Technological competition is a core feature of U.S.-China trade relations. The United States has characterized various Chinese technologies—including the formerly Chinese-owned social media app TikTok and Chinese telecommunications company Huawei—as national security threats. China, for its part, has perfected the model of obtaining Western technology, Jennifer Hillman, senior fellow for trade and international political economy, told CFR. Beijing uses the technology to develop domestic companies into giants, then unleashes them into the world market—at which point foreign companies can no longer compete. Over the past decade, Washington and Beijing have been battling along several technological fronts, including:
AI leadership. With AI increasingly deployed in defense, intelligence, and economic contexts, both countries have sought to solidify their supremacy on this frontier technology. Although U.S.-made AI models outperform their Chinese competitors, China has focused on scaling the use of AI applications in manufacturing and daily life, wrote CFR President Michael Froman. Beijing achieved a major technological milestone with Chinese startup DeepSeek launching one of the world’s most advanced AI models in January 2025. It reportedly operates at cheaper costs and higher energy efficiency that rivals the capacity of the U.S. AI titans, such as OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
Taiwan and semiconductors chips. In an effort to restrict China’s technologic access, the United States began implementing export controls on advanced semiconductor chips—an essential component for most technologies, including smartphones, computers, weapons systems, and AI infrastructure—in 2018. This also included export controls on technologies that were seen as having a “dual-use” capacity for commercial and military purposes. The second Trump administration, however, seemed to reverse course by approving the sale of U.S. company Nvidia’s advanced H20 chips to China in August 2025. The agreement has come under sharp scrutiny by U.S. officials.
Meanwhile, Taiwan, which produces 90 percent of the world’s chips, is a critical part of the U.S.-China economic relationship. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the top supplier for U.S. companies, such as Apple, and it has invested in manufacturing facilities in the United States. Despite the United States accounting for a third of Taiwan’s total exports, the island’s economy also relies on trade with China; in 2025, China and Hong Kong made up 26.6 percent of Taiwan’s total exports.
TikTok and national security. The social media app TikTok, created by Chinese company ByteDance, had been a major target by U.S. lawmakers seeking to restrict Chinese access to Americans’ data. After Trump floated the idea of banning TikTok in his first term, Biden signed into legislation that ByteDance would be required to sell the social media app to a U.S. owner or face a ban. TikTok sued the U.S. government, but the Supreme Court ultimately upheld the ban. In January, ByteDance agreed to divest almost 80 percent of TikTok’s assets, valued at $14 billion, to an U.S.-owned joint venture that included global conglomerates Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. (ByteDance still owns the remaining 19.9 percent stake in the company.) Efforts to ban TikTok have fueled larger conversations about what U.S. policymakers have characterized as Chinese efforts to spread disinformation and collect sensitive information on Americans.
IP Theft. Firms have long accused Chinese companies of stealing intellectual property to develop counterfeit products, pirated software, access trade secrets, and forced technology transfer on condition of doing business in China. The research organization Intelligence and National Security Alliance found in a May 2021 report that Chinese IP theft costs between $300 and $600 billion [PDF] annually. Although China’s IP laws have improved over the past decade, theft is still prevalent, even among Chinese firms that have appropriated capabilities domestically.
