Were often asking if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can lead to some kind of world war. But what if global conflict creeps up on us from a different quarter? Infuriated by what it portrayed as an “anti-China” G7 summit, Beijing has now made good on its threat to ban the US’s biggest memory chipmaker, Micron. The move was expected, one might argue, after the West’s growing restrictions on Chinese tech brands that include the likes of Huawei and TikTok. Is this a fight for market share disguised as a battle of values? Or is technology the battleground of national security in the Information Age?

The Cold War had the space race. But this is different. How will US allies like South Korea – chipmakers in their own right – react? Can democracies really decouple from a China that’s still the world’s factory?

The Covid-19 pandemic forced a reckoning on the West’s overdependence on made-in-China products for its essentials. Now, as the US heads into an election cycle, and as an ageing China grapples with a slowing economy, the forecast calls for lots more finger-pointing. But what is the way forward?

Source: France24.com