Just last week, the U.S. government, under President Joe Biden, enacted wide-sweeping export curbs aimed at cutting off key software, chips and machinery that could aid China's development of semiconductors, artificial intelligence and supercomputers.Zero Covid Another unforeseen event during the last five years is the outbreak of Covid, which originated in China and spread across the world.While many countries dealt with the initial waves of the virus, they relied on vaccines and masking measures to eventually open up their economies after prolonged lockdowns and border closures.In its its five-year development plan, the 14th of its kind, Beijing said it would make "science and technology self-reliance and self-improvement a strategic pillar for national development.""It would seem that Xi underestimated the challenges China faced in overcoming its reliance on foreign, mostly U.S. firms, in key 'core' or 'hard' technologies such as semiconductors," Paul Triolo, the technology policy lead at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge, told CNBC."