Semiconductors will remain central to America’s tech rivalry with China

By Don Weinland

As soon as the Huawei Mate 60 Pro handset went on sale on August 29th, technologists raced to smash it open and see how it worked. The Chinese telecoms-equipment maker had somehow succeeded in creating a new 5G smartphone—something few thought it could accomplish. Huawei had been forced to give up making such devices in 2020 after American sanctions blocked it from buying advanced semiconductors or the equipment needed to make them. Sales of Huawei smartphones, which at one stage even outsold Apple’s iPhones globally, collapsed. Yet as they sifted through the innards of the Mate 60 Pro, engineers discovered a Chinese-made chip that seemed to show that American sanctions had been overcome by indigenous innovation.