At the same time, South Korea’s SK Hynix is planning to invest about US$4 billion to build an advanced packaging plant in the US, while South Korean battery maker Samsung SDI is also set to build a battery plant in the US. These examples are enough to show that globalisation, which was once led by the US, is not going in reverse.
Yet the US has continued to strengthen its chip export controls on China. On 29 March, the US’s Joe Biden administration revised rules aimed at preventing China from accessing US artificial intelligence (AI) chips and chipmaking tools. Released in October last year, the rules were meant to halt shipments to China of more advanced AI chips designed by Nvidia and others.
