On Biden's China Chips Strategy

 One of the more significant political moves which Biden has done, even if it's somewhat under the radar in terms of national news reporting, is the place extensive new restrictions on China's access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology. For a primer, see: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/10/27/biden-s-unprecedented-semiconductor-bet-pub-88270

I've been trying to wrap my head around the motivation for this. After all, the status quo seemed fine from an outsider perspective, and aggravating China seems politically dangerous. It's also the kind of move which would traditionally be done by the more right-wing people in the US political sphere's (despite Trump's essentially "rhetoric only" approach to foreign policy, which was fairly damaging to the US efforts in general). However, I have another theory now, which I'll expound upon; no idea if this is accurate, but it's conceptually interesting.

Currently, a lot of US semiconductors are manufactured in Taiwan, and production had been migrating to China based on costs (and China's government subsidizing those efforts, so that they could steal the technology). The first-order read of Biden policy change is to slow those migration efforts, and perhaps encourage some high-end talent to be moved out of China, which has already happened. However, the longer term play might be larger.

Consider that China has pledged to eventually invade Taiwan, and take its stuff (land, resources, facilities, etc.). Rhetoric-wise, this is about national unity and other nationalistic concerns; realistically, though, it's probably more economically pragmatic, due to the advanced technology and financial resources in the other country. The US has pledged to defend Taiwan, but they do not have a formal treaty, and in-practice they could not significantly impede and invasion. Moreover, China is sacrificing some potential political leverage by staying biased towards Russia in regards to its invasion of Ukraine, presumably because they know they will need to invade Taiwan in a similar manner. This has "shown their hand", so to speak, as they would not miss the opportunity at world leadership if there wasn't a political need to support Russia's actions.

I hypothesize that Biden's move is sending a somewhat different message than just stopping the flow of technology into China. In essence, he's creating a policy that makes it such that if Taiwan is invaded, then US companies can no longer produce chips there, and must move talent and manufacturing abroad. Indeed, this is already happening: Taiwanese companies are already moving production facilities to the US, in pragmatic anticipation of the possibility (see: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/21/business/taiwan-tsmc-arizona-plant-hnk-intl).

What does this mean for geopolitical strategy? Well, it creates a conundrum for China. Economically, the value of Taiwan is in the business and technology, but in the case of an invasion, the former would be largely disrupted (because the financial industry doesn't play well with Communist dictatorship), and now the latter would also be effectively destroyed (based on US policy, and the reactions of the Taiwanese companies). Currently, Taiwan can (and does) export chips to China, and supports a large part of their tech industry. If China invades, they could now lose that, and economically take a big hit.

This puts the Chinese government in a more difficult position: continue with the nationalistic push at potentially significant economic cost, or make a more pragmatic economic decision at the cost of losing some credibility in your nationalistic rhetoric? That won't be an easy call: China is already having some economic issues, and recently some domestic unrest, and causing significant damage to their technology access might be bad for the regime there. In essence, Biden's new policy is leveraging economics to achieve what military cannot, and in that sense it might be brilliant.

Anyway, just my opinion, and I could certainly be wrong.