Tide of progress cannot be held back

The chip giants Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and ASML, along with many other companies involved in the semiconductor industry, were among the participants at the just-concluded China International Import Expo, where deals worth $73.5 billion were reached.

Their attendance came despite the United States having abused its state powers to politicize and weaponize science, technology and trade issues in an attempt to block China's technological development.

Even though the chip industry is China's weak point where the US "holds it by the throat", that does not mean it is not active in the sector. On the contrary, China has a huge pool of talent and a huge domestic market whose potential is still to be tapped, as well as national policies to encourage innovation in the technological sector.

All these make China a good place for the companies in the semiconductor industry to invest and cooperate. The US companies that take the lead in cooperating with China will benefit more than the latecomers, which is why they are all staking their claims at the gold mine.

What the US government has done by banning the US chip companies from doing business with China is against the companies' interests. The politicians might mean to contain China, but in fact they are only harming the prospects of these US companies.

By blocking the flow of technologies to China, US politicians are blocking their companies' future.

Chips are only one of the technologies that featured at this year's CIIE. Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, Siemens and others attended to showcase their technologies relating to the metaverse and artificial intelligence and robots. They have voted with their feet, showing their confidence in China's tech progress.

The formation and development of the global chip industry chain and supply chain is the result of the combined action of market rules and the choices of enterprises. The attempts by US politicians to suppress the development of China's tech will fail.