As President Trump begins his second term, the China-U.S. technology rivalry has reignited with renewed intensity. The global AI leader, Nvidia, has emerged as the most significantly affected party. The United States has imposed restrictions on Nvidia’s exports to China to prevent the leakage of sensitive technology. In response, China has tightened its import restrictions on Nvidia GPUs. As a result, Nvidia’s market share in China has dramatically declined from around 95 percent to nearly zero.
Meng-Chun Liu, Director of the China Economic Research Institute at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER), notes that China’s actions serve multiple purposes beyond serving as leverage in negotiations with the United States. More critically, these measures create market opportunities for domestic AI chip companies, including Moore Threads, MetaX, Cambricon, and Huawei HiSilicon. While domestic hardware performance still lags behind Nvidia’s capabilities, Chinese companies are adopting an “open-source collaboration” model to compensate for these limitations, reduce costs, and enhance their large language model training capabilities.
China Incorporates Technological Self-Reliance into its “15th Five-Year Plan” Forward-Looking Strategy
The recently released “Proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan” demonstrates China’s shift from passive defense to proactive efforts to strengthen technological independence. The plan prioritizes strategic positioning in emerging industries such as quantum technology, hydrogen energy, nuclear fusion, brain-computer interfaces, and sixth-generation communications, which closely align with U.S. competitive priorities. Observers widely believe that China is seeking to secure a commanding position in critical technology sectors.
Director Meng-Chun Liu assesses that the China-U.S. technology competition will persist over the long term, with supply chains increasingly exhibiting pronounced regionalization and localization trends. For Taiwan, this environment necessitates continued monitoring of AI chip market restructuring and the formulation of prospective strategies in technology research and development, supply chain resilience, and international cooperation to mitigate the impacts of geopolitical risk.
Author: CIER Editorial Team
Date: December 1, 2025