Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China. This familiar line on the back of iPhones has summed up the world order for the past two decades: American innovation married with low-cost Chinese manufacturing to deliver cheap, quality products for the world.
But as China pursues its own tech ambitions, a threatened US is moving to cut Chinese firms off from American scientific know-how and pushing the world into a tech divide that neither country has really prepared for. The Trump administration has targeted Huawei Technologies, one of China’s tech champions, by launching a one-two punch combination in its fight to ensure that national security is not compromised in US telecoms infrastructure, while simultaneously reining back China’s dominance in next-generation 5G wireless networks.
