On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden announced plans to impose new restrictions on American companies’ overseas investments. The latest measure aims to narrow China’s access to technologies that could undermine US national security.
Biden’s Measures
In an executive order released by the White House on Wednesday, Biden said that some “countries of concern” were involved in eliminating “barriers between civilian and commercial sectors and military and defense industrial sectors, not just through research and development, but also by acquiring and diverting the world’s cutting-edge technologies, for the purposes of achieving military dominance.”
These “advancements in sensitive technologies and products,” Biden said, “will accelerate the development of advanced computational capabilities [...] that pose significant national security risks, such as the development of more sophisticated weapons systems.”
To this end, the US president declared “a national emergency to deal with this threat.”
As part of the measures, the US will prohibit certain transactions “that involve covered national security technologies and products,” such as the sectors of semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence.
BREAKING: President Joe Biden signed an executive order that will narrowly prohibit certain US investments in sensitive technology in China and require government notification of funding in other tech sectors https://t.co/lZIdZoTQ67 pic.twitter.com/ocapURbuIJ
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 9, 2023
The leader called the move “a national emergency to deal with the threat of advancement by countries of concern in sensitive technologies and products critical to the military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities of such countries.”
Chinese Response
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to the move on Thursday, calling it the US’ “single-minded rollout of restrictions on investments” in China.
China accused the US of using national security concerns “as a front” to cover its “real” motive of depriving China of its “right to develop and selfishly pursue US supremacy at the expense of others.”
Beijing added that the US was “overstretching the concept of security and politicising business engagement.”
“This is blatant economic coercion and tech bullying, an act that seriously violates the principles of market economy and fair competition, undermines the international economic and trading order, destabilises global industrial and supply chains and hurts the interests of both China and the US and the global business community. This is de-globalization and a move to phase China out.”
The Ministry urged Washington to “stop politicising, instrumentalising and weaponising tech and trade issues” and “create an enabling environment” for business cooperation.