When it comes to chips, there is simply no pleasing Washington

The same Americans banning semiconductor sales to China are now outraged at Beijing’s partial block on those supplied by a US company

Washington, do you want to sell chips to China or ban them? Make up your mind. Beijing announced early this week that it had imposed a partial ban on US chip maker Micron in China. Apparently, the company’s chips, which are used for memory storage in popular electronics such as phones and computers, pose “relatively serious cybersecurity problems”.

You would think American leaders would welcome the decision. Haven’t they strongarmed South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and the Netherlands – well, basically everyone and anyone who makes advanced semiconductors – to bar their top chip makers from selling their best chips to the Chinese?

Now, the Chinese side says, no, we don’t want to buy from you because you pose a security risk. And what do top US politicians do? Uncork champagne? Not quite.

“The Chinese government’s announced action against Micron is not based in fact and is a troubling use of economic coercion against the US,” US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. “I am working closely with the Biden administration to make clear to the Chinese government that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable and unproductive.”

Coercive, unacceptable and unproductive? Hasn’t the US barred everyone, on pain of retaliation, from selling their best chips to China? What do you call that?

Republican lawmaker Michael McCaul, chairman of the powerful US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “China’s legal system is built to coerce any person or company under its authority.”

He then characterised this as “a mafia-like legal system bullying an American company. The US and its partners and allies must stand together against this economic aggression.”

What does he want? “No, no, no. You Chinese must buy from American companies. You just can’t buy from the Dutch, the Taiwanese, the Japanese and the Koreans.” OK, McCaul, got it.

Schumer says the US is now working with the business community as well as “allies and partners to address the Chinese government’s restrictions against Micron”. Presumably he meant retaliation.

I wonder what form it will take. Since Washington has already banned the Chinese from buying the good chips they want, perhaps it will insist on dumping the rubbish on them?

Micron Technology is the largest memory chip manufacturer in the US. The Chinese ban is only partial, though, as it applies only to domestic Chinese operators of critical information infrastructure. But experts have pointed out that it’s unclear what counts as “critical information infrastructure”.

Micron has a 28 per cent market share of China’s DRAM chips – which are used in all types of electronics – behind Samsung’s 43 per cent. If Beijing is serious about enforcing the ban, Micron stands to lose close to 10 per cent of revenue from loss of business in networking, server and cloud, and government-owned sectors that use its advanced memory chips.

The partial ban is nothing compared to the vicious chip war the US has launched against China. Though it’s justified by saying it only aims at technologies with links to the People’s Liberation Army, it’s specifically designed to hinder Chinese development across a wide range of technologies such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 6G telecoms gear, commercial drones and electric cars. In other words, it’s a full-spectrum tech war aimed at containing and retarding the development of Chinese technologies.

There are reports that the White House has asked its Korean counterpart to instruct companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix not to help fill the supply gap left by Micron. The ostensible rationale is that China cannot be allowed to pick and choose suppliers.

But from the Korean perspective, especially Samsung and SK Hynix’s, it might sound like Washington is saying if we Americans can’t sell to the Chinese, you can’t either. With a friend like the US, who needs economic coercion?

Oh, America, for friend and foe alike, you are so hard to please!

The partial ban is nothing compared to the vicious chip war the US has launched against China