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Britain unlikely to slowdown China’s technological advances.
Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
Sino-British business relations are becoming increasingly strained, partly due to British concerns that China has achieved a new technological breakthrough. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did not meet face-to-face with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the G20 Summit in Bali, perhaps due to a lack of confidence in the positive outcome of such a meeting, especially as London recently targeted China’s semiconductor industry.
British Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Grant Shapps announced on November 16 that Chinese-funded tech company Nexperia must sell at least 86% of Newport Wafer Fab (NWF) in the UK under the National Security and Investment Act. Nexperia is a Dutch subsidiary of Chinese technology company Wingtech Technology Co.
NWF is the largest semiconductor chip company in the UK. Nexperia acquired an 86% stake in NWF last July, bringing its ownership rate in the company to 100%. Just before Nexperia took NWF, some UK MPs called for a block on its sale to China. The US, for its part, put pressure on London through diplomatic channels to block the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Days before the UK blocked Nexperia from acquiring the largest microchip factory in the country, Sunak told Sky News that, “China poses a systemic challenge to both our values and our interests and it represents the single biggest state threat to our economic security and that’s why it’s right that we take the steps that are necessary to protect ourselves.”
British national strategy is closely intertwined with American policy, so it has no strategic autonomy of its own. The countries in the Five Eyes Alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US) are making every effort to limit China’s progress, especially in the field of semiconductor development.
London closely follows Washington in foreign policy and rejects pragmatic relations with China. By all accounts, Sunak, like Liz Truss and Boris Johnson before him, is unlikely to implement foreign policy independent of Washington.
London’s decision will further worsen the business environment for Chinese companies in the UK market. This decision reflects the downward trend in the development of Sino-British relations and is in line with the West’s policy of imposing a technology blockade on China.
It is recalled that in mid-October, American companies were banned from exporting semiconductors and chip-making equipment to China. The regulations also allow the US to prevent the export of chips made abroad with American technology.
Later, the German government, despite the positive outcome of the Sino-German summit in Beijing, banned the sale of the chip factory belonging to the German company Elmos to the Swedish company Silex because it was a subsidiary of the Chinese parent company Sai MicroElectronics.
The West is increasing the blockade of semiconductors because of concerns that Beijing could strengthen its position in the global technology market. The biggest worry for the West is that Chinese products can flood the global market. Even more worrisome for the West is that China has seized on the technological initiative to become a leading producer, dominating the semiconductor market in quantity and quality.
Moreover, this is closely related to the strengthening of China’s military potential, which the West is obviously trying to prevent.
London announced it was blocking the Chinese company’s takeover of the British chip factory on the same day that the Sino-British summit in Bali was cancelled. The cancellation of the meeting was officially explained away due to the scheduling of G20 events. This should only be believed with scepticism though.
None-the-less, the cancellation of the summit shows that the leaders of China and Britain have little to say to each other. Clearly, the Chinese side does not believe in the possibility of holding a constructive exchange that can yield results. This demonstrates that there is little trust between the two sides and why China will continue the path towards self-reliance.
British actions are very unlikely to slow down China’s technological advances. Rather, the West’s best opportunity is to re-invest into technological research, rather than self-destructive sanctions policies, austerity, and having an enormously over bloated military budgets caused by multiple wars and occupations.
Free Trade!!!
Free trade for our goods, not for yours slave… you dont comply with our regulations to sell us and we dont accept this trade because we lose we only accept if we win and you lose. Thats how the Dialect of free trade works…
More pathetic attempts to blacken and deter China. What a bunch of spoiled children are the G7 criminals.
China is an economic and engineering juggernaut. They probably have more engineers in China, than employed people in shithole Britain. There is no stopping them other than global thermonuclear war. So instead of being dicks to the Chinese, how about being nice and making friends with them? The fact is, it’s not the 1800’s Britain, and you are a washed up former power that needs to know it’s place.
Quote: “like Liz Truss and Boris Johnson before him, is unlikely to implement foreign policy independent of Washington”… dont you know what a military alliance is? US / UK is an alliance. And almost all powers servants to USA had an HIDDEN MILITARY SECRET PACT or Goverment deal with USA… … World is divided in Blocks and dont expect that any country change his allegiance… look what happen when Ukraine switched from Russia to USA on his allegiance… … we arent m0r0ns l1ke JHK or Jens Holmes to read Propaganda without knowing what it is… we read because we hope we can find something that we are missing to solve our puzzle of World Politics and understand how this Realm of West Works
Ya, who is England anymore! The country has become nothing more than an attack dog of the US. It’s monetary might is going in the trash can and is a complete terrorist state, bar-non! Now they want to harass China; what we call a flee on a elephants ass.
Oh, don’t get me started on the Windsor pedo royalty and Charlie the WEF, fleebag and his pedo parliamentarians. Did you notice how quite the child trafficking focusing quite down with Charlie and Biden in control??? See how western nations are forcing acceptance of pedophilia and see changes with minors. Oh ya 😏 doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see this woke agenda. England shows it’s colors, as well by supporting full fledged NAZISM whether in Ukraine or anywhere else for that matter. Don’t hold your breath for thing useful coming out of there.
UK is a power downgraded to a poor, very poor state. UK has zero importance. Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!
One man and his company have killed more Israelis than all the extremist attacks of the last 80 years. He’s clearly the enemy of gods people.
who gives a rat’s ass about a tiny island similar to south korea in population and size? put that island in asia and what you get is another myanmar.
I’m sure I read years ago that the Russian government was replacing all it’s PC’s with Russian home grown chips because of the ‘Intel’ chips having backdoors built into them which enabled intelligence agencies to access the computers. I guess Russia could impart some of their chip technology onto China.
Russia has only the capacity for a limited number of chips, to be used for administration and sensitive military communications. The reason is the process of building the chips: China is trying to master 5nm photolithography, in which the etch process consists of an almost instant flash of UV light through a mask. The chips from Russia are built with the slow, methodical shooting of electron beams at the wafer. This allows Russia to build high-quality, custom chips for a low cost. But the downside is that Russia will never be able to satisfy mass production in this way. China’s semiconductor industry is the best bet for securing the Eurasian market’s access to advanced digital technology.