The US and China are heading in different directions when it comes to technology, the sector that will drive global growth over the next several decades. Last week’s demands by US officials that China eliminate state support for its own high tech industry won’t fly — Beijing has made it very clear that it will never disband its China 2025 plan, which aims to make the Middle Kingdom independent from American technology within the next few years.

Meanwhile, the US is ringfencing its own tech sector, vetoing Broadcom’s bid for chipmaker Qualcomm, and slapping a seven-year trade ban on China’s ZTE(Huawei may be next). The Treasury department could put new restrictions on Chinese investment in place within the next two weeks. There’s also a bill up in Congress to expand the remit of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, giving it broader powers to veto not only more kinds of foreign investment into the US, but even outbound investment by American firms.

The bottom line is the integration of the Chinese and US tech industries may well be over. Assuming that the two countries go their own ways, this invites the question which is best poised to win the industries of the future. The answer depends on whether you believe a centralised or decentralised economic model benefits innovation. China has bet on the former. While its largest tech firms — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent — are not officially state run, they are heavily influenced by the regime, which can use their technologies for surveillance and data gathering at will.