By Karen Freifeld and David Shepardson
(Reuters) – The U.S. will launch its third crackdown in three years on China’s semiconductor industry on Monday, restricting exports to 140 companies including chip equipment maker Naura Technology Group, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The efforts to thwart Beijing’s chipmaking ambitions will also hit Chinese chipmakers Piotech and SiCarrier Technology with new export restrictions as part of the package, which also targets the shipment of advanced memory chips and more chipmaking tools to China.
The move marks one of the Biden administration’s latest large-scale attempts to hinder China’s ability to access and produce chips that could help advance artificial intelligence for military applications or otherwise threaten U.S. national security.
It comes just weeks before the swearing-in of Republican former President Donald Trump, who is expected to maintain many of Biden’s tough measures against China.
The package includes restrictions on shipments to China of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are critical for high-end applications such as AI training; new restrictions on 24 additional chip manufacturing tools and three software tools; and new export restrictions on chip-making equipment manufactured in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.
The controls on the instruments are likely to hurt Lam Research, KLA and Applied Materials, as well as non-US companies such as Dutch equipment manufacturer ASM International.
Chinese companies facing new restrictions include nearly two dozen semiconductor companies, two investment firms and more than a hundred makers of chip-making tools, the sources said. U.S. lawmakers say some companies, including Swaysure Technology Co, Qingdao SiEn and Shenzhen Pensun Technology Co, are working with China’s Huawei Technologies, the telecommunications equipment leader that was once hobbled by U.S. sanctions and is now central to China’s advanced chipmaking and -development.
They will be added to the Entity List, which will prevent US suppliers from shipping to them without first receiving a special license. China has stepped up its drive to become self-sufficient in the semiconductor sector in recent years as the US and other countries have restricted exports of the advanced chips and the tools to make them. However, it remains years behind chip industry leaders such as Nvidia in AI chips, and chip equipment manufacturer ASML in the Netherlands.
The US is also poised to impose additional restrictions on Semiconductor Manufacturing International, China’s largest contract chip manufacturer, which was placed on the Entity List in 2020 but with a policy that allowed billions of dollars in licenses to be granted to ship goods to it.
