China has learned much from the United States as the two rivals have sought to limit each other’s access to critical mineral supply chains and technologies. Last year, Beijing responded to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs by drastically tightening export controls on rare earth elements that are crucial inputs for a range of high-tech products and military hardware. More recently, Chinese authorities have reportedly been considering curbs on exports of equipment to manufacture solar panels. They also blocked Meta’s acquisition of Manus, a Chinese AI startup that had relocated from Beijing to Singapore ahead of the sale, and have put travel restrictions on some AI engineers.
These steps underscore how much Chinese policymakers have learned from past efforts by U.S. presidents to reduce their economic exposure to China—a process that is often called “decoupling,” but might be more accurately referred to as “de-risking.” To be sure, the semantic debate elides an important point: Both countries will struggle to achieve a full decoupling using their current frameworks. The Trump administration’s efforts to impose sweeping tariffs—not just against adversaries like China, but against its allies as well—are expensive and zero-sum. China also faces a constrained set of choices, in which its efforts to achieve economic self-reliance might undermine its efforts to improve the economy.
But even if they only manage to partially de-risk, Beijing’s and Washington’s efforts will have important consequences, not all of which can be easily foreseen. For example, when it comes to the prospect of a military conflict, will a reduction in economic linkages reduce tensions by giving each country a greater sense of self-reliance and autonomy? Or will attempts at self-reliance make conflict more likely, with each side having less to lose when it inflicts pain on the other?