Reckless attacks on China's high-tech sector are endangering growth of US chipmakers: China Daily editorial

The Joe Biden administration continues to tighten the squeeze on China's high-tech sector. Being an idee fixe, its architects ignore the obvious boomerang effect that inflicts pain on the US. But this is hurting US companies to such an extent that the major US chipmakers can no longer remain silent.

The chief executives of Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia gathered in Washington on Monday to meet with the top officials of the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, to discuss how to ensure that the administration's aggressive policy does not shut these US chip companies out of the lucrative Chinese market.

This comes in tandem with the US-based Semiconductor Industry Association calling on the Biden administration to "refrain from further restrictions" on chip sales to China and urging the administration to allow "the industry to have continued access to the China market, the world's largest commercial market for commodity semiconductors". Last year, China accounted for $180 billion in semiconductor purchases, around one-third of the world's total of $555.9 billion, and it remained the largest single market, according to the SIA.

The huge and growing Chinese market has been pivotal to the US chipmaking industry, given that sales there provide the scale for US companies to fund high levels of investment in research and development back in the US, from which come superior technology and products, which in turn reinforces the US leadership in technology.

However, "repeated steps … to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the US semiconductor industry's competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China," the SIA said in a statement.

The appeal for the Biden administration to forgo new tech curbs on China comes as the White House is planning a fresh round of restrictions on chip exports to China, further escalating its offensive against the Chinese mainland's semiconductor, quantum-computing and artificial intelligence sectors. The US already imposed sweeping export controls in October, making it almost impossible for companies to sell chips, chipmaking equipment and software containing US technology to China.

Such acts of "tech hegemony", which violate World Trade Organization rules and threaten the stability of global industry supply chains, risk compromising all the efforts the two countries have made recently to stabilize Sino-US relations. They also run counter to Biden's claim that the US has no intention to seek "decoupling" from China, to halt China's economic development, or to contain China. In an interdependent world, no country will emerge a winner from the politicizing and weaponizing of trade and technology.