Restrictions a disservice to US interests: China Daily editorial

The US administration has been trying to wall off China from the United States' robotics industry only to discover that US robots have already been learning to walk on Chinese feet.

An internal review by the Association for Advancing Automation of the US found that 28 of 31 research papers led by US universities on humanoid or quadruped robots used products made by China's Unitree Robotics. This is a snapshot of institutional dependence, embedded in the very laboratories where the US administration seeks to maintain technological leadership.

The finding also exposes the contradiction in Washington's technology strategy: the more aggressively the US tries to "decouple" from China in high-tech, the more clearly it reveals how deeply the two countries' innovation systems have become intertwined.

The Federal Communications Commission updated its "Covered List" late last month to include "advanced robotic devices" produced in foreign countries, stating that advanced robots assembled in the US must contain more than 65 percent domestic components by value by 2028, rising to 75 percent in 2029. The ambition is clear enough. The mechanism is not.

China occupies important positions across the robotics supply chain, supplying everything from sensors, motors and batteries to lidar and motor controllers. Actuators, which determine how humanoid robots move, can account for 40 to 60 percent of hardware material costs.

The FCC has issued a mandate without first building the industry base needed to fulfill it. The consequences will fall most heavily on US laboratories, start-ups and consumers.

Specialization and the division of labor allow people and economies to become dramatically more productive; prices help allocate scarce resources; and competition provides a powerful incentive to innovate. Globalization extended those principles across borders, building supply chains in which components are produced wherever companies can make them most efficiently.

Washington now appears to be betting on the reverse proposition: that productivity can be raised by dismantling international specialization; that bureaucratic restrictions can allocate resources better than markets; and that competition from Chinese companies will weaken the US.

That is a risky bet. The White House raised the stakes on Wednesday with a national emergency declaration that could curb US imports of foreign power grid equipment — and potentially force utilities to replace gear already online.

Every such arbitrary restriction creates compliance departments, supplier audits, certification requirements and legal uncertainty.

For robotics and AI companies already operating at the frontier of capital expenditure, such costs can become significant. They are ultimately absorbed by companies, consumers or both, adding to the inflationary pressures already confronting the US economy.

If restrictions depend heavily on executive action and can be reversed by a subsequent administration, companies have little incentive to make the long-term investments that Washington says it wants. Industrial policy requires patience and predictability. The US' current regulatory whiplash provides neither.

In an article published on Wednesday, "The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical", Bill Gates rightly argued that since AI will be one of the most disruptive technologies in history, the US and China need to cooperate on AI governance before competitive pressures make cooperation impossible. He also observed that much cutting-edge robotics research is taking place in China, something many in US policy circles have yet to appreciate fully.

The history of technological revolutions offers little support for the idea that innovation flourishes behind walls. Previous periods of major-country rivalry did not require dismantling the international division of labor. Today's technology ecosystem is vastly more interconnected, making such an effort even more costly.

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a meeting with US Ambassador to China David Perdue on Wednesday, after the US threatened to impose an additional "overcapacity" tariff of 7.5 percent on Chinese goods, China and the US should focus on a positive agenda, manage differences and remove obstacles to high-level exchanges.

If Washington decides that competition itself is a "security threat", it risks confusing national strength with national isolation. A technology superpower should want its companies to win because they are better, not because their competitors have been administratively excluded.