Many who entered university during Trump’s first trade war with China are ready to become key cogs in China’s hi-tech engine
When Jack Wang enrolled as an undergraduate in microelectronics at a prestigious Chinese university, the year was 2019, and China was in the early days of its trade war with the United States.
Looking back, his decision to focus on the field revolving around the design and manufacture of hi-tech microchips has proved prescient. Today, it complements Beijing’s aspirations to make world-leading semiconductors amid Washington’s amped-up efforts to curtail China’s technological progress.
Indeed, the sector has grown by leaps and bounds in the six years since Wang laid out his focus of study, and it now serves as the backbone for artificial intelligence (AI) advancements.
“I realised that this industry was booming, and AI had been kind of popular back then – it just wasn’t as capable as it is today,” he said.
