China has launched an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, viewed as retaliation against U.S. chip export curbs, escalating tensions between the countries in the semiconductor sector.

China Investigates Nvidia

China has launched an antitrust investigation into Nvidia Corp, following new U.S. restrictions on its chip industry. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) states that Nvidia may have violated the country’s anti-monopoly laws. However, they did not specify the details of these violations, raising concerns about the increasing tension between the U.S. and China in the tech sector.

Escalating Tensions

This action is perceived as retaliation for the U.S. limiting exports to over 140 Chinese companies, including semiconductor manufacturers. Concurrently, China has enacted bans on critical mineral exports to the U.S., signaling a strong response to American trade actions.

Nvidia’s Market Position

Nvidia previously held over 90% of the AI chip market in China but now faces stiffer competition from local enterprises like Huawei. The company’s revenue from China has decreased, highlighting the significant impacts of ongoing geopolitical frictions on its business operations.

Source : China targets Nvidia with antitrust probe, escalating US chip tensions

The TC260 has launched a guide to standardize cross-border personal data transfers between the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong within the Greater Bay Area, enhancing security standards and facilitating data flows while addressing protection challenges amid varied regional regulations.

The Technical Committee for Information Security Technology (TC260) has released a new guide to standardize cross-border personal data transfers between the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). This guide introduces enhanced security standards and mutual recognition mechanisms, aiming to facilitate smoother data flows while ensuring robust protection of personal information.

On November 21, the Technical Committee for the Standardization of Information Security Technology (TC260) released a new Cybersecurity Standards Practice Guide (hereinafter, the “Guide”) outlining requirements for cross-border personal information processing and protection within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA).

The Guide provides a framework for businesses and organizations transferring personal data between the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong, focusing on security standards and mutual recognition mechanisms. It offers a pathway for voluntary certification and inclusion in the “Greater Bay Area Cross-Border Personal Data Transfer Recognition List,” managed by Hong Kong’s Privacy Commissioner.

Cross-border data transfers (CBDT) have become a key focus in the GBA as the region works to enhance economic integration while addressing data protection challenges. Since December 2023, facilitation measures have been in place to streamline personal data transfers between nine Mainland GBA cities—Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing—and Hong Kong.

These measures aim to harmonize the varying regulatory frameworks within the region, particularly between the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, however, lacks specific rules governing the transfer of personal data outside its jurisdiction, raising questions about the extent to which businesses in Hong Kong would engage with these GBA measures. By contrast, the Chinese Mainland’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) imposes stringent restrictions on cross-border data transfers. The GBA measures marked a significant step forward by relaxing some of these restrictions for transfers from Guangdong to Hong Kong, reflecting efforts to balance security with business practicality.

A major regulatory development followed on March 22, 2024, when the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued the New CBDT Rules.

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Trump’s reelection raises concerns about US-China relations, potentially impacting Japan-China ties. While economic cooperation has thrived, historical tensions complicate political collaboration amidst shifting leadership in Japan.

Donald Trump was declared the winner of the US presidential election on November 6, sealing a historic and improbable return to the White House. His reelection has triggered speculation as to the state of world affairs once he assumes office in January.

One of the relationships most speculated on is between the US and China. Trump waged a trade war against China during his first term as president and has now promised higher tariffs on Chinese goods – of 60% or more – at a time when China’s economy is struggling.

But much less discussed is the potential effect of Trump’s policies on relationships between other countries. In the absence of US trade and security guarantees during Trump’s first term, regional rivals China and Japan entered a detente, a period of thawing relations. With Trump’s second term on the horizon, will relations between China and Japan thaw once again?

The Chinese-Japanese relationship is an example of “hot economics, cold politics”. This term, which originated in the early 2000s to describe the distinctive relationship between these two countries, still holds true to today.

Over the next decade, China and Japan have agreed to cooperate on an estimated US$26 trillion (£20 trillion) worth of regional infrastructure projects. And, in 2021, trade between China and Japan edged above US$372 billion (£292 billion). Japan now serves as China’s second-largest trade partner, behind only the US, with China serving as the largest trading partner of Japan.

Yet political animosity is a source of continuing tension. Japan’s invasion of China during the second world war, in which over 20 million Chinese people died, has left an enduring legacy. Anti-Japanese sentiment is a core characteristic of contemporary Chinese nationalism, which routinely calls for vigilance against what it considers to be an inherently militaristic Japanese culture.

A man at a protest in China in 2013 holds a Japanese military flag featuring the word ‘Shame’ alongside a picture of Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

Meanwhile, Japan is anxious about a rising China. Japan has been a pacifist nation since the second world war, with Article 9 of its post-war constitution outlawing war as a means to settle international disputes. But the right wing of Japanese politics has long called for constitutional reforms that would allow for Japan’s rearmament to counter China’s rise.

The Article 9 debate is a concern for China, which considers the calls for reform a potential indication of a newly militaristic Japan and, thus, a renewed threat. So, although China and Japan are willing to cooperate extensively on economic matters, unsettled historical issues make political cooperation difficult for the two nations to achieve.

Thawing relations

Revenue from China’s exports to the US fell by US$53 billion in the first nine months of 2019, after the start of Trump’s trade war. Anticipating further reductions in trade with the US, China turned to Japan, the world’s third-largest economy and an established economic partner of China. This led to a 7.3% increase in trade between the two countries.

Japan, on the other hand, relies on the US to guarantee its security through a defence pact signed after the second world war. During Trump’s first term, he questioned the fairness of the agreement. So, with Article 9 reform unlikely due to domestic political opposition and with the US appearing unreliable, the Japanese government sought to secure itself through further economic engagement with China.

This included the reestablishment of high-level economic forums between the two countries, which had been suspended in the early 2010s following anti-Japanese protests in China and a surge of anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan. Japan’s government also consented to Japanese businesses engaging with the belt and road initiative, China’s flagship economic infrastructure and development programme.

The economic relationship between China and Japan became so fundamental to the core interests of both countries that they were willing to temporarily overlook their political animosity. Japan’s prime minister at the time, Shinzo Abe, even visited China in 2018 in what was the first such visit in years.

The detente ended in 2020, when the US and China signed a preliminary trade deal that lessened China’s economic reliance on Japan. And less than a year later, tensions between China and Japan renewed over the Senkaku Islands, an island chain in the East China Sea that is administered by Japan and claimed by China (where they are known as the Diaoyu Islands).

Will we see another detente?

We can expect China and Japan to again look for alternatives to the US for economic stability and security following Trump’s reelection. Trump has already promised to impose high tariffs on goods from China, and is reportedly looking to China hawks such as Michael Waltz and Marco Rubio for key security and foreign policy roles in his cabinet.

He has been less vocal about his plans for the alliance with Japan, but Trump has been critical of Nato countries for falling short of his expectations. It therefore seems likely that he will again take a poor view of Japan’s constitutional pacifism. However, while Trump’s presidency might again push China and Japan closer together, there has been a key change in Japan’s political leadership.

China and Japan were led by Xi Jinping and Shinzo Abe respectively during Trump’s first term. Both were long-term leaders of their country and, despite their mutual dislike, there was by the late 2010s a degree of familiarity between Xi, Abe, and their administrations. This familiarity served as a foundation to build the heightened economic cooperation that temporarily overcame political concerns during the first detente.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, shaking hands with the then Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, at a G20 summit in 2016.
plavi011 / Shutterstock

While Xi remains the president of China, Abe resigned from his post in 2020 and was assassinated in 2022. Japan has had three prime ministers since Abe’s resignation, each with their own cabinet, advisers and opinions of China. This has lessened the familiarity between the Chinese and Japanese governments.

Trump’s foreign policies will probably recreate the conditions that caused China’s relations with Japan to thaw during his first term. So, a second detente is by all means possible. But the lack of familiarity between China and Japan’s political leadership could certainly prove a stumbling block.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.