Dutch to restrict sales of processor chip
China lashes Dutch plan on chip tools
THE HAGUE, March 9, (AP): The Dutch government has announced that it is planning on imposing additional restrictions on the export of machines that make advanced processor chips, joining a U.S. push that aims at limiting China’s access to materials used to make such chips.
Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Liesje Schreinemacher sent a letter to lawmakers outlining the proposed limitations, which come in addition to existing export controls on semiconductor technology.
“In view of technological developments and geopolitical context, the government has come to the conclusion that it is necessary for (inter)national security to extend the existing export control of specific semiconductor production equipment,” she wrote.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited U.S. President Joe Biden in January for talks on advanced chip machines made by Dutch company ASML and other topics.
Export
The Biden administration in October imposed export controls to limit China’s access to advanced chips, which it says can be used to make weapons, commit human rights abuses and improve the speed and accuracy of its military logistics. It urged allies like Japan and the Netherlands to follow suit.
China has criticized the moves as violations of market principles in international trade.
The Biden administration also is close to tightening rules on some overseas investments by U.S. companies in an effort to limit China’s ability to acquire technologies that could improve its military prowess, according to a U.S. official familiar with the deliberations.
The expected action is the latest effort
by the White House to target China’s military and technology sectors at a time of increasingly fraught relations between the world’s two biggest economies.
ASML, headquartered in the southern Dutch town of Veldhoven, is the world’s only producer of machines that use extreme ultraviolet lithography to make advanced semiconductor chips. The Dutch government has prohibited ASML from exporting some of its machines to China since 2019, but the company had still been shipping lower-quality lithography systems there.
ASML has research and manufacturing centers in Beijing and Shenzhen, China, as well as a regional headquarters in Hong Kong.
The Dutch minister’s letter to lawmakers did not mention China.
It said the new export control measures target “very specific technologies in the semiconductor production cycle on which the Netherlands has a unique and leading position, such as the most advanced Deep Ultra Violet (DUV) immersion lithography and deposition.”
It added that the decision for additional export controls “was made carefully and as precisely as possible (surgically), in order to avoid unnecessary disruption of the value chains and to take into account the international level playing field.”
Publish
The government said it would publish the new regulations “before the summer.”
In a statement published on its website, ASML said that the new restrictions will apply to its “most advanced deposition and immersion lithography tools.”
“Due to these upcoming regulations, ASML will need to apply for export licenses for shipment of the most advanced immersion DUV systems,” the company said, adding that it “will take time for these controls to be translated into legislation and take effect.”
The company added that based on the announcement “our expectation of the Dutch government’s licensing policy, and the current market situation, we do not expect these measures to have a material effect on our financial outlook that we have published for 2023 or for our longer-term scenarios.”
Also: BEIJING: China’s government on Thursday criticized the Netherlands for joining Washington in blocking Chinese access to technology to manufacture advanced processor chips on security and human rights grounds.
A Dutch minister told lawmakers Wednesday that exports of equipment that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits on chips would be restricted on security grounds. ASML of the Netherlands is the only global supplier. Industry experts say a lack of access to ASML’s most advanced technology is a serious handicap for China’s efforts to develop its own chip industry.
Washington in October blocked Chinese access to U.S. tools to make advanced chips that it said might be used in weapons or in equipment for the ruling Communist Party’s surveillance apparatus. The Biden administration is lobbying European and Asian allies to tighten their own controls.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman complained that “an individual country,” a reference to the United States, was trying to “safeguard its own hegemony” by abusing national security as an excuse to “deprive China of its right to development.”
tMao appealed to the Netherlands to “safeguard the stability of the international industrial and supply chain.”
ASML’s extreme-ultraviolet, or EUV, equipment uses light to etch microscopically precise circuits into silicon, allowing them to be packed more closely together. That increases their speed and reduces power demand.
Chinese manufacturers can produce low-end chips used in autos and most consumer electronics but not those used in smartphones, servers and other high-end products.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and U.S. President Joe Biden held talks in January on ASML’s chip machines.