Last month, the United States rolled out two sweeping rounds of tech curbs targeting China, erecting parallel barriers to commercial market access and cross-border academic collaboration.
On July 23, the US Department of Defence expanded its Section 1286 Entity List, blacklisting 130 research and academic institutions across China, Russia and Iran — 88 of which are Chinese.
Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University appear on the roster for the first time.
On July 28, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added humanoid and quadruped robots, alongside grid-connected solar inverters, to its Covered List.
New iterations of these foreign-manufactured devices will no longer receive FCC certification, effectively barring them from US retail and industrial markets.
Though China is not explicitly named in the ruling, industry insiders widely recognise Chinese manufacturers as the implicit target.
Taken together, these measures clamp down on both ends of the innovation pipeline, weaponising market rules and research partnerships to reshape the global technological order.
Self-defeating protectionism: The hidden domestic costs of US isolationism
Ironically, Washington’s restrictive agenda inflicts tangible harm on American businesses and consumers, undermining the very competitiveness it claims to safeguard.
Counterpoint Research data underscores this paradox: Chinese firms produced over 80% of the world’s 16 000 deployed humanoid robots in 2025, with four of the globe’s top five suppliers based in China.
By walling itself off from the industry’s most robust supply chain ecosystem, the US cuts its own companies off from benchmarking opportunities, joint R&D prospects and avenues for product refinement.
The renewable energy sector faces identical headwinds. Research from the Idaho National Laboratory confirms roughly 80% of solar inverters installed stateside are imported, with Chinese suppliers dominating the import pool.
Restricting these imports will inflate domestic energy transition costs and pass steep price hikes onto ordinary American households.
Frontier sectors like humanoid robotics and AI rely on unimpeded cross-border exchange to accelerate breakthroughs. Washington’s long-running “small yard, high fence” framework assumes technological supremacy can be preserved through exclusion.
Yet successive rounds of restrictions have failed to widen the innovation gap; China has steadily narrowed its technological edge in semiconductors, 5G, drones, electric vehicles and robotics alike.
Double standards undermine Washington’s “national security” justification
The US government frames every new curb as a necessary national security safeguard, yet glaring inconsistencies expose this rhetoric as a convenient cloak for industrial protectionism.
In artificial intelligence, US regulators threaten sanctions against Chinese developers over model distillation practices, while overlooking identical knowledge-sharing behaviour by American AI firms that draw from Chinese open-source models.
Hundreds of US startups have lobbied federal policymakers to keep access to Chinese open AI frameworks intact, warning that blanket bans would cripple domestic innovation capacity.
This selective enforcement lays bare a two-tier rulebook: one standard for American corporations, another for foreign competitors.
Academic cooperation has likewise been politicised beyond recognition. Flagship civilian comprehensive universities such as Fudan and Shanghai Jiao Tong now face sweeping research bans, extending vague security concerns into spheres once reserved for open, borderless scientific inquiry.
Federal research grants, industry contracts and international joint projects are now weighed against geopolitical calculus—directly contradicting the US’ long-standing rhetorical commitment to academic freedom.
If Chinese-made commercial hardware truly posed systemic security risks, the US would impose uniform controls across all channels of technology transfer. Its narrow focus on finished consumer and industrial imports alone betrays that security is not the core motive.
The Global South’s strategic imperative: Forging digital sovereignty
Africa and other developing economies bear the heaviest spillover costs of great-power tech rivalry, trapped in an untenable structural vulnerability.
Today’s global digital infrastructure—spanning semiconductors, cloud computing, internet protocols and consumer tech platforms—is concentrated in the hands of a small number of US and Chinese corporations.
Most Global South nations export raw data and mineral resources while importing high-value digital technology, leaving their critical national infrastructure reliant on foreign vendors.
Compounding this strain is the extraterritorial reach of US sanctions, which force developing states into an unenviable balancing act. Maintaining partnerships with sanctioned Chinese entities triggers punitive pressure from Washington; severing those ties means forfeiting affordable, mature technological solutions with few comparable alternatives.
Smaller economies lack the institutional bandwidth to navigate this geopolitical squeeze.
Worse still, the security framing deployed against Chinese technology is transferable.
The same rhetorical playbook could later be deployed to hinder any developing nation’s modernisation agenda.
African critical mineral exploitation, digital governance systems, AI rollouts and cross-border tech alliances risk tariffs, blacklisting and unilateral sanctions whenever they clash with great-power strategic interests.
Reliance on a single external technology provider cedes long-term national development autonomy.
To escape this trap, the Global South must pursue layered, actionable pathways to full digital sovereignty:
- Short-term regional alignment: Harmonise digital regulations via frameworks including the African Union Data Policy Framework and Asean Digital Masterplan to consolidate collective bargaining leverage against multinational tech conglomerates.
- Medium-term diversified partnerships: Expand South-South collaboration through Brics and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. Crucially, Chinese technology partnerships operate on principles of mutual benefit with no political strings attached—a stark contrast to U.S. alliances predicated on forced bloc alignment.
African rare earth reserves, critical minerals and proprietary data ought to be treated as strategic negotiating assets rather than mere export commodities.
Regional data hubs, internet exchange points, open-source technical infrastructure and independent cross-border payment systems must be jointly developed to mitigate supply chain fragility.
- Long-term indigenous innovation investment: Digital sovereignty cannot be imported. Sustained funding for Stem education, local research labs and homegrown tech enterprises builds self-sustaining innovation ecosystems.
Without robust domestic industrial capacity, regional integration initiatives risk remaining symbolic gestures rather than tools of genuine technological independence.
Global innovation thrives on open markets, fair competition and cross-border collaboration—not isolationist barriers erected under the guise of national security.
Washington’s widening tech crackdown lays bare the fundamental limitations of protectionism in an interconnected global economy.
For Africa and the Global South, the takeaway is unambiguous: lasting development does not come from picking sides in great-power competition. It belongs to nations that invest in the capacity to stand technologically sovereign on their own terms.
*Saxon Zvina is a principal consultant at Skyworld Consultancy Services and a member of the Belt & Road Initiative Think Tank.
Email: saxon@skyworld.co.zw
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