Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday.
It did not publicly announce the change.
Photo: Bloomberg
Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere.
Local companies need approval from the government before they can ship anything to users on the entity list, according to regulations.
In 2023, Bloomberg News reported that several Taiwanese companies were helping Huawei build infrastructure for an under-the-radar network of chip plants across southern China.
The new restrictions are likely to, at least partially, cut off Huawei and SMIC’s access to Taiwan’s plant construction technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors, such as those made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for the likes of Nvidia Corp.
In Huawei’s case, several of its overseas units, including in Japan, Russia and Germany, were also captured in the update to the entity list. Huawei and SMIC — and some of their subsidiaries — are also on the US entity list, which has significantly limited the companies’ ability to acquire foreign technology.
While Taiwan has for years imposed certain blanket bans on the shipments of critical chipmaking equipment, including lithography machines, to China, it has not included leading Chinese tech companies or chipmakers on its entity list previously. TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia, cut off its supplies to Huawei in 2020 because of US export controls.
Huawei, together with SMIC, shocked US politicians in 2023 by releasing an advanced, made-in-China 7-nanometer chip. While the two are struggling to improve their technologies due to various curbs, they are still China’s best hope to help fill in the AI chip gap left by a lack of Nvidia’s most sophisticated semiconductors.
Tensions between Taiwan and China also stepped up a notch earlier this year after President William Lai (賴清德) labeled China a “foreign hostile force” for the first time and unveiled wide-ranging measures to counter infiltration efforts.
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