Commercial products that have already reached the market are “much more difficult” to contain than military tech, adds Yeo at a forum on Nov 10. “We should not be overly excited about the fact that the US today is trying all means to prevent China from getting critical technologies… These attempts at long-arm jurisdiction will delay the process, but not for very long, because it’s too leaky.”
The US’ tech curbs against China are but a temporary obstacle and will not succeed. Rather, the Americans’ increasingly hostile rhetoric may turn ethnic Chinese against the US, says Singapore’s former Foreign Minister George Yeo.
“Many of those involved in developing technology are ethnic Chinese and they have a certain affection for China,” he observes. “The more anti-China the US becomes, the more they feel uncomfortable even in the US. Some of them, a small minority, will say: ‘Oh, I should help my mother country.’”
