a major front in the conflict, perhaps the major front, is the "chip war":
In many ways, the October 7 policy was narrowly targeted.... However, the implementation approach and underlying logic of the new regulations marked a major reversal of 25 years of U.S. trade and technology policy toward China in at least three ways.
First, rather than restricting exports of advanced semiconductor technology to China based on whether the exports were related to military end-uses... the new policy restricted them on a geographic basis for China as a whole.
Second, previous U.S. export controls were designed to allow China to progress technologically, but to restrict the pace so that the United States and its allies retained a durable lead. The new policy, by contrast, actively degraded the peak technological capability of China’s semiconductor industry....
Third, to the extent possible, the policy seeks to prevent China from ever again reaching certain advanced performance thresholds in semiconductor technology. Rather than revising the performance thresholds upward every few years as had been done in the past, the Biden administration intends to hold those benchmarks constant, meaning that the gap in performance will grow over time as the world advances and China remains stuck behind
After the watershed October 7 export controls hobbled China's advanced semiconductor industry, China is striking back.
www.csis.org