One of the likely fall-outs from the current hi-tech trade war between the USA and China is to raise new challenges for US mobile chip providers. Qualcomm, Intel and others have invested heavily in developing partnerships and joint ventures in China, to ensure they are not locked out of the world’s largest market, but President Trump’s recent policies are likely to put strain on these relationships, and redouble China’s government-backed efforts to become autonomous in core chip technologies. Intel is not letting trade wars deter it from pursuing Chinese business aggressively, however. It has been heavily involved in several major Chinese operator R&D projects and trials for 5G and Cloud-RAN. It is a stakeholder in Spreadtrum, Greater China’s second largest…