US Senate votes for bill to help compete with China

China’s parliament expresses ‘resolute opposition’ to the bill, says it shows the US has ‘paranoid delusion’.

The US Senate has voted 68-32 to approve a sweeping package of legislation intended to boost the country’s ability to compete with Chinese technology. The measure, passed on Tuesday, authorises about $190bn for provisions to strengthen US technology and research – and would separately approve spending $54bn to increase US production and research into semiconductors and telecommunications equipment, including $2bn dedicated to chips used by automakers that have seen massive shortages and made significant production cuts. The desire for a hard line in dealings with China is one of the few bipartisan sentiments in the deeply divided US Congress, which is narrowly controlled by President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats.