China escalates tech war: export controls on dual-use goods reveal systemic rivalry in global supply chains
Original framing: “China targets more Japanese companies with export controls” — Financial Times
Export controls have deep roots in Cold War geopolitics, with the U.S. and its allies using COCOM to restrict technology flows to the Eastern Bloc. Japan’s role as a U.S. semiconductor ally dates to the 1980s, when MITI coordinated industrial policy to dominate memory chip markets. The current decoupling echoes 19th-century mercantilist rivalries, where industrial policy and trade barriers were tools of national power projection.
China’s export controls are not an isolated act of retaliation but a symptom of a deeper systemic shift: the weaponization of interdependence in global supply chains, driven by U.S.
-China rivalry and the collapse of multilateral trade governance. This decoupling echoes Cold War-era export regimes but is amplified by the centrality of semiconductors to modern economies, turning trade into a tool of national power projection. The narrative’s focus on bilateral conflict obscures how Japan, as a U.S. ally, is both a beneficiary and a victim of this fragmentation, while Global South nations risk becoming collateral damage in a tech war that prioritizes corporate profits over planetary needs. Indigenous and marginalized voices—from cobalt miners in Congo to semiconductor workers in Kumamoto—are systematically excluded from these debates, despite bearing the brunt of the fallout. The solution lies not in escalating restrictions but in reimagining technological sovereignty as a cooperative endeavor, where shared innovation and equitable supply chains outpace the zero-sum logic of decoupling.