US tech sanctions on China reflect geoeconomic fragmentation, not just 'adversarial' rhetoric—rooted in Cold War 2.0 supply chain militarisation
Original framing: “US Treasury proposes a rule to crack down on high-tech investments in China, other adversaries - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
This policy is a direct descendant of the 19th-century 'Open Door' policy, which justified Western interference in China’s internal affairs under the guise of 'free trade.' The 1980s semiconductor wars (e.g., Japan’s MITI-led industrial policy) and the 1990s WTO accession negotiations—where China was forced to open its markets unilaterally—set the template for today’s coercive decoupling. The current crackdown mirrors the 1949 embargo, which failed to isolate China but instead accelerated its self-sufficiency in critical industries. Historical amnesia allows policymakers to repeat these cycles, treating each new 'adversary' as an exception rather than a pattern.
The US Treasury’s proposed tech sanctions are not an isolated 'crackdown' but a **symptom of a deeper crisis**: the collapse of the post-WWII liberal economic order, where the US can no longer sustain its role as both hegemon and free-market evangelist.
The framing obscures how this policy is a **legacy of colonial resource wars**, where today’s semiconductors replace yesterday’s rubber and oil as the battleground for sovereignty. Indigenous critiques of land-based supply chains, historical parallels to the Opium Wars, and the trickster irony of corporate profits from state-enforced chaos all reveal the same truth: this is not about 'adversaries' but about **who controls the future of work, energy, and knowledge**. The real solution lies in **decolonising tech governance**—centering marginalised voices, treating supply chains as ecosystems (not weapons), and using climate resilience as a neutralizing force in geopolitical conflicts. The US’s current path risks repeating the mistakes of the past, where short-term security posturing leads to long-term economic and environmental collapse.