Political tensions between the US and China are contributing to lower container shipments between the world’s two largest economies, on top of an already-underway reshaping of global trade, according to a major shipping industry boss.

China has urged the World Trade Organization to scrutinise US-led technology export restrictions aimed at curbing its ability to make advanced chips, state television said on Wednesday.

China and the US need to create a stable and predictable economic and trade environment, to enhance the confidence of enterprises in both countries, Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen told a press conference in Beijing on Thursday.

The great competition between the US and China—which only intensified in 2022—will likely be the most important theme of the coming decades, longtime global economy watcher Stephen Jen has rightly said.

While the U.S. has sought to persuade countries to reduce their dependence on China, trade ties between the world’s second-largest economy and the rest of Asia are deepening as economies grow and companies refashion supply chains.

Over the past year, the Biden administration's economic and trade policies toward China have not only failed to make an overdue correction to the Trump administration's tariff war, but have also gone further in terms of export control and investment flow restrictions. The Biden administration has escalated its economic war against China to a new level and expanded its crackdown and restrictions from trade to technology, and financial sectors.

China has expressed concerns over some unilateral trade practices of the US during the WTO's 15th Trade Policy Review of the US, raising 312 written questions to the US based on WTO rules and pointing out Washington's trade protectionism is affecting the stability of global industrial chains.

The US Commerce Department on Thursday blacklisted 36 Chinese companies including top producers of advanced computer chips, severely restricting their access to American technology.

South Korea is facing a complex balancing act as it finds itself positioned in the middle of an intensifying tech war between the United States and its biggest semiconductor chip trading partner China.

ASML is not about to voluntarily leave China, where it has sold a thousand chip-making tools over the decades.