The acrimony between China and the US over technology transfers has created plenty of losers during the past year. There are the US companies which have missed out on business as a result of sanctions, and the Chinese groups that have had to find alternative supplies. But there is one group that has emerged as a winner: the security hawks who say they saw it coming and who are now pushing Beijing to be more self-sufficient.

Since the start of 2019, Washington has used sanctions to cut Chinese companies out of US supply chains, denting the telecoms group Huawei , China’s supercomputer groups and eight of the country’s leading artificial intelligence surveillance companies.

For many policymakers in Beijing, the inevitable trend is towards more decoupling of the two countries’ tech supply chains. A truce in the trade war is unlikely to diminish the Trump administration’s drive to place controls on exports of advanced technologies.