The world’s biggest consumer technology trade show kicks off Tuesday in Las Vegas amid an escalating tech cold war between the U.S. and China.

While new generation tech that has been the focus of China’s innovation efforts—like artificial intelligence and 5G—will be at the forefront of CES 2020, major Chinese tech players like Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com are absent from the first major global tech event of the decade.

The U.S.-China trade dispute is spilling into CES in spite of plans for the two countries to sign a “Phase One” trade agreement on Jan. 15 in Washington. A Chinese consulate and commerce ministry-backed station at the expo will offer free legal help to Chinese attendees, who have also been encouraged to carry documents certifying their intellectual property rights. IP theft has been a sticking point in trade negotiations.

Escalatory U.S. policy against Chinese tech companies in 2019 has led to a new push in China to establish technological independence from the U.S.—a move that that will have major international repercussions, according to a Jan. 6 Eurasia Group report on top risks for 2020.

“The decision by China and the United States to decouple in the technology sphere is the single most impactful development for globalization since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” the report said.

A little over 1,000 of the 4,500 companies exhibiting at CES 2020 hail from China. Two years ago, one third of participating companies were from China, and last year it was more than one in four.

The uncertainty brought on by political tensions between the U.S. and China as well as difficulties obtaining U.S. visas are contributing to the drop-off in attendance from Chinese companies.

“Our company decided not to attend this year because we knew it would take forever to get our visa, if they don’t get rejected after all,” one Chinese A.I. chip startup founder told the Nikkei Asian Review.

Of China’s top domestic smartphone makers, only OnePlus and Huawei appear on the CES exhibitor directory. Top name brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are absent.

Artificial intelligence will be at the forefront of CES 2020, but China’s leading A.I. startups will be absent, including Megvii, SenseTime, and Yitu, which all landed on a U.S. government trade restricting “entity list” in October 2019 for their alleged involvement in a Chinese government campaign against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang province.

Voice recognition company iFlyTek and surveillance company Hikvision, which were also added to the entity list in October, attended CES 2019 last January but will not be attending this year.

The world’s most valuable startup, ByteDance Ltd., which owns popular app TikTok, will also be absent from CES 2020. U.S. senators have labeled ByteDance a national security risk and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. is currently reviewing its 2017 purchase of the app that is now TikTok.
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