By Greg Gao

The spokesperson of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), the country’s top foreign trade and investment promotion agency, expressed firm supports to China initiated dispute against the US at the World Trade Organization(WTO) over Washington’s sweeping semiconductor export curbs, Chinese press reported.

“The Chinese government has chosen to resolve its concerns through legal means and maintain the stability of the supply chain of essential industries, including global chips. CCPIT and the China Chamber of International Commerce strongly support this, ” said the CCPIT spokesperson at a press conference on December 27.

The original intention of export control is to protect countries from the threat of the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and their means of delivery and to maintain world peace and security. However, in recent years, the US has included a large number of Chinese companies in the US Commerce Department’s “Entity List” and has strictly restricted the ability of Chinese companies to obtain high-performance computing chips, advanced computers, specific semiconductor manufacturing facilities, and equipment, and related technologies through export control rules, the spokesperson pointed out. 

Washington’s sweeping semiconductor export curbs were actually trade protection in the name of safeguarding national security. This practice was suspected of violating the WTO principles of non-discrimination and prohibition of quantitative restrictions and seriously affected the security and stability of the global semiconductor supply chains, CCPIT’s spokesperson added.

The US expanded its crackdown on China’s chip industry on December 15, adding 36 entities to the Entity List, including China’s largest memory manufacturer, Yangtze Memory Technology Corp (YMTC). In early October, the US introduced rules that restricted chips made using American tools from being exported to China as well as any semiconductors designed for artificial intelligence applications. The US also actively wooed Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea to join the restriction, said a JW Insights report.