Competition among regional powers has surfaced in the form of trade disputes and technological wars. Alongside such conflicts, the localization of supply chains, diversification of industrial standards, and restrictions of technology output will likely have a further impact on relationships, ecosystems, customer layout, and allocation strategies of production capacity. The unexpected outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in early 2020 has further disrupted the tempo of the global industrial chain that originated in mainland China and is still a primary production base.

    In the past, mainland China has, with lower production costs and a fast-growing domestic demand market, built up its manufacturing and supply clusters for comprehensive electronic products and offered them to the world as it assumed an important role as the workshop of the world. If we take the regions where the production bases of Apple’s supply chain are located as an example, mainland China has, for those more than 750 productions bases, accounted for the highest proportion; 46% in total. Furthermore, even though Japan ranks second in terms of production bases, its only accounts for 17%, demonstrating the tremendous disparity to that of mainland China. As for other production bases, including those in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, the United States and other regions, they have an even lower proportion, highlighting the evident importance of manufacturing capacity in mainland China for Apple products.

    In addition to industrial reliance, the rise of technological power in China is also brining in a new era that the entire world must face after the epidemic, and 5G competition is believed to be the most typical indicator of this. According to the figures regarding the number of patents invented in the field of 5G technology, the United States and China are considered the two leading countries; in total they account for 68% of 5G inventions. If viewed from the number of patent families applied for by individual companies, Huawei is ranked first with 3,325 from the cumulative number of 5G patent families based on a report released by German patent statistics company IPlytic in November 2019. ZTE came in fourth with 2,308.