The Hill: Can the US compete with China? Not without strong patent rights. By Robert Work and Rama Elluru
In the second Republican presidential debate, candidates spoke forcefully about China, alternately calling for outright decoupling, claiming we are already in a new cold war, and pledging to “declare independence from China.”
Their rhetoric reflects a broader concern across government about strategic dependence and maintaining America’s technological edge, which the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party addressed specifically in a hearing over the summer. What went unmentioned was the recent revelation that China’s Huawei’s release of its newest smartphone, which contains a domestically produced chip that is prompting questions about the effectiveness of U.S. export controls, demonstrates that a strategy of technology denial alone will not be sufficient to maintain U.S. leadership.