Huawei's new phones increasingly rely on own components --"The development adds credence to the argument that the company is consistently implementing the policy of import substitution and is trying to establish the production of components on its own." 1/ https://asiatimes.com/2020/11/huaweis-mate-40-pro-has-a-little-secret-under-its-hood/

More generally, this is the crux of the US policy challenge in taking on Huawei (and other Chinese tech co's) using sanctions, export controls, etc -- these policies probably are going to accelerate China's indigenous tech dev't, hurting US companies' sales in the process 2/

BUT, it's also clear that, for both economic and political reasons, China's long term goal was always this kind of import substitution anyways - as laid out in Made in China 2025, and as has already happened in many other sectors (eg, trains) 3/

US might be happy with a long term vision of China depending on American high tech inputs, but China's clear it doesn't want this. Maybe if the pace of American innovation is fast enough, China won't have a choice - to keep up, will need to keep on bringing in latest US tech 4/

But based on recent history in innovation, that's not something I'd bet on.

So question then is, does cutting China off from US tech, at real cost to US companies, before China would make this choice itself ultimately help or harm US objectives?

(Answer: I'm not sure.) 5/end