The hard question is over the lengths to which America should go. Protectionists in the White House would doubtless like to move the semiconductor supply chain to America. Good luck with that. The industry is a hymn to globalisation. One American firm has 16,000 suppliers, over half of them abroad. China is a huge market for many firms. Qualcomm makes two-thirds of its sales there. Trying to cleave the industry into two would hurt producers and consumers in America. And it would be a bluntly antagonistic act, which would make no distinction between unfair and genuine competition.
大問題是美國應該走多遠。毋庸置疑，美國保護主義者想將半導體供應鏈轉移至美國。祝其好運。芯片業是全球化的頌歌。一家美國公司有16000家供應商，其中一半以上在國外。而對于很多公司而言，中國是一個很大的市場。高通三分之二的銷售額來自中國。試圖將這個產業一分為二將會傷害美國的供應商和消費者。這會是一種直截了當的敵對行為，將會使不公平競爭和真正的競爭界限模糊。
In the long run it may be futile, too. Today America has the edge over China in designing and making high-end chips. It can undoubtedly slow its rival. But China’s progress will be hard to stop. Just as Silicon Valley’s rise rested on the support of the American government, so China blends state and corporate resources in pursuit of its goals. It has incentive programmes to attract engineering talent from elsewhere. Firms like Huawei have a proven ability to innovate; blocking the flow of Intel chips in 2015 only spurred China on to develop its domestic supercomputing industry.
從長遠來看，也有可能是徒勞的。今天，美國在設計和制造高端芯片方面比中國有優勢。毫無疑問這可以延緩中國的發展速度。但中國的發展不會停止。正如硅谷的崛起依賴美國政府的支持，因此中國為實現芯片發展目標，已將國家和企業資源整合。中國推出激勵計劃，以從其他地方吸引工程人才。像華為這樣的公司已被證實有創新能力；美國2015年阻止英特爾芯片進入中國只會激發中國自己的超級計算機行業變得更強。
Moreover, China’s bid to become a global semiconductor powerhouse is propitiously timed. For decades the chip industry has been driven forward by Moore’s law, under which the capabilities of a chip of a given size double every two years. But Moore’s law is reaching its physical limits. As everyone jumps to new technologies, from quantum computing to specialised AI chips, China has a rare chance to catch up.
此外，中國成為全球半導體強國的努力可謂恰逢其時。幾十年來，芯片業都被摩爾定律主導，按照此定律，給定尺寸的芯片的性能每兩年翻一番。但摩爾定律已經達到物理極限。隨著所有人都轉向新技術，從量子計算到專門的人工智能芯片，中國有一個難得的機會彎道超車。
The right approach for America, therefore, has three strands. The first is to work with its allies in Europe and Asia to keep pushing back against unfair Chinese practices (such as forced tech transfer and intellectual-property theft) at the World Trade Organisation, and to screen out inward Chinese investments when security justifies it. The second is to foster domestic innovation. More government funding is already going into chip research; greater openness to talent is needed. And the third is to prepare for a world in which Chinese chips are more powerful and pervasive. That means, among other things, developing proper testing procedures to ensure the security of Chinese-made products; and tightening up on data-handling standards so that information is not being sprayed about so carelessly. Measures such as these will not make the headlines at the G20. But they will do more to shape the world in the years ahead.
因此，對美國來說，有三個正確做法。第一，和歐洲以及亞洲的盟友合作，在世界貿易組織反擊中國不公平的做法（比如強制技術轉讓和知識產權盜竊），并在有安全保障的情況下，篩選出中國的投資。第二，培養國內創新。芯片研究已經投入了更多政府資金；還需要更多人才開放。第三，準備迎接一個中國芯片更強大、更普遍的世界。這意味著，除其他事項外，要制定適當的檢測程序，以確保中國制造產品的安全性；加強數據管理標準，以保證信息不會被隨意泄露。雖然這些措施不會成為20國集團會議的頭條新聞，但將來，會更有益于塑造這個世界。
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