Two senior US representatives on Friday pressed US President Joe Biden’s administration for tougher enforcement of export controls on sending advanced computing chips and the tools to make them to China.
In a letter to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, US Representatives Michael McCaul and Mike Gallagher — chairmen of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party respectively — said that new advances by China’s top chipmaker show that a sweeping set of rules rolled out a year ago this month need updating to close what the lawmakers called loopholes.
The letter came after Huawei Technologies Co (華為) unveiled a new Mate 60 Pro smartphone that contained advanced chips made by China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際) despite US sanctions.
Photo: Carlos Garcia Rawlins, Reuters
“The October 7 [last year] rules and SMIC’s growing capabilities reveal a stagnant, obscured bureaucracy that does not understand China’s industrial policy, does not understand China’s military goals and does not understand technology at all — and does not have the will to act,” McCaul and Gallagher said in the letter.
The lawmakers urged the Biden administration to update the rules and take immediate action against Huawei and SMIC. They also urged the White House to cut off Chinese companies’ access to powerful artificial intelligence chips accessed through cloud computing services and to start enforcing the administration’s own rules around placing restrictions on Chinese companies that do not allow US officials to verify whether Chinese companies are complying with US export rules.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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