5 articles
Export controls and data-sovereignty laws have divided the technology economy into two non-interoperable production systems. Multinationals now face a permanent cost premium from bifurcating infrastructure, products, data systems, and compliance operations.
China's strategic deficit can be explained as a fiscal crowding-out problem: capital was absorbed by real estate and local government balance sheets before domestic semiconductor capabilities reached strategic self-sufficiency.
U.S. export controls aimed at leading-edge chips inadvertently created a pricing-power windfall in China's mature-node foundries. The mechanism: a deliberate policy line, state capital reallocation, and an unmodeled AI demand shock.
AI compute scarcity has migrated from fabrication to HBM, advanced packaging, grid access, and cooling. China is constrained upstream; the U.S. downstream.
The semiconductor supply chain is not a policy debate — it is a physical constraint. Advanced packaging, equipment tooling, and rare earth processing cannot be duplicated instantaneously. The irreversible timeline for strategic decoupling is approximately 2028-2032.