The Great Decoupling
The decision by China and the United States to decouple in the technology sphere is the single most impactful geopolitical development for globalisation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This decoupling, already disrupting beneficial flows of technology, talent, and investment between the two countries, will move beyond strategic technology sectors at the heart of the US-China dispute (semiconductors, cloud computing, and 5G) into a broader array of economic activity.
It will affect not just the entire $5 trillion global tech sector, but a host of other industries and institutions from media and entertainment to academic research, creating a hard-to-reverse business, economic, and cultural divide. After a series of escalatory US policy moves in 2019, Beijing has concluded that decoupling is inevitable. Caught off-guard by the US actions, President Xi Jinping has called for a new "Long March" to break China's technological dependence on the US. At the same time, China will expand efforts to reshape international technology, trade, and financial architecture to better promote its interests in an increasingly bifurcated world.