Yes, and that’s why the US is going to make it very difficult for them to do so.
Businesses don’t just exist in a vacuum. They have suppliers and vendors and collaborators and customers, the entire chain of which most have been locked into more or less the same ecosystem, and taking a leap of faith to completely switch over to an entirely different ecosystem alone is going to be very costly especially if the US declares very stringent rules that you have to follow.
Of course, companies can opt out of doing business with the “Western world” (and I think this kind of “regionalism” is where the world is heading towards) and stick to Asian businesses that are already under the Chinese sphere, but it’s going to make a lot of international businesses think twice, whether such changes will be worth it for their businesses (we’re talking about replacing hardware, revamping existing protocols, retraining staff etc.)
And here’s the kicker: China as long as it remains an export-led economy will need to make profit from exports to maintain their growth, and if international demand for their technology is dampened for political reasons, then it ends up hurting China’s technology sector.
The US knows this, probably their only chance at creating substantial damage to China, and will play this card as relentlessly as it can.
China’a only way out is to transition into a domestic consumption economy to shake off the US control, and that’s why the US is only sanctioning Huawei, and not other mobile phone manufacturers because they want China to keep relying on export for their plan to work. Sanctioning all the Chinese companies at the same time is only going to accelerate China’s move toward an internal circulation model, which is the US’s worse nightmare because they can no longer exert their control over China.
Meanwhile, Huawei has been forced to retreat “back” to China and has been destroying its competition at home, allowing Chinese native technology to flourish, while the competitors have retreated “out” to the overseas market to displace Huawei’s position there.
You are making the mistake in thinking that just because you were one of the minority of libs who became radicalized and turned left, it would also mean that every lib could have the same experience and trajectory as yours.
History has proven again and again that this is false. The vast majority of German liberals allowed Nazism to take hold of the country in silence. They were probably disgusted by the brutality of the fascists, and maybe even reacted emphatically with how many communists, socialists and social democrats were killed, but at the end of the day, getting rid of communist ideology and preventing it from taking root in their country were far more preferable for the liberals.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many people are anti-capitalists in the country or how many people had been radicalized by the recent events. The only way to prevail is through having strong organized left wing movements, without which all of these protests energy will be channeled down the drain, and fascist violence will once again save the day for the capitalist ruling class.
Without an organized left in the country, the movement is certainly doomed to fail.