Reportedly, the Joe Biden administration is to roll out a policy that has been in the works for months aimed at curbing US enterprises and individuals' investment in high-tech fields in China.
Set to be introduced within two months, the policy, which covers semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals, rare earths, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonic technology, robotics and underwater drones, etc, is a further attempt by the administration to decouple the US economy from that of China. The US administration already restricts US companies selling certain technologies and equipment to Chinese entities, while continuously adding Chinese entities to its swelling blacklist prohibiting them from doing business in the United States.
The US Treasury Department has also been reaching out to the governments of US allies, including the European Union, to try and make sure they will not act against the new policy after it is implemented. Which is not policy consultation but a process in which the US is trying to coerce other parties to do its bidding.
Like the other decoupling measures the US has devised since the previous Donald Trump administration, the latest policy giving a red light to investment in China is also based on the zero-sum proposition that the US will be better off by stifling China's tech development. That's a false proposition. Not to mention the shocks the US will send to the world in the process of trying to sever the links between the world's two largest economies.
That the proposition can take root in the country largely originates from the fact that scapegoating China represents the easiest way for the two US parties to ease their squabbling.
Once implemented, the policy will undoubtedly be greeted with strong opposition from the US business community as it will be the US companies that will bear the brunt of it. The diversified structure of China's access to foreign investment means it has long prepared for such a situation and has avoided putting all its eggs in one basket.
Although US companies' spending in buying and investing in Chinese companies, about $11 billion last year, is only a small slice of their investment worldwide, which was more than $1.5 trillion last year, according to a report by The New York Times, the China deals remain valuable and profitable as the world's second-largest economy is undoubtedly a cradle for innovation and promising startups.
Although it will hurt US interests, the policy will by no means be the last of its kind to run roughshod over the rules-based market order as US trade policy is being hijacked by the ideologically-driven zero-sum gamers in Washington.
Instead of blocking China's access to the rest of the world, which has ironically become wider due to the US' maximum pressure tactics, the US is increasingly enmeshing itself in a web it is spinning itself.