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Armed conflict, new protectionist regulations, and worsening international relations are snarling the flow of goods, services, and people across borders.<\/p>\n
But Dongsheng Li, the founder and CEO of TCL Technologies, gave his own account of deglobalization at the Fortune Innovation Forum on Wednesday. He believes it\u2019s being driven by U.S. policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we are talking about deglobalization, we mainly talk about the deglobalization of technologies, represented by the U.S.,\u201d Li said in a conversation with Fortune China <\/em>executive editor Maiwen Zhang in Hong Kong. (The conversation was conducted in Mandarin, with simultaneous translation into English).<\/p>\n New rules from the Biden administration are targeting China\u2019s ability to develop strategic technologies. The U.S. blocks the sale<\/a> of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to Chinese companies, and bans outward investment<\/a> into sectors like AI and quantum computing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.S. also bars electric vehicles with components made in \u201ccountries of concern\u201d\u2014a designation that includes China\u2014from qualifying for tax breaks<\/a> under the Inflation Reduction Act. More recently, the Biden administration has called Chinese EVs a possible security threat<\/a> due to fears that cars could send data back to Beijing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.S. is \u201crestricting the technological development of China\u201d with measures like these, Li said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n While Li criticized U.S. policy towards China, he did accept some of the more general critiques of global economic integration. \u201cWe should admit that the benefits of globalization are not allocated in a fair way among all the countries,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n TCL is a major Chinese electronics conglomerate, founded by Li in 1981 in the southern Chinese city of Huizhou. The company is perhaps best known globally for its cheap TVs; it\u2019s the world\u2019s second-largest TV manufacturer, behind Samsung Electronics. But it also makes smartphones and household appliances, and is investing heavily in semiconductor and solar-panel production.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Fortune<\/em><\/a> wrote in 2004, TCL was one of the first Chinese state-owned companies to bring its level of government ownership below 50%. The company listed on Hong Kong\u2019s stock exchange in 1999.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Hong Kong on Wednesday, Li reminisced about the company\u2019s path to global prominence.\u00a0<\/p>\n During his first visit to CES in Las Vegas in the 1990s, TCL only had a small nine square meter booth in a pavilion run by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. TCL\u2019s booth at the show has since expanded to 1,700 square meters, similar to Samsung\u2019s footprint at the show, Li said.<\/p>\n But TCL\u2019s path to global growth wasn\u2019t always smooth.<\/p>\n In the early 2000s, TCL made a big play for the global stage by launching two massive joint ventures with European companies. In 2003, TCL launched a joint venture that merged its TV manufacturing operations with those of French manufacturer Thomson, making the world\u2019s largest TV maker<\/a> at the time. The next year, TCL tried another joint venture with French telecoms company Alcatel to make phones.\u00a0<\/p>\n Neither venture worked out<\/a>. By 2006, both joint ventures<\/a> had collapsed<\/a> after extended losses. (One reason for the collapse of TCL\u2019s deal with Thomson? The French company continued to make bulky CRT televisions even as the world moved on to flat-panel displays)<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Li remembered that he pursued the joint ventures to give TCL a foothold in international markets. \u201cBack then in China, we were the best in terms of color TVs and mobile phones, but in international markets we didn\u2019t have any presence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But the joint ventures were too much for a Chinese company inexperienced with how things worked internationally. \u201cSuddenly, we became a global company. I have to take care of a lot of American and European employees,\u201d something he wasn\u2019t \u201ccapable\u201d of doing at the time, Li said.\u00a0<\/p>\nTCL\u2019s global expanison<\/strong><\/h2>\n