Technology

China urges Japan to halt export restrictions on chips

Chinese Minister urges Japan to halt semiconductor export controls, calling it a 'wrongdoing' and serious violation

Reuters May 29, 2023

Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao urged Japan to halt semiconductor export controls, calling it a "wrongdoing" that "seriously violated" international economic and trade rules, a statement from his ministry said on Monday.

China's latest condemnation of the export restrictions was made during Wang's talks with Japanese Trade Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura on May 26 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Detroit.

Japan, along with the Netherlands, in January agreed to match US export controls that will limit the sale of some chipmaking tools to China, and has placed restrictions on the export of 23 types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to its neighbour.

The U.S. imposed the restrictions last year aiming to slow China's work on supercomputers that can be used to develop nuclear weapons systems and artificial intelligence systems.

Japan has not singled out China in its statements about the export controls, saying only that it is fulfilling its duty to contribute to international peace and stability.

Monday's statement from the Chinese commerce ministry also said, however, that China "is willing to work with Japan to promote practical cooperation in key economic and trade areas."

On Friday, Nishimura met with US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and the two agreed to deepen cooperation in the research and development of advanced chips and technologies such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

Wang also met Raimondo and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai while at the summit, criticising US economic and trade policies towards China, including the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that excludes China and aims to provide a US-centered alternative to its influence.

The US, Japan and other members of the Group of Seven (G7) advanced nations this month agreed to "de-risk" but not decouple from China, reducing their exposure to the world's second-largest economy in everything from chips to minerals.

COMMENTS (1)

test | 1 year ago | Reply China has come to chip sector lately which means someone in the CCP in the past 3-4 decade made a wrong policy deliberately to shift the focus away from microchips and other critical technologies like passenger aircraft engines etc. It is at this point irrelevant that who was behind all the hardships of China when it comes to microchips because that person shifted CCP s focus to other products instead of the microchips and likely got away uncatched. Anyway China will rise and rise and I am hopeful that SMIC Yangtze and other big chip makers in China will definitely get a breakthrough in advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology and hopefully China will be able to produce 10nm microchips 5nm microchips and 1nm microchips at large scale. I know China wants to achieve self sufficiency in 14nm node device fabrication at a large scale but it needs advanced lithography machines which are used for drawing billions of transistors on a tiny chip but those machines are american patented and netherland is vulnerable to american doctrine but France and Germany can help in the longer run especially if they are able to produce those lithography machines for China otherwise China needs to keep pressuring its own chip companies to have a breakthrough in chip manufacturing and it can definitely work too in the longer run. Pakistan will always stand with China whenver China wants our help. China is our brother and we can do anything for our brother China. China just name it and Pakistan will give it. If Pakistan had the capability to produce advanced microchips we would have definitely given the technology to China free of cost to prove our loyality to China.

Replying to X