I just read about this on Twitter so looked for news. Gist is that US sanctions gave US citizens and passport holders the choice... Work in China in the semiconductor industry or lose US citizenship. On Twitter this has been reported as "everyone has resigned overnight".
What I don't know if the scale of this, companies most affected, the long term impact, etc. But if that headline and the Twitter rumours are more true than false, then it seems to be a real escalation between the US and China and not one that can be reversed easily once the impact has set in.
A country, especially one with strong rule of law and individual rights, cannot strip citizens of citizenship just like that.
In fact it is even illegal in international law to make people stateless so stripping citizenship is really only an option against people who have dual-citizenship and the threshold is still high.
But they can put severe sanctions on citizens who work in China, I suppose.
Anyway, this looks like the US are increasingly desperate to hold on to their global supremacy.
As far as I understood it... they are targeting dual-nationality dual-passport holders. No-one would be left without a country of citizenship, but it withdraws the bridge to the USA for those dual-citizen holders.
Unless we can read the legal text that specifically says that penalty will include losing citizenship I can only say that highly doubt that this will be the case... I suspect that this is a misrepresentation of the new restrictions, which, as far as I understand, only state that US citizens will be banned from certain jobs without a license.
This does not mean that anyone will be stripped of citizenship. It means that dual-nationals may choose to renounce US citizenship in order to keep working in China:
" For many senior executives at Chinese companies, the rule will likely force them to decide between their jobs and their U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status, Mr. Chamorro said. The rules require all U.S. persons to apply for a license to continue working in Chinese advanced chip development. " [1]
Again, stripping someone of citizenship is a nuclear option and is rare and has a high threshold. For instance, the US a such a law against German Nazi war criminals who moved to the US after WWII.
My main worry is, this can put Taiwan at risk. One of the incentives for China to avoid any kind of military conflict is that the price to pay for Chinese export-oriented economy would be prohibitive. Now they might be forced to pay that price anyway.
And sadly, this makes it yet another example of US trying to incite war.
On the other hand, if it’s bad enough, perhaps it could get China to respond by eg voiding American IP rights for stuff sold in Asia? That would be a tremendous win to the world as a whole.
What I don't know if the scale of this, companies most affected, the long term impact, etc. But if that headline and the Twitter rumours are more true than false, then it seems to be a real escalation between the US and China and not one that can be reversed easily once the impact has set in.