Biden’s US continues to hit China on technology, here’s how
The US government has imposed new technology restrictions on 36 Chinese companies it accuses of endangering national security. At the same time, however, tensions with Beijing over the delisting are easing. All the details
The US Commerce Department on Thursday imposed restrictions on the access of American technology to 36 other Chinese companies and organizations, with the aim of preventing Beijing from advancing its military and its semiconductor industry.
The New York Times wrote that these export controls on critical technologies that can also be used for military purposes, such as artificial intelligence and supercomputing, have become "a salient element of US foreign policy".
THE OCTOBER TECHNOLOGY RESTRICTIONS
In October, President Joe Biden's administration announced significant restrictions on exports of advanced microchips and related machinery to China. These restrictions apply not only to US-based companies, but also to those located in third countries whose products contain American technology or were made with American equipment.
“Today we reiterate the actions we took in October to protect the national security of the United States by severely limiting the ability of the People's Republic of China to leverage artificial intelligence, advanced computing and other powerful commercially available technologies for military modernization and security breaches. human rights,” said Alan Estevez, the Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security yesterday.
NEW RESTRICTIONS AGAINST YMTC, SMIC AND MORE
One of the most important Chinese semiconductor companies affected by the restrictions is Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation (YTMC), previously in talks with Apple to supply components for the iPhone 14.
On Thursday, the US Congress approved a law on military matters containing a provision that prohibits the government from purchasing or using semiconductors made by three Chinese companies – SMIC, ChangXin Memory Technologies and the aforementioned YMTC – accused of having ties to intelligence agencies and security in Beijing.
THE GOVERNMENT ENTITY LIST
The United States government has included YMTC, SMIC and ChangXin in an entity list , i.e. a "black list" made up of foreign subjects – such as companies, in fact, or research entities – considered dangerous for American national security and therefore subject to restrictions of a commercial nature.
The Commerce Department explained that the three companies pose a security risk because they produce and sell (even to already sanctioned companies, such as Huawei and Hikvision) technology that can be used for military purposes or to repress minorities, such as chips for weapons hypersonic and artificial intelligence, or components for Iranian drones.
As a result, YMTC, SMIC, ChangXin and the other thirty-three sanctioned companies will no longer be able to have free access to a number of sensitive American technologies, products and software, regardless of the geographical location of the seller.
CHINA'S ANSWER
China has accused the United States of distorting the concept of national security, abusing export control measures, politicizing economic and technological matters, and carrying out discriminatory practices against foreign companies (a rule known as the foreign direct product rule ).
Beijing this week filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization against Washington's restrictions on microchip exports.
– Read also: Microchip, here's how China is trying to react to US blockades
CHECKS PASSED BY 25 COMPANIES
The Biden administration also placed dozens of Chinese companies on a watch list in October to ensure their products were not being used for purposes risking US security. Twenty-five Chinese companies passed the checks and were therefore removed from the list.
ARE TENSION ABOUT THE DELISTING LOWERING ?
In 2020, Congress passed a law obliging the delisting of US-listed Chinese companies that do not make their audit reports available to the authorities for three consecutive years.
Also on Thursday, a government agency that monitors the audits of listed companies, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, said it had obtained – for the first time – full access to the audit reports of companies based in mainland China and in Hong Kong.
According to the New York Times , the news is important for cooling financial tensions between the United States and China and should reduce the risks of mass delisting of large Chinese companies from the American stock market.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/stati-uniti-restrizioni-tecnologia-aziende-cina/ on Fri, 16 Dec 2022 09:23:20 +0000.