U.S. strategy to limit China's rise as a technological power is working, analyst says

I think if you look at it in from from practical terms, if there wasn’t any impact, he wouldn’t have slammed the restrictions because he wouldn’t care about them. From where we sit here, when we look at it, the fact that China is unable to manufacture in volume and economically advanced semiconductors will actually have substantial ramifications right the way across their entire technology sector. It’s not that they can’t make them, they can make them using the older machines that they already have. The problem is, is is that when they do make them using those older machines, it costs them so much money that it’s just not economically viable to do so. So what are the economic consequences of this rift and do you think it’s permanent or could we see a shift? We could always see a shift. You know, they always say that 24 hours is a long time in politics. So there’s always, there’s always room for a rapprochement. We just don’t see it happening anytime soon. If we, you know, when we look at it, the sides seem to be getting further and further apart. The net result is going to be that historically we’ve seen a lot of global standards in the technology sector, Take the Internet for example. What we see happening is, is the technology standards fracturing into China will do their own version and everybody else will do another version. And then if you’re a third third party country such as someone in Africa or Southeast Asia, you’re going to have to choose which standard am I going to adopt. And in the long run that’s actually quite negative for everybody because you get a much lower network effect and much less utility generated right the way across the entire technology sector. So unfortunately, the rift that is getting worse, it’s actually bad news for everybody, Richard. China has been investing hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of trying to achieve self-sufficiency when it comes to the chips industry. But we also know that semiconductor manufacturing is extremely, extremely expensive and that’s why there’s such high barriers of entry. I’m just wondering how far away is China from the market leaders here? OK, again, in my opinion so far away that the that China will never catch up. Now let me give you an example. The current most advanced system that’s used for manufacturing chips is called Extreme Ultraviolet, which is manufactured where ASML, the company you mentioned before has a complete and total monopoly. The reason why they’re the only company that makes the machines is it took them over 30 years to perfect the technology. And when we look at where China is in terms of developing the light source and also the mirrors that were required to to replicate that technology, China is so far away. I suspect that it in in real practical terms it will never get there. Which is why it is going down this alternative route that’s already been tried by Intel anti SMC and found to be economically not viable. So what does that mean then for China when it comes to AI, when it comes to advanced technology? Because coming out of the NPC that is really their focus here for the future as of course we’ve seen that the property sector continues to struggle. They are seeing these new productive forces as being kind of the future to push up their growth. Yeah, this is, this is, this is an excellent question. I think what it means is if you look at it historically, if you look at some of the older technologies that are already out there in the market, China dominates them. And in one of the reason why China dominates them because able to manufacture them at good quality and much lower cost than anyone else. Now what I think we think is going to happen is its inability to access or manufacture advanced semiconductor manufacturing means it will still be able to develop the technologies. If we look at artificial intelligence, you know in certain areas I would argue China is the best in the world. However, because they can’t access the advanced semiconductors, they won’t be able to develop those technologies and make them much cheaper than everybody else. So when it comes to a competition with a Western standard and a Chinese standard, a third party country, it’s going to be a more nuanced choice because it’s not. China will not be the obvious choice because it won’t be that much cheaper than the West, because the West is able to use the much more advanced semiconductors, which enables them to develop the technology at much lower cost. So this US strategy then Richard, of a small yard, high fence, is it in your view working at the moment in terms of limiting China’s rise as a technological power, in terms of China’s influence overseas, it would seem to be working I think you know and when you look at some of the pronouncements from the Chinese state, that’s kind of the impression that you get behind the scenes. So at the moment, yes, it is working. It doesn’t mean it’s going to continue to work. Maybe China pull something out of the bag. But at the moment, the trajectory is the US on the semiconductor front is currently winning the battle, yes.