I have mixed feelings about those trade restrictions against China. Yes, can we say that governance is not so good? But America and the rest of the world don’t care at all about it. There are even worse dictators, you never hear about them and nobody does anything about them.
The real motive, of course, is that America wants to remain the big dog. China has made it clear that it also wants to become a true world power. They are already very powerful economically, but they mainly want to sit at the table everywhere and have a say instead of dutifully doing what America says. America’s power is also not really good. It only takes one bad president (Trump anyone?) and it can go completely wrong.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are also hard at work on their own, and have already started collaborations with Huawei and others to build their own capacity to make high-tech chips. It’s not easy, especially as ASML emphasizes that this technology isn’t built that way. But it is certainly not impossible. And the Chinese are not far behind. They have a lot of toys in it, there are enough Chinese studying and working in America and Europe that they can go back to their home country and support development there. Eventually they will figure it out.
The US wants assurances that in the event of a military conflict, they will have the upper hand. It seems so now. Although China has a 5th gen fighter, it is not as capable as the F35. Not only are the chips lagging behind, the engines for such aircraft are basically the domain of the US. This also applies to commercial flights. Those engines are actually a specialty that various countries have been struggling with for decades.
In the end, it’s not good if a country like the US gets (very) high priority right now. They can now dictate to the rest of the world what to do. As they played a more real role, Russia eliminated itself. Only China can throw some weight around on this scale, as the EU certainly doesn’t.