Sino-US Tech Rivalry and Biden’s Pursuit of Renewing America’s Supremacy

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated an unprecedented challenge to supply chain management around the world, particularly in the United States. To constrain China’s tech rise and its potential dominance in global supply chains as well as pursue America’s supremacy in tech innovation and global supply chain system, the Biden administration fully exploits the comparative advantages of like-minded technological democracies to maximize its ability to hedge challenges China poses and elaborately weaves a global supply chain security coalition (GSCSC) by combining point-to-point cooperation with coordination under the framework of multilateral institutions with different characteristics such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), Five Eyes, and the Australia–United Kingdom–United States (AUKUS). This paper draws on the theoretical framework of neoclassical realism to analyze the generation, layout, and influence of GSCSC strategy under the administration of Biden. It indicates that the GSCSC strategy, which mainly targets the Indo-Pacific region and aims to impede China in critical supply chains industry, exerts an influence on the US domestic political and economic development, Sino-US relationship, and geopolitics in Asia. It also signifies a great stride for the Biden administration to renew America’s global supremacy after Trump.