As U.S. export controls bite, China's tech giants and local governments are forging unlikely alliances - Huawei's with rival SMIC, for one - to build a parallel ecosystem China's bold push to achieve tech self-sufficiency is triggering a wave of unexpected corporate alliances, investment surges and speculative bets. As U.S. sanctions choke access to advanced semiconductors and artificial-intelligence hardware, Beijing is responding with a top-down industrial mobilization - and an estimated trillion dollars' worth of combined public and private capital now flowing into domestic chip and AI startups. From obscure ... (full story)