Global value chains and the new era of technology controls in US-China relations

Globalization is in reverse.  The open, rules-based liberal economic order is being threatened by geopolitics, particularly the intensifying US-China conflict over leading-edge technologies.  The central American policy tool is the imposition of export controls and sanctions on Chinese firms that cut them off from American finance and technology. 

However, American technology controls make assumptions about the underlying organization of industries and technologies, which fundamentally impact the policies’ intended goals, and can trigger unintended consequences, including potentially undermining US innovation.  For instance, they assume (often implicitly) that industries are organized into linear ‘chains’ or through hierarchical networks with clear-cut ‘chokepoints,’ dominated by US technologies.  Do these assumptions hold true in the industries in which the US aims to control Chinese ambitions, such as semiconductors, high-performance computing, AI and 5G? 

In reality, industrial organization varies in complex ways, and competing firms forge diverse inter-firm relationships.  Using a comprehensive dataset of every Chinese firm under export controls, this research examines how complex business structures impact the effectiveness of export controls, and produce unintended consequences beyond their intended targets.

Mark Peter Dallas

Mark Dallas is an Associate Professor in the departments of Political Science, Asian Studies and Science, Technology & Society at Union College in New York.  His publications are interdisciplinary, and focus on China, global value chains, industrial organization, technology and innovation management, industrial and technology policy, and their economic and security implications.  Previously, he received full-year fellowships from the Council on Foreign Relations, Fulbright-Hays, Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard-Yenching Institute, National Security Education Program, Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, among others.  He has conducted year-long research projects at Harvard University, Peking University, George Washington University School of Business, and he was the Hallsworth Visiting Professor at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester.  He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University.