Biden targets to limit China's chip industry with new rules
On Friday, the Biden administration put out a new set of export restrictions which included a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with US tools with the intention of limiting Beijing's technological advances.
This new set of rules is said to be the biggest shift in US policy aimed at Chinese technology since the 1990s, reports Al Jazeera.
Released by the Commerce Department, these new measures are designed to slow the progress of Chinese military programs, which use supercomputing to model nuclear blasts, guide hypersonic weapons and establish advanced networks for surveilling dissidents and minorities, among other activities, according to New York Times.
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Once they go into effect, these measures could severely set China's chip manufacturing industry back years alongside forcing the foreign and American companies to opt for US technology instead.
"This will set the Chinese back years," said Jim Lewis, a technology and cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington DC-based think-tank, who said the policies harken back to the tough regulations of the height of the Cold War.
"China isn't going to give up on chipmaking … but this will really slow them [down]."
Earlier this year, top toolmakers KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc were notified through letters which requested them to halt shipments of equipment produced by Chinese-owned factories producing advanced logic chips.
Additionally, on Friday, the Biden administration applied the expanded restrictions to China's Dahua Technology, Megvii Technology and IFLYTEK companies added to the entity list in 2019 based on the allegations that they aided Beijing in the suppression of its Uighur minority group.
In a briefing with reporters on Thursday, senior government officials revealed that they have not yet secured confirmation from allied nations that they will implement these new measures.
"We recognise that the unilateral controls we're putting into place will lose effectiveness over time if other countries don't join us," one official said. "And we risk harming US technology leadership if foreign competitors are not subject to similar controls."
US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer welcomed the announcement, arguing the rules would "protect our country's innovations from China's predatory actions".
Eric Sayers, a defence policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, added "The scope of the rule and potential impacts are quite stunning but the devil will, of course, be in the details of implementation."
