With more than 400 Chinese companies on the U.S. Commerce Department's list of sanctioned firms — the so-called U.S. Entity List — it hardly even registers as news when more are added. But on the Wednesday before last Thanksgiving, the federal agency quietly made a bold announcement: eight more China-based “entities” were being added to the list, this time “to prevent U.S. emerging technologies from being used for the PRC’s quantum computing efforts.”
While the U.S. government has moved to promote quantum science domestically, the Commerce Department’s sanctions represented the first time the federal government was acting defensively, and it underscored what observers in the field have been warning about for years: China is rapidly closing the quantum gap.
“It’s a recognition that quantum computing is a very crucial technology for the military in the future, and also for the capabilities of the U.S. in the strategic competition with China, particul
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On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
