From technological sanctions to Tech Wars: Impact of the U.S. — China conflict on sanctioning policies and the high-tech markets

Abstract

The U.S. “Technology War” with intensive sanctions against Chinese digital sector marked changes in the American and global sanctioning policy. Historically, tech sanctions are well known practice, negatively affecting defense and total capacity of opponents/adversaries. But case of the “Tech War” is very specific: scale of sanctions was unexpected, as was the choice of highly internationalized digital sector as their target. Key groups of the U.S. tech sanctions since 2018 seem to fit existing practices — taking into account realities of the modern high-tech markets (for example, sanctions against Chinese venture investments in the U.S.A. or against Chinese startups). However, deeper analysis of the motives and content of the “Tech War” reveals changes in the ideology of the sanctioning policy. From blocking all forms of technology transfer in order to weaken the opponent (restrictionism) it is evolving toward strengthening U.S. leadership in high-tech markets through technological expansionism (blocking competition). This convergence of trade/investment national strategies with sanctioning policies is also determined by high-tech market specifics, as well as by features of the digital economy (i. e., access to the global raw data). Other nations are also considering these new practices which imply further increase of the technological component in the sanctioning policy (despite re-actualization of the hard power in international relations). At the same time, geopolitical factor also forces changes in the organization of high-tech markets — a challenge that will remain for the future.