Joe Biden has jolted China

The chip war between China and America is heating up, with an increasingly assertive Joe Biden battling with Xi Jinping as he enters his third term as Chinese leader. The US last week further restricted China’s access to advanced American know-how, in what were some of the most stringent export controls for decades. Xi didn’t mention semiconductors in a speech on Sunday marking the opening of the Communist party’s twice-a-decade congress in Beijing, but he did pledge that China would ‘resolutely win the battle in key core technologies’. To compete with the US, China will need better tech. These new export controls will make Xi’s vision much harder to achieve.

Joe Biden has tightened restrictions on exports to China of high-performance chips critical for the development of supercomputers, surveillance systems and advanced weapon systems. It has also blocked the Chinese from buying foreign-made chips that use American tools and software. The US dominates the production of such tools, and now any firm using them will require a licence for exporting to China.