Washington has asked allies to limit maintenance work on chip-making machines to thwart Beijing’s ambition to manufacture state-of-the-art semiconductors. This was reported by the Bloomberg news agency on Wednesday.
“We are committed to not maintaining these critical components, so those are conversations we’re having with our allies,” Assistant Secretary of Commerce Alan Estevez told reporters on Wednesday.
He also said the US does not want to restrict equipment suppliers from servicing less advanced parts that Chinese companies can also repair themselves.
The US government was taken by surprise when Huawei Technologies introduced a new 5G smartphone in 2023 with an advanced 7-nanometer chip made in China.
Huawei and partner Semiconductor Manufacturing still needed foreign equipment from American suppliers including Applied Materials and the Dutch supplier ASML to make that chip, according to Bloomberg.
Since that breakthrough at Huawei, Washington has been calling for limiting China’s access to the latest technology. Applied Materials and American peers are not allowed to maintain their equipment at certain Chinese companies, but companies in the Netherlands, such as ASML and Japan, are not obliged to do so.
Tags: limit maintenance Chinese chip machines
