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Paper short abstract

There is a burgeoning literature on the "chip war" between the US versus China, yet we lack adequate tools to measure who is winning and why. Many who analyze national development employ national accounts, yet we argue this is anachronistic in globalization, and offer an alternative framework.

Paper long abstract

Both China and the United States agree that semiconductors are a foundational technology of the twenty-first century underpinning many others, thereby crucial for national development and power. Since 2014 China has spent over $150 billion in industrial policy to catch-up with the world’s leaders in semiconductors. Since 2018 the United States has been implementing policies to try to prevent this catch-up, from blacklists of Chinese firms to export controls on entire modules of the global value chain, from 2022 committing $280 billion in the CHIPS and Science Act to semi-nationalizing key firms such as Intel and MP Materials. The United States has been able to weaponize not only technologies owned by transnational corporations (TNCs) domiciled in the United States but also TNCs from Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Taiwan. We still lack an adequate explanation for how the US state can weaponize both US and non-US TNCs, as well as tools to measure who is winning and why in this chip war. We offer the concept of “national corporate power” and an original method to measure this in the age of global value chains (GVCs). We show that despite China producing more chips than Europe and the United States combined, US dominance remains staggering, including in China, because of its control over GVCs, which the US state can weaponize. This has resulted in a more than half-decade tech blockade on China, which has profound implications for the Global South’s capacity to technologically upgrade in this new age of techno-nationalism.

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This paper calls for a cautious view of China’s technical self-reliance. By examining Chinese hi-tech firms' innovation returns and supply chain dependence under US export control, it argues that while patenting surged, the sustainability of economic returns and technical autonomy remained limited.

Paper long abstract

The Trump administration’s sanctions on the Huawei in 2019 seemingly sounded the horn of a Second Cold War. The trend of geo-economic fragmentation, the escalating U.S.-led blockade, and China’s doubled effort in industrial policies since 2014 would logically accelerate China’s high-tech innovation, as analyses on patenting activities among Chinese firms following U.S. export controls (Lin et al., 2025). However, increased innovation output does not imply genuine technological self-reliance. Rather than merely focusing on patent quantity and R&D expenditure, we evaluate China’s self-reliance in high-tech from two dimensions: the economic returns to firms' innovation measured by financial performance and the degree of techno-dependence captured by firms’ reliance on foreign suppliers.

This study examines China’s high-tech firms using a mixed-methods design that integrates case studies with firm-level cross-year panel fixed-effects analysis. Our results show that while patenting activity rose markedly after U.S. sanctions, its marginal contribution to firms’ financial performance declines, without a corresponding reduction in share of foreign suppliers. Evidence from leading firms even suggests that China’s techno-dependence remains entrenched, particularly in upstream value-chain segments facing the most severe sanctions. Therefore, this article argues that China’s path to catch-up is a much longer Great March than prevailing narratives imply, especially in sectors where interdependence has been weaponized in geo-economic rivalry (Starrs et al., 2025). The U.S.–China tech war has undoubtedly stimulated China’s greater investment in localization and innovation, but the extent to which this represents genuine technical autonomy and economic sustainability remains to be seen.

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Paper short abstract

How do UK and EU balance innovation and security as MNEs relocate from China amid the US-China rivalry? This paper shows regulatory ambiguity functions as strategic flexibility, enabling states to secure technology transfer through negotiated outcomes while filtering investments on security grounds.

Paper long abstract

As US-China techno-nationalist rivalry intensifies, multinational enterprises (MNEs) are reconfiguring global value chains away from China through friendshoring and nearshoring strategies. This presents European states with a fundamental dilemma: how to attract technology-intensive investment while maintaining security sovereignty? This paper examines how the UK and EU employ regulatory ambiguity in FDI screening as a strategic tool navigating this tension, contributing to understanding the evolving state-capital relations in techno-nationalist globalisation.

Challenging the dichotomy between “retreat of the state" and "return of the state," I argue that regulatory ambiguity represents neither state weakness nor pure intervention, but deliberate institutional flexibility enabling negotiated outcomes. Drawing on institutional theory and international relations perspectives, I analyse how European FDI regulations serve dual purposes: filtering investments on security grounds while enabling conditional arrangements that maximise technology transfer and local embeddedness. Post-Brexit institutional divergence between the UK and EU provides a natural experiment to assess different approaches to this strategic challenge.

I employ quantitative text analysis of UK/EU investment screening regulations (2018-2024) to measure regulatory ambiguity, combined with firm-level tariff exposure and investment project data. Preliminary findings suggest regulatory ambiguity functions as strategic institutional adaptation rather than policy incoherence, enabling European states to leverage geopolitical tensions for technological upgrading. This research advances theoretical understanding of how states in advanced economies strategically respond to techno-nationalist pressures, revealing complex state-capital dynamics beyond simple intervention narratives.

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This paper examines an advanced state of China's digital 'going out' in Africa. Huawei has moved from a predominant prviate vendor to a public 'systems connector' inside the state, speaking to Kenyan concerns of cost but also localization, as well as serving broader Chinese soft power ambitions.

Paper long abstract

While China’s ‘Going Out’ policy began officially in 2001, Huawei’s expansion overseas preceded this, with a focus on the African continent. Once constrained by the political economy at home, Huawei embarked on a programme of expansion abroad, focusing on areas overlooked by Western markets: in this case, cutting-edge technologies in Africa (Wen 2020). While Huawei is an autonomous non-state actor, now a global powerhouse with more autonomy than almost any other Chinese company, its expansion in Africa has both shaped and been shaped by broader Afro-Chinese relations. This paper looks at Huawei’s predominance in Kenya, a regional technological and industrial leader, in which Huawei has reached an advanced state of maturity. Examining its recent expansion into public sector services, specifically health, this paper first provides an overview of the types of technology instituted into Kenya’s Ministry of Health at both national and, increasingly, county levels, backed by Huawei’s well-documented dominance in Kenya’s wider tech-infrastructure. This signifies Huawei’s move well beyond that of private sector ‘vendor’ to that of ‘systems integrator’ inside the state. Second, drawing on this review, we reflect on how Huawei’s advanced technological ecosystem in Kenya shapes Afro-Sino relations more broadly. In this, Kenyan ministries are satisfied by China’s established commercial but also political advantages regarding cost, reliability and crucially localization, away from Western influence but also Western data offshoring and regulations. China’s soft power, indeed, technonationalist, ambitions are satisfied, whereby China remains the purveyor of some of the world’s most advanced technologies, in their most advancing state.