In its tech war with America, China brings out the big guns
IN THE TECH war between America and China, the Western power has been more aggressive of late. Last year President Joe Biden’s administration laid out harsh restrictions limiting Chinese artificial-intelligence (AI) firms’ access to American technology. America has also been coaxing allies to follow its lead. On June 30th the Netherlands, under pressure from the White House, said it would restrict the sales of some chipmaking kit to China: ASML, a Dutch maker of the world’s most advanced lithography machines, will from now on sell Chinese customers only low-yield devices for etching cutting-edge chips. On July 4th the Wall Street Journal reported that the American government may be preparing to curb Chinese use of American cloud-computing services, which allow Chinese AI firms to circumvent America’s earlier bans by taking advantage of the cloud provider’s high-end processors without owning chips of their own.
China’s communist authorities had so far responded to this barrage of tats with a single, relatively meagre tit: in May it barred some Chinese companies from using memory chips made by Micron, a company from Idaho. But on July 3rd it brought out a bigger gun, saying that it would impose export controls on gallium and germanium, two metals used in high-end semiconductors.
The new export controls will come into effect on August 1st. Unlike the Micron ban, which has little impact beyond one American chipmaker’s top line, restrictions on the sale of chip metals could reverberate across the global chip industry. China supplies about 80% of the world’s gallium and germanium. America may source as much as 50% of its germanium supply from China, according to Jefferies, an investment bank.
2023-07-04 11:43:27
Link from www.economist.com
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