【英文】中美技术脱钩系列评估报告：中美语境下的电信行业（48页）

The telecommunications sectors in the United States and China have a long history of interconnection,  but both countries are now developing policies with the effect of decoupling technology stacks, supply  chains, and markets. Once in motion, these policies will be difficult to reverse, given the political distrust  that has engulfed the bilateral relationship and emboldened extreme views on both sides about each other’s  hegemonic intentions. The costs to both countries’ innovation systems and to global value chains built up  over decades will be significant. Over the next five years, a full bifurcation may take the industry back to  the days of separate and competing national standards, problems with interoperability, and the end of a  globalized value chain with all its attendant benefits in terms of cost, innovation, and compatibility. 

The  growing cleavage between the two telecommunication systems will have broad ripple effects across a great  number of technological sectors, including an intensifying struggle over the future of the internet. The challenge for US policymakers over the next decade will be to counter China’s early lead in 5G while  simultaneously enabling interoperability and a globalized supply chain. This will require perceptive  domestic industrial policies, substantial investment, and skillful diplomacy that values and refreshes global  multi-stakeholder governance and standards-setting processes. Navigating this complex geopolitical,  technical, and economic landscape will be hugely difficult for existing US institutions and will require US  officials to reimagine how the United States sets telecommunications policy.