Washington bringing ruin to US tech, deceived by false promise of advantage

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has vocally denied any attempt on the part of the United States to "decouple" from China, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has touted Washington's aspiration for a "stable" relationship with China when speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday.

In practice, however, Washington is doing everything in its capacity to impede the technological progress of China, turning a deaf ear to Beijing's calls for bilateral ties to "return to a healthy track".

Although, rhetorically, "de-risking" sounds less confrontational than "decoupling", there seems to be no way to dissuade Washington from continuing its ongoing tech offensive against Beijing, despite its efforts so far having proved both the impossibility and self-defeating nature of the tactic.

Belying all the claims about US sincerity for a normal, stable relationship with China based on international rules and fair competition, Washington has since the days of the Donald Trump administration identified China as its foremost rival and acted accordingly.

In addition to all the previous sanctions and export control measures, the Joe Biden administration is proposing to significantly upgrade these endeavors with new rules being considered to restrict US investments in Chinese tech companies, and further tighten the restrictions on exports of advanced chips to China. The US House of Representatives is targeting venture capital companies GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Walden International and Qualcomm Ventures for their investments in China.

Beijing has consistently said that the attempts to sever the economic and trade ties between the world's two largest economies are painful for both sides and will not benefit the US in the long run. And that is what the US business community is telling the country's policymakers.

If that message fails to convince when it comes from Beijing, perhaps the CEOs of the largest US chipmakers, who have found themselves at the forefront of the chip war with China, can be more persuasive in getting it across. During a meeting on July 17 with officials in Washington, they asked the government to study the impact of export controls and pause before implementing new ones, because they undermine US leadership in the industry.

Rather than slow down Chinese technology progress, such restrictions weaken US companies in the Chinese market, which in turn will negatively impact their R&D funding, they argued. The obvious truth is many major US companies have developed a heavy dependence on China. Qualcomm, for one, gets more than 60 percent of its revenue from the China region. Just as the chipmaker CEOs conceded, access to the Chinese market is not only indispensable to the company's overall business, but also to its return to the US as well as its global competitiveness.

As Beijing embraces what it defines as "higher-level of opening-up", and strives to retain and attract more international investments, it is indeed of critical importance for the US, as well as China, that Washington reconsider its witch-hunt targeting China's tech companies.