The American and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 2, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. Some US states are scrapping investments in Chinese companies amid tensions between the world’s largest economies.
“You’re talking a considerable amount of money that frankly is competing against the US technology and innovation ecosystem,” King said. The US Treasury Department recently proposed a rule prohibiting American investors from funding artificial intelligence systems in China that could have military uses, such as weapons targeting. In May, President Joe Biden blocked a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining firm from owning land near a Wyoming nuclear missile base, calling it a “national security risk.”
State pension divestment policies are “part of a broader march toward more confrontation between China and the United States,” said Clark Packard, a research fellow for trade policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. But “it makes it more challenging for the federal government to manage the overall relationship if we’ve got to deal with a scattershot policy at the state level.”