America’s sanctions have brought huge losses to its own companies, and Huawei has made an advanced chip anyway, despite heavy suppression. It’s a technological miracle signaling that China may have achieved technological independence.

The debate over the difference between tactics and strategy is as rich as it is enduring. In his seminal 1996 article in the Harvard Business Review, Harvard’s Michael Porter tackled this issue head on. While his focus was business, his arguments can be applied much more broadly – including to today’s Sino-American rivalry.

A ban on the export of advanced chip manufacturing equipment to China by the Netherlands and Japan, imposes sweeping restrictions. The ban aims to contain China’s semiconductor industry and further widen America’s tech lead. But it’s not going to work.

Technology is ground zero in the conflict between the United States and China. For the American hegemon, it is about the leading edge of geostrategic power and the means for sustained prosperity. For China, it holds the key to the indigenous innovation required of a rising power. The tech war now underway between the two superpowers could well be the defining struggle of the twenty-first century.

National security and data risk concerns between the U.S. and China are continuously increasing, potentially leading to a ‘Cold War’ between the two countries.

Washington wants to build a “small chip world” for itself that is decoupled from global supply chains. This is pure fantasy. The act can neither help the U.S. achieve a secure supply chain nor rejuvenate its domestic chip manufacturing sector. And it won’t slow China down either.

A robust semiconductor supply chain without China is out of question, while complimentary China-U.S. cooperation would make the global supply chain both complete and resilient for years to come.

I, like almost all Chinese compatriots, am most delighted that Ms. MENG Wanzhou was able to come home from Canada where she had been under house arrest based on a U.S. extradition request since December 2018. It was a long ordeal for her—losing her freedom and missing her family for more than a thousand days!

Meng Wanzhou’s release, along with Canada’s two Michaels, breaks a deadlock in a geopolitical tug-of-war. It presents an opportunity to restore mutual trust between China and the U.S. in the sci-tech sector. A crackdown on China now would be ill-timed.

The sordid tale of a Huawei executive — held hostage in Canada under pressure from the United States — ends with a whimper, not a bang. And the world is worse off for it. Yet the aimless machinations of a wayward superpower continue.