In an effort to slow down Beijing’s scientific and military advancement, the administration of US President Joe Biden has released a new list of export prohibitions, some of which aim to block China from using certain semiconductor chips created anywhere in the globe with American tools.
The new regulations, some of which are effective immediately, come in response to letters this year that effectively ordered key chip-making tool manufacturers to stop shipping equipment to fully Chinese-owned plants that develop sophisticated chips.
Since the 1990s, the US policy on technological exports to China may have seen the biggest change as a result of the new measures.
By requiring US and international corporations that use US technology to reduce subsidies to some of China’s top chip makers and designers, it threatens to set the country’s chip sector back years.
Many of the regulations, according to senior government officials, are designed to stop foreign businesses from selling sophisticated chips to China or from giving Chinese companies the means to produce advanced chips on their own.
However, they admitted that they have not yet received any commitments from partners to carry out such measures, stressing that talks with other nations in this regard are still ongoing.
One of the officials added, “We know that if other nations do not join us, our unilateral controls will gradually lose their efficacy. We run the risk of losing the US’s position as a technological leader if international rivals do not follow the same rules.
The formalisation of letters sent to a number of companies to restrict exports to China of chips used in the supercomputing systems that countries all over the world rely on to develop nuclear weapons and other military technologies is part of the new regulations, which will also severely restrict the export of US equipment to Chinese memory chip makers.
American new regulations target Chinese “semiconductors”
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