A Study Of US Strategic Technology Competition With China

The new round of technological change is growing in momentum,with a wide range of applications and a deeper degree of embedding,and is significantly changing people’s production,life and way of thinking.Technology is at the intersection of security and wealth,and its powerful empowerment will also reshape international interests,with profound strategic significance,and thus become a new arena of competition between great powers.Strategic technology is transnational in breadth,complex in density,and entangling in depth,and it plays a fundamental and overall role in Sino-US competition,not just the means.The goal of US strategic technology competition with China is to clarify the security boundary and expand strategic advantages,which is a systematic and cross-domain competition with technology as the core under the new situation.First,at the level of strategic vision,the US strategy towards China has undergone a shift from "engagement" to "competition" and "containment".From the "whole-of-government" strategy in the Trump era to the "stratified" competition in the Biden era,what has changed is the way of competition,but what remains the same is the general tone of US assertiveness towards China.The "small yard,high fence" approach,which follows this shift,i.e.dividing core and critical technologies("small yard")and concentrating major efforts to protect them("high fence"),has become the main guide for US strategic technology competition with China.Secondly,from the perspective of action,the US technological competition with China has gone through three stages: emerging,shaping and deepening.During the Obama administration,the conflicts between the US and China in the field of technology were mainly focused on market share grabbing and cyber security,but the competitive actions were relatively fragmented,and both sides still maintained "competitive cooperation".The Trump administration has highlighted its tendency to suppress China’s high-tech development by means of export controls,investment reviews and visa tightening,through trade disputes,diplomatic pressure and legislation.When Biden came to power,he reshuffled the size of the "yard" and the height of the "wall",and a sustainable long-term competitive advantage has been sought through the formation of science and technology alliances,the optimization of the cabinet and the promotion of a package of bills against China.Finally,in essence,the US and China are actually in an embedded competition.Deep globalization has partially dissolved the differences between the world’s top two economies,and the close commercial interactions are gradually spilling over into national relations,making it impossible for the US to exclude China,but also impossible to fully embrace it.The US has a well-developed innovation system of industry,academia,research and application,and takes the lead in the world in original innovation and achievement transformation,giving it an "asymmetric" advantage in strategic technology competition with China,but China’s strong domestic market demand and strong manufacturing capacity are the key to the commercialization and industrialization of technology,and also provide room for the development of independent innovation.This embedded relationship creates the potential for a ’symbiosis’ in the US-China strategic technology competition.