furtherance of US business interests may have been something that 'the rest of the world' has had to live with but its not something its going to forget. Our allies -- we always talk in terms of military groupings -- the Japanese learned the hard way not to be too competitive with products as diverse as semiconductors and motorcycles. The Brazilians started developing a useful aircraft industry only to have it taken over when it threatened inroads into US interests. Now we've decided that our currency is not just a useful global reserve currency but also a weapon to be used against our 'adversaries' (but one that requires everyone's cooperation to maintain its value). This isn't a formula for long term stability.

(Of course the alternative is global destruction. We have both the tools and the fanatics who would use them.)