U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Monday that the expanding sales of Chinese electric vehicles in Western countries put the United States and the European Union at risk.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, she noted that sophisticated electric and self-driving cars are loaded with thousands of semiconductors and sensors that can gather vast amounts of information about the driver, the vehicle's location and the surrounding environment. Raimondo questioned, "Do we really want all this data to be sent to Beijing?" ”
It is worth noting that Raimondo has previously pointed out that Beijing has banned Tesla electric vehicles from driving in certain parts of China on the grounds of ***. She asked rhetorically, "Can you imagine?" "It can be seen that on the issue of electric vehicles, the contradiction between the United States and China has begun to emerge.
After talks with EU Executive Vice President Vestager, Raimondo further compared electric vehicles to the semiconductor industry, which is another region where the United States and China are wrestling over access to cutting-edge technologies. She said that many of the semiconductors produced in China would also cause concern.
In fact, since October 2022, under Raimondo's leadership, the U.S. Department of Commerce has been seeking to cut off China's access to cutting-edge chip-making technology. From banning Nvidia from exporting some of its most advanced chips to China, to co-opting Japan and the Netherlands into the chip war, and cutting off Beijing's access to key chip-making equipment, Washington has been aggressively curbing the technological advances of its main economic rival.
Raimondo also vowed to tighten those restrictions every year. She said that although the hundreds of billions of dollars in relations with China have created jobs in the United States and Europe, there are still real problems, and we must be sober-minded about them.
Overall, the United States and the European Union have cooperated to strengthen export controls on China, which can be clearly felt in Raimondo's speech. If the United States and Europe do not take an active role in standard-setting in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, Raimondo warned, China will inevitably lead the process.