Over 45% of Chinese tech professionals in the US predict there will be negative consequences due to growing tension between the US and China.

The number gets higher for those in the Hardware and Semiconductor industry.

The tension between the US and China escalated after the Trump administration blacklisted the Chinese telecommunications company, Huawei, last month. Since the ban, US Tech giants such as  Google, Microsoft and Facebook have publicly stated they would limit their exchange with Huawei.

With the G20 in Osaka around the corner, there is a heightened interest in the Trade War and its negative impact on various industries. We wanted to ask employees working in the US how this battle between the East and West would specifically impact Chinese affiliates.

The Survey:

From 5/29/2019 to 6/3/2019, workplace community app Blind ran a survey to its users to find out the sentiment about the US-China Trade War’s impact on Chinese affiliates working in the United States.

Q1. Do you predict there will be negative consequences to those who are affiliated as Chinese with the growing tension between the US-China trade war?

1. 1. Yes
   2. No
   3. It’s already happening
   4. I don’t know

Q2. Are you a Chinese descent?

1. 1. Chinese Citizen
   2. Chinese American
   3. East Asian
   4. No

With more than 6,000 responses, we were able to compare the sentiments across different industries and companies, and break down the results by whether these employees are of Chinese descent or not.

• Industry Breakdown
  • 65% in Hardware & Semiconductor companies answered ‘Yes’ or ‘It’s already happening,’ saying that the US-China Trade War will have or is already having a negative impact on Chinese affiliate workers in the US.
  • 48.4% of those working in Software & Internet answered ‘Yes’ or ‘It’s already happening,’ slightly higher than the Overall response, which was 45.3%.
  • Employees working in finance were not as concerned as the employees in tech. (Blind consists of a large tech audience, but a small percentage of our users work in finance companies such as Capital One)

*Note that we gave users four answer options – Yes, No, It’s already happening, I don’t know. We combined the numbers for ‘Yes’ and ‘It’s already happening’ for this chart

• Company Breakdown
  • Qualcomm made the top company with more than 3/4 of employees stating that the Trade War will negatively impact Chinese affiliates.
  • Nvidia (72.6%), Apple (67.4%) and Google (59.3%) made the top four companies.

We also asked our users “Are you of Chinese descent?” to see if their ethic background would have an affect on their relationship with this issue.

• Overall, Chinese Citizens had the highest percentage of ‘Yes’ and ‘It’s already happening’ responses with 66.7%. Only 13.7% answered with ‘No’
• Chinese Americans and East Asians had a similar response, with 48.6% and 48.4% respectively.
• When we looked at this response for those working in the Hardware industry, majority of people answered that they were negatively affected regardless of their ethnic background.

Discussions on Blind:

The issue of US-China Trade War is already a very hot topic on Blind. Employees in the tech industry discussing how their work-lives are affected by the issue continues to surface on Blind.

User posts on Topics (Public Channel)

• Which US tech company would get hit the hardest in a trade war? – Nvidia employee
• Trade wars – Microsoft employee
• I’m confused about the trade war – Chase employee
• Is recession coming? Economy is good but trade war is scary. – Tesla employee