Results

To fully understand the prospects for US-China technological competition, we need to examine how the economy is complexly “embedded” (Granovetter, 1985; Polanyi, 1944) within the broader context of society, culture, politics, and international relations. This paper focuses on the theory of strategic action fields (SAF) (Fligstein and McAdam, 2011, 2012). The SAF theory was used to disentangle the complexity by investigating the case of advanced technologies in the next-generation automobile industry—for example, autonomous driving and electric vehicles—for two reasons. First, the technologies required for the next generation of automobiles span most, if not all, of the advanced technologies that are the source of recent US-China tension. Second, although the two superpowers are key players in the industry, Japan is equally competitive in the global industry (both with automakers such as Toyota, Nissan, and Honda as well as parts companies such as Denso). In sum, focusing on the next-generation automobile industry enables us to look beyond state-to-state relations between the US and China in the area of advanced technologies.