The fourth China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) opened in Beijing on June 22, 2026, attracting significant participation from global technology giants amid intensifying US-China trade tensions. Notably, United States firms accounted for the largest foreign presence at the event, representing 36.5% of all international participants, underscoring the enduring commercial ties between the two economies even as their governments engage in escalating sanctions and export controls.
The expo, which runs through June 26, features over 1,200 companies from 85 countries. Launched in 2023 as a strategic countermeasure to US-led decoupling efforts, CISCE serves as a platform for Beijing to showcase its central role in global manufacturing and technological supply chains, and to signal that China remains open for business with international partners.
US Tech Giants Maintain Engagement
The prominent presence of US companies highlights the complex reality of global tech supply chains, where commercial interests often necessitate continued engagement with China despite political pressures. Major American participants included Apple, Tesla, Micron Technology, Qualcomm, and Nvidia.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivered a video address to the attendees, offering a notably warm assessment of China’s technological capabilities. “China is one of the world’s great centers of technology and industry,” Huang stated. “The engineers are excellent. Developers move fast. Companies build at remarkable scale.” The address was widely noted given the ongoing restrictions on Nvidia’s ability to sell its most advanced AI chips to Chinese customers.
The participation of these firms underscores the difficulty of fully decoupling the US and Chinese technology sectors. For companies like Apple, China remains both the world’s largest manufacturing base for its products and a critical consumer market. For Micron, despite its own experience with Chinese market restrictions, maintaining relationships with Chinese supply chain partners remains commercially essential.
Dedicated AI Exhibition Area
Reflecting the growing importance of artificial intelligence to China’s industrial strategy, the Chinese government established a dedicated AI exhibition area at this year’s expo. This section highlights advancements in AI hardware, software, and applications, showcasing China’s ambition to remain a vital node in the global AI supply chain regardless of external restrictions.
The focus on AI aligns with broader national strategies to integrate intelligent systems across industries, from manufacturing to healthcare and logistics. By prominently featuring AI at CISCE, Beijing is making a direct argument to international partners: that Chinese AI capabilities are a feature, not a risk, of global supply chain integration.
A Contradictory Geopolitical Signal
The expo was officially opened by Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, the sixth-highest ranking official in the Chinese Communist Party, underscoring the event’s strategic importance to the central government. Yet the welcoming atmosphere at the expo contrasted sharply with other government actions on the same day.
On June 22, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the addition of 10 US entities to its export control list, banning them from receiving dual-use items. This dual approach, courting foreign investment and supply chain integration while simultaneously imposing targeted sanctions, illustrates the nuanced and often contradictory strategies employed by Beijing. The message appears to be that China distinguishes between companies that engage with its economy on its terms and those that it views as adversarial actors in the technology war.
Japanese companies were also present at the expo despite a period of worsened Sino-Japanese diplomatic ties, further illustrating the primacy of commercial relationships in shaping actual supply chain behavior, even when political relationships are strained.
The Limits of Decoupling
CISCE’s success as an event, and the strong turnout from US and other Western companies, illustrates the fundamental tension at the heart of the technology decoupling debate. Governments on both sides of the Pacific are pursuing policies to reduce strategic dependencies, but companies operating within those supply chains continue to make decisions based on commercial logic. For many US firms, the cost of disengaging from China entirely would far exceed the perceived geopolitical risk of continued participation.
This gap between political intent and commercial reality is not unique to the US-China relationship, but it is particularly acute given the scale and depth of the two economies’ integration. CISCE, by design, exploits this gap, offering a venue where commercial engagement can continue even as the broader political relationship deteriorates. The fifth edition of the expo is already being planned for 2027, and the Chinese government has signaled its intention to expand the event’s scope to include more AI and semiconductor supply chain content.
For Beijing, the continued participation of US tech giants in CISCE is itself a form of soft power, evidence, presented to domestic and international audiences alike, that China remains indispensable to the global technology economy despite sustained Western efforts to reduce that dependence.