China’s tech giants depend on data centers full of foreign, largely U.S.-produced, chips. The documents that Edward Snowden leaked in 2013 before fleeing to Russia demonstrated American network-tapping capabilities that surprised even the cyber sleuths in Beijing. Chinese firms had replicated Silicon Valley’s expertise in building software for e-commerce, online search, and digital payments. But all this software relies on foreign hardware. When it comes to the core technologies that undergird computing, China is staggeringly reliant on foreign products, many of which are designed in Silicon
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