Chinese chip trade group opposes export controls from U.S., Netherlands, Japan

[February 15, 2023]   SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA), the country's top chip industry trade group, opposes reported export controls from the United States, Japan and the Netherlands, it said on Wednesday.  

Semiconductor chips are seen on a circuit board of a computer in this illustration picture taken February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration/Files

The restrictions, should they become a reality, "will cause serious harm to the semiconductor industry in China, with detriment to the global economy, as well as long-term damages to the interests of consumers world-wide," the association said in a statement.

CSIA also called on the Chinese government to establish rules "for maintaining the healthy development of the global semiconductor industry ecology."

In January, media reports surfaced stating that Japan and the Netherlands had agreed to comply with export restrictions against China's chip sector that the U.S. government had announced in October 2022.

The initial U.S. sanctions took aim at Chinese purchases of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) computing chips, as well as equipment that chip factories could use to produce leading-edge computing chips.

Japan and the Netherlands are market leaders in the latter category. Both countries are the only producers of market-competitive lithography machines, which are a key component in the chip manufacturing process.

The governments have not directly addressed reports that they are cooperating with the United States, and the degree of their compliance and the restrictions' enforcement remains unclear.

The Netherlands' ASML is the world's dominant provider of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which it had already ceased selling to China in compliance with an earlier U.S. ban.

Along with ASML, Japan's Nikon Corp and Canon Inc produce deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, which chip manufacturers use to make less advanced chips.

Shanghai-based chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp and Wuhan-based memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd are among the Chinese companies set to be affected by the restrictions.

(Reporting by Josh Horwitz; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Tom Hogue and Jamie Freed)

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