The administration of US President Joe Biden on Friday published a sweeping set of export controls, including a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with US equipment, vastly expanding its reach in its bid to slow Beijing’s technological and military advances.
The rules, some of which take effect immediately, build on restrictions sent in letters this year to top toolmakers KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc, effectively requiring them to halt shipments of equipment to wholly Chinese-owned factories producing advanced logic chips.
The raft of measures could amount to the biggest shift in US policy toward shipping technology to China since the 1990s. If effective, they could hobble China’s chip manufacturing industry by forcing US and foreign companies that use US technology to cut off support for some of China’s leading factories and chip designers.
Photo: Reuters
“This will set the Chinese back years,” said Jim Lewis, a technology and cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, adding that the policies harken back to the tough regulations at the height of the Cold War.
“China isn’t going to give up on chipmaking ... but this will really slow them” down, he said.
In a briefing with reporters on Thursday previewing the rules, senior government officials said that many of the measures were aimed at preventing foreign firms from selling advanced chips to China or supplying Chinese firms with tools to make their own advanced chips.
The rules also block shipments of a broad array of chips for use in Chinese supercomputing systems. The rules define a supercomputer as any system with more than 100 petaflops of computing power within a floor space of 595m2, a definition that two industry sources said could also hit some commercial data centers at Chinese tech giants.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said that Taiwanese firms were law-abiding.
“Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has long served global customers and attaches great importance to compliance with laws,” it said. “In addition to complying with domestic laws and regulations, it will also cooperate with the needs of international customers who place orders and the norms of customers in their countries.”
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is a technological leader and continues to “maintain an advantage in the competition for international orders,” it added.
The government continues to maintain close contact with manufacturers and supports them in investing in factory expansion and supplying products to the world for technological development, it said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to companies including Apple Inc, and smaller competitor United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) declined to comment on the US rules.
Eric Sayers, a defense policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the move reflects a new bid by the Biden administration to contain China’s advances instead of simply seeking to level the playing field.
“The scope of the rule and potential impacts are quite stunning, but the devil will of course be in the details of implementation,” he added.
Earlier on Friday, the US added China’s top memory chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (長江存儲) and 30 other Chinese entities to a list of companies that US officials cannot inspect, ratcheting up tensions with Beijing and starting a 60 day-clock that could trigger much tougher penalties.
Companies are added to the unverified list when US authorities cannot complete on-site visits to determine if they can be trusted to receive sensitive US technology, forcing US suppliers to take greater care when shipping to them.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique