In October 2022, the United States began a policy aimed at limiting – and ultimately impede – the production and development of semiconductors or “chips” in the People’s Republic.
At the same time, the “black list” of Chinese companies that cannot participate in the US “chip” market has increased significantly, led by the two main ones: Huawei and SMIC (“Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation”).
Finally, he added to this gigantic effort of hegemonic domination the Netherlands and Japan, whose companies specialize in the production of latest generation semiconductors, who agreed not to export any of the most sophisticated production facilities to the People’s Republic.
The results of this extraordinary restrictive undertaking were significantly negativeto the point that they can be considered a strategic failure of global scope, which could prove decisive in the contest between the two superpowers for the dominion of the advanced technologies of the fourth industrial revolution.
First, Huawei and SMIC have achieved considerable success by producing an advanced “chip” capable of competing with and outclassing the latest generation North American ones, and they have done so under the brand HuaweiMate60presented to the market in a completely surprising way in August 2023 with the identification of the Kirin 9000.
This presentation constituted an event of historical importance because China, through Huawei/SMIC, began to compete effectively with the most advanced technological industry of the United States, in what constitutes the strategic core of the 4th industrial revolution and the key to capitalism most advanced of the 21st century.
Likewise, due to the exacerbation of the technological struggle between the two superpowers, the large North American high-tech multinationals that produced in China as Intel and Micron they decided to abandon the People’s Republic market, and the Europeans did the same Infineon and AMS-Osram, among others, and has moved to countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam; and they did it – this is a point to underline – accompanied by their associates, the Chinese companies specialized in the production of parts and components.
This highlighted, in addition to the modification of the global geopolitical map, the extraordinary degree of integration achieved by the semiconductor or “chip” manufacturing industry, which is the most advanced in the world.
This means that with this transfer, Chinese investments in these Asian countries have increased dramatically, deepening the fact that the People’s Republic is already – by far – the largest investor in the Asian continent; and above all by ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations), which represents over 40% of global GDP; and this obviously multiplies China’s relevance in the region, making it clearly the vanguard of high-tech manufacturing.
This is what Malaysia has been doing for the last 10 years one of the new centers of the “chip” manufacturing industry in the world system, because it now attracts not only Chinese but also North American, Korean and Japanese investments, in a phenomenon that responds to one of the most significant characteristics of 21st century capitalism, namely the “magnet effect” of mutual attraction of large transnational companies that tend to concentrate, constituting gigantic “clusters” of global order.
The US chip manufacturing industry, which is the most advanced in the world, was also barred from participating in China’s semiconductor market, which is the largest in the global system. The People’s Republic imports more than $400 billion a year in semiconductors or “chips” and the United States bans its companies led by the top 10, whose unequivocal leader is Nvidia, operate in the huge and most profitable semiconductor market, which is China.
These are the paradoxes of a restrictive and conflictual policy like the one that Washington is currently developing when the technological revolution has produced the most complete integration of globalized capitalism, which it is intrinsically based on a systematic cooperative effortand discarded by its very nature any deliberate strategy of rupture and confrontation.
In summary, Malaysia attracted $12.8 billion in high-tech foreign direct investment in 2023, more than it received between 2013 and 2020 combined.
It should be added that it already exports more “chips” to the USA than Taiwan, Japan and South Korea individually: and represents 20% of North American “chip” imports; Taiwan, 15.1%; Vietnam, 11.6%; and South Korea, 7.5%.
The unintended consequences of historical processes are usually the most relevant parts of the capitalist system, this is what Marx called the “irony of history”; and all these huge changes are one of the most notable achievements of the Joe Biden administration.
“There is nothing further from the events than the intentions of the protagonists,” says Raymond Aron.
Source: Clarin
