Home » China and the United States are caught in a superpower technology war to “win the 21st century”-ABC News

China and the United States are caught in a superpower technology war to “win the 21st century”-ABC News

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In a quiet work area above the bustling Shenzhen Huaqiangbei Electronics Market, engineer Xiong Chang (transliteration) reached for a metal part on the table behind him.

It may not seem special, but it is a powerful example of why the technology start-ups he founded in the UK chose this “Silicon Valley of China”.

“In American factories, this[零件]The quotation will be several thousand dollars, and they may give you a delivery time of about two to three weeks,” Chang Xiong said.

“The same parts, we can get from the factory here in three days, and the price is less than one hundred dollars.”

Chang Xiong’s company is assembling a prototype agricultural robot that kills weeds by spraying hot oil on them, which may solve the problem of herbicide-resistant weeds that plague world farms.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Chang Xiong is visiting the world‘s largest electronics market in Shenzhen.

This is one of a growing number of technology start-ups based in Shenzhen. Shenzhen is separated from Hong Kong by a river.

Until the 1980s, Shenzhen was still a sleeping small fishing village with less than 100,000 residents.

Nowadays, Shenzhen is a metropolis full of tall buildings, with a permanent population of 12.5 million. There are also many Chinese technology giants standing here. This is the headquarters of Huawei.

Chang Xiong said that Huaqiangbei is the world‘s largest electronics market and a “Hardware Holy Land.” He said that here people can find parts for making any type of electronic gadgets, and they are all in one place and on a huge scale.

Although the United States has a long-standing technological advantage, China is catching up quickly and is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, 5G and 6G, chips, and surveillance technology.

U.S. President Biden is planning a $330 billion grant program to revitalize U.S. investment in research and development. He also pointed out that the strategic competition between the United States and China is no less than a battle to “win the 21st century.”

A man in a boat with high-rise buildings in the background.
Until a few decades ago, Shenzhen’s main business was fishing. It is now an expanding metropolis, often referred to as “China’s Silicon Valley”.(

Reuters: Kim Kyung-Hoon

)

The so-called “technological cold war” is quickly becoming a decisive battlefield for the superpowers of the United States and China.

The United States has been trying to contain China’s rise as a technological power. Prohibit Huawei’s 5G network technology in the United States, and effectively prohibit US companies from providing software and components to Chinese technology companies.

Last year, the Trump administration also took action to ban TikTok (the international version of Douyin) in the United States, fearing that the application might steal users’ personal data for the North Chinese Communist regime.

But analysts warn that these small-scale conflicts will only increase the “digital iron curtain” between China and the West.

These people say that the world is being divided into two competing and mutually exclusive technological ecosystems, each with its own Internet, hardware, communications and financial platforms.

Apjit Walia, head of global technology strategy at Deutsche Bank, said: “The technology war is a parallel world of two groups of countries using two sets of competing standards.”

“No matter how you use a personal computer for calculations, or use a mobile phone for communication, and everything that is electronic, you start to have two sets of standards.”

Two internet

As early as 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of an audience at Georgetown University and issued a warning.

He said that China is developing an online world that is unfamiliar to Westerners. This online world has its own values ​​and platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg at the podium.
In his 2019 speech, Mark Zuckerberg warned of the impact of China’s alternative Internet ecosystem on freedom of speech.(

Reuters: Carlos Jasso

)

Zuckerberg said: “China is building its own Internet, focusing on different values, and is exporting their views on the Internet to other countries.”

China’s social media platform WeChat, Alibaba’s online shopping platform, and Baidu’s search engine have created a cyberspace that is different from those dominated by American technology giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google.

James Green, the former trade affairs minister of the US Embassy in China, said that China’s Internet division has been going on for ten years.

“The Chinese side decided that for reasons of domestic stability, China’s Internet must be separated from the global Internet,” Green said.

“I think the Chinese leadership realized, hey, there are some technologies that we don’t want foreigners to participate in, so we started to squeeze them out.”

Platforms like Facebook and Google are banned because the Communist government has created a “protected market for Chinese technology companies[环境]”, and these companies are willing to obey Beijing’s political requirements.

A Huawei store.
Few companies have been directly pushed into the center of the US-China science and technology war like Huawei. In many Western countries, Huawei is prohibited from providing 5G hardware.(

Reuters: Aly Song

)

“So I think the Trump administration’s response to Huawei and semiconductors is, to some extent, a natural response.”

China’s work to establish its own technology ecosystem continues. In addition to the Internet platform, it also extends to operating systems, CPU architectures, satellite communication networks, and payment systems. These systems have little interoperability with similar products in the West.

The Trump administration’s sanctions cut off the Chinese mobile phone maker’s access to Google’s Android mobile operating system (OS) and may harm Huawei’s smartphone business. However, according to Yu Chengdong, CEO of the company’s consumer business group, this Forcing Huawei to focus on developing its own Hongmeng operating system.

The company has begun to manufacture mobile phones without American chips.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is pushing China to achieve technological self-sufficiency in areas such as chip manufacturing to get rid of its dependence on the United States.

Deutsche Bank’s Wallia believes that the ever-widening digital divide may soon force individuals, companies, and even countries to choose one system, otherwise they will have to bear the cost of crossing two technological systems.

Trump and Xi with their backs to each other.
The trade war in the past three years has forced some Chinese companies to focus on the Chinese domestic market in order to survive, further deepening their differences.(

Reuters: Kevin Lamarque

)

“Companies and institutions…will have to find a way, or have two structures and two sets of things,” said Wallia.

“The same goes for mobile phones. Do users have to have two different mobile phones? One uses WeChat and the other uses Gmail?

“This is a scary situation, but it may become a reality at some point.”

Both sides of the technology war will be injured, but this will cost the entire world a huge price. A report by Deutsche Bank estimates that the cost of the technology war will exceed US$3.5 trillion in the next five years.

Competing financial system

The global financial system is becoming a new and destructive frontline in the technological war.

A key way for the United States to exercise control over the financial system is the SWIFT International Payment Network. Every day, five trillion US dollars of funds are transferred around the world through this global system.

If the Biden administration chooses to do so, this system can sanction or cut off the business connections of various Chinese banks and companies in the international financial market, causing huge damage to the Chinese economy.

A sign indicating digital yuan.
In a shopping mall in Shanghai, China, a sign displaying the digital renminbi. This digital currency may weaken the U.S. dominance in the financial system.(

Reuters: Aly Song

)

Aditi Kumar of the Kennedy School of Harvard University said: “Control of this infrastructure gives the United States tremendous power to track global capital flows and cut off the use of this infrastructure by entities.”

The SWIFT system of the Global Banking Financial Telecommunications Association enables the United States to arrest and accuse Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, for violating US sanctions against Iran.

Meng Wanzhou is still under house arrest in Canada, and the case has angered the Chinese leadership. They took retaliatory action and arrested two Canadian citizens in China.

China has responded to this new financial threat by digitizing the renminbi. In 2020, China will become the world‘s first major economy, testing digital currencies in four cities in China.

The purpose is to internationalize this new system as soon as possible to weaken the world’s dependence on the US dollar and the SWIFT system.

“This promotes trade, and our influence will, you know, get bigger and bigger,” said Qu Qiang of the Institute of International Monetary Studies at Renmin University of China.

A man stands next to a ByteDance sign.
The Chinese company Bytedance’s app TikTok (known locally as Douyin) was targeted by the Trump administration for fear of disclosing private data of American citizens to China.(

Reuters: Tingshu Wang

)

“Now that we have digital currency, our friends in Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos can download an application, and then they can put the money in an authorized exchange site to obtain Chinese digital currency, and they can use it immediately.[数字人民币]To trade,” Qu Qiang said.

Kumar said that Beijing’s move worries Washington.

“[北京]Will be able to circumvent US supervision and sanctions. With the digital infrastructure developed by China, the United States may lose its ability to monitor or sanction. “

No longer imitators

In Shenzhen, the trade war seems to have little effect on China’s pace of innovation.

American entrepreneur Garrett Winther said: “From an engineering or technical point of view,[深圳]It’s almost the center of everything in the physical world.” He now owns a portfolio of more than 200 Shenzhen, a high-tech center startup company.

Two years ago, China reached an important milestone. For the first time, the number of global patent applications filed by China surpassed that of the United States.

China has registered nearly 60,000 patents, 1,000 more than the United States, and most of them are from Shenzhen.

Men at an electronics store.
Shenzhen Huaqiangbei has become a gathering place for technology start-ups pursuing original product design and innovation.(

Reuters: Thomas Peter

)

“In fact, there are a lot of expertise, knowledge,[对知识的]Cognition and understanding. “

“There will always be economic ups and downs, but the potential driving forces that are occurring in Chinese culture will continue to promote new opportunities and growth, and I think we have not even seen these opportunities and growth come.”

The United States believes that it can win and maintain its technological superiority.

But China is spending huge sums of money on high-tech research and development, announcing a five-year plan of about 1.8 trillion Australian dollars, which is expected to dominate artificial intelligence, robotics, 6G and all other technologies by 2035.

James Green, the former trade affairs minister of the US Embassy in China, said that the expansion of the technology war under Trump’s leadership will not end soon.

He said: “Some issues, especially those surrounding technology and the technology ecosystem, will continue to haunt us in the next few years.”

Please watch the second episode of Clash of the Titans (Clash of the Titans-Part 2) on ABC TV and iview.

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