The recent launch of the Huawei Mate60 Pro sent a seismic shiver across the global semiconductor realm. Several years of the most drastic sanctions, culminating last year in the US CHIPS and Science Act, had failed to stop China’s technological juggernaut.

On the contrary! A cryptic Chinese poem expresses the struggle: 两岸猿声啼不住, 轻舟已过万重山 – the boat has sailed past the looming mountains with their screeching baboons. 

The Huawei Mate60 Pro is a masterful move in an unfolding global chess game. But there is much more coming.

Let’s look at the big picture.

Think back to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. China spared no expense in staging a magnificent show combining artistry and technology that narrated the trajectory of Chinese culture and civilization, from its ancient origins to the boundless potential of its high-tech future. Synchronicity and power on a breathtaking scale.

Many were ecstatic. But while the Beijing show impressed most of the world, it sent shivers down the spines of some Western elites, who were more and more terrified about China’s growing power and self-confidence.

Wheels were set in motion to slow down the Chinese juggernaut’s advance at all costs, even if it meant damaging the synergistic partnership between the West and China, which had brought enormous growth and profitability for both.

This is where I think each side made a fatal misjudgment, by projecting their own ideology on the other side.

Instinctively the West thought: “Surely when China attains the means, it will act like we would do, seeking hegemony and aiming to deal a death blow to its waning rival.” Seeing China as an existential threat, the West launched a ferocious, full-spectrum attack.

China bet erroneously that the West would act pragmatically, as China would do, and not try to kill the proverbial goose that lays golden eggs. After all, China is the biggest buyer of Western debt ($4 trillion in US Treasuries since the 2008 financial crisis), a huge market for high-value-added goods and services from the West, a manufacturing partner that enabled brands like Apple and Tesla to become global behemoths.

China was fully integrated into the supply chain of Western companies; hardly anything could be produced without inputs from China. 

‘Winner takes all’ strategy

China was therefore caught completely off guard by the series of exclusionary measures launched under the Barack Obama administration – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – and culminating in outright trade and technology sanctions, siege and wars orchestrated by Donald Trump, and expanded and intensified under the Joe Biden administration. 

It became a zero-sum game on The Grand Chessboard, as Zbigniew Brzezinski called it in his famous book.

Based on game theory and a ruthless “winner takes all” approach, think-tanks across the West devised ever stronger decoupling measures and punitive sanctions on a rapidly expanding “Entity List.”