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The most advanced computer chips are designed in the United States, made in Taiwan and South Korea, on machines from the Netherlands and Japan. Since 2022 Washington has barred all of them from selling their best products and tools to China, and has claimed the right to do so wherever American technology is involved. China is spending whatever it takes to build the whole chain itself.
The wider rivalry and each side's full account: The United States and China.
On 8 September 2026 Huawei faced a US racketeering trial in New York over its business dealings in Iran. The trial opened on 10 September; the company denied charges of stealing secrets and violating Iran sanctions. On 11 September the Trump administration agreed a $100 million loan to the African telecoms firm Africell. On 22 September China expanded export controls on precursor chemicals to the United States, Mexico and Canada. On 27 September China weighed allowing ByteDance and Alibaba to buy new Nvidia chips.
Where the line runs. Washington says it fences off a small yard of military technology. But the same chips train weapons and chatbots alike, and the yard has grown with each rule.
Reach. A Dutch machine or a Taiwanese chip falls under American rules if it contains American technology. Allies comply, and resent it. China calls it one state legislating for the world.
Whether it works. The bans slow China at the very top and speed it everywhere below. Both sides read that as proof they are right.
Advanced chips are the basis of modern weapons, codebreaking and surveillance, and China's companies are bound by law to serve its military. Selling them would be arming a rival. The controls keep China a generation or more behind where it matters most, and smuggling shows how much it still needs what it cannot make.
The United States abuses national security to cripple companies whose only offence is competing well. It orders other countries' firms to stop selling to their largest market and puts Chinese companies on lists without evidence or appeal. It will fail. Huawei was meant to die in 2019 and now makes its own chips, phones and AI systems, and China's chip industry is growing faster than any in the world.
Washington's leaves out the lobbying of its own chipmakers, who lost their largest market; that it relaxed the rules in 2025 for a share of the revenue; and that the ban gave Chinese chipmakers the customers they never had.
Beijing's leaves out its law requiring companies to assist state intelligence, the evidence in the smuggling cases, and that its best chips are still made on imported machines it cannot yet replace.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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