As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was visiting China earlier this week, a sea-green Chinese smartphone was quietly launched online.
It was no normal gadget. And its launch has sparked hushed concern in Washington that U.S. sanctions have failed to prevent China from making a key technological advance. Such a development would seem to fulfill warnings from U.S. chipmakers that sanctions wouldn’t stop China, but would spur it to redouble efforts to build alternatives to U.S. technology.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
“The major geopolitical significance,” he said, “has been to show that it is possible to completely design [without] U.S. technology and still produce a product that may not be quite as good as cutting edge Western models, but is still quite capable.”
China’s official broadcaster, CGTN, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, called the phone Huawei’s “first higher-end processor” since U.S. sanctions were imposed and said the chip it contains was made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., a company partially owned by the Chinese government.
U.S. sanctions were intended to slow China’s progress in emerging fields like artificial intelligence and big data by cutting off its ability to buy or build advanced semiconductors, which are the brains of these systems.
“This shows that Chinese companies like Huawei still have plenty of capability to innovate,” said Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts University and author of the book “Chip War.” “I think it will also probably intensify debate in Washington on whether restrictions are to be tightened.”
“This development will almost certainly prompt much stronger calls for further tightening of export control licensing for U.S. suppliers of Huawei, who continue to be able to ship commodity semiconductors that are not used for 5G applications,” Triolo said.
For instance, Intel recently announced it will have to pay $353 million in termination fees to Israel’s Tower Semiconductor after failing to acquire Chinese regulatory approval for the acquisition.
Saved 84% of original text.