White House restricts China’s access to U.S. technology

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced sweeping new limits on the sale of semiconductor technology to China, a step aimed at crippling Beijing’s ability to access critical technologies that are needed for everything from supercomputing to guiding weapons.

The moves Friday are the clearest sign yet that a dangerous standoff between the world’s two major superpowers is increasingly playing out in the technological sphere, with the U.S. trying to establish a stranglehold on advanced computing and semiconductor technology that are essential to China’s military and economic ambitions.

The package of restrictions, released by the Commerce Department, is designed in large part to slow the progress of Chinese military programs, which use supercomputing to model nuclear blasts, guide hypersonic weapons and establish advanced networks for surveilling dissidents and minorities, among other activities.

Companies will no longer be allowed to supply advanced computing chips, chipmaking equipment and other products to China unless they receive a special license.

The restrictions limit U.S. exports of high-tech chips called graphic processing units that are used to power artificial intelligence applications and place broad limits on chips destined for supercomputers in China. The rules also ban U.S.-based companies that make the equipment used to manufacture advanced logic and memory chips from selling that machinery to China without a license.

The Biden administration also imposed broad international restrictions that will prohibit companies anywhere in the world from selling chips used in artificial intelligence and supercomputing in China, if they are made with U.S. technology, software or machinery.

Another foreign direct product rule bans a broader range of products made outside the United States with American technology from being sent to 28 Chinese companies that have been placed on an “entity list” over national security concerns.

On Saturday, China criticized the U.S. move, calling it a violation of international economic and trade rules that will “isolate and backfire” on the U.S.

“Out of the need to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the U.S. abuses export control measures to maliciously block and suppress Chinese companies,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. “It will not only damage the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies, but also affect American companies’ interests.”

The measures come at a particularly sensitive moment for Beijing. Chinese leaders will hold a major political meeting beginning Oct. 16, where leader Xi Jinping is expected to secure a third leadership term.