US May Curb AI Chip Exports to China as Soon as July

BEIJING, June 28 (TiPost)— The Biden administration is said to prepare for further restrictions to China even it is pushing for high-level communication between the top two economies in the world.

Credit：Visual China

The United States is considering new curbs on the exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, including stopping the chip shipments made by U.S. companies to customers in China and other countries concerned without first obtaining a license, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The U.S. Commerce Department could reportedly announce the move as soon as early July, affecting all the American chipmakers such as Nvidia, AMD and Micron Technology. Nvidia is a dominator of the market for chips that empower artificial intelligence (AI) systems including the model behind ChatGPT. It has modified some of flagship products including A100 and H100 for exports to China earlier this year, including an alternative A800 chip, as the U.S. regulators last year banned it from selling its most advanced chips to the country. The Commerce Department is mulling restrictions that would even ban sales of A800 without a license, according to the report. The U.S. government was also reported to weigh whether to restrict leasing of cloud services to Chinese AI companies.

News about U.S. further potential curbs came as Chinese Premier Li Qiang blasted the Western countries’ attempts for de-risking and reducing dependency on China, reversing the historic trend of economic globalization. What made people more concerned about is that “the invisible barriers put up by some people in recent years are becoming widespread, and pushing the world into fragmentation and even confrontation”, China’s No. 2 official warned, in his keynote delivered at the opening plenary of the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as the Summer Davos Forum.

“We firmly oppose the politicization of economic and trade issues and we must jointly maintain the safety, stability, and smoothness of the global industrial and supply chain, so that the fruits of economic globalization can benefit different countries and people in a more equitable manner,” Li said. He noted that the consensus made from exchanges with leaders in his visits Germany and France recently was to reject the zero-sum mindset and keep to the right track of win-win cooperation.

In a separate meeting with about 120 business leaders from more than 20 countries and regions, Li showed willingness to support foreign companies’ work with their Chinese partners. Beijing wants to work with all parties to promote the development of cutting-edge technologies, expand new areas of cooperation, and open up new and broad space for investment and development of enterprises, he said. He called on these leaders to firmly support economic globalization, and jointly maintain the stability and smoothness of the global industrial and supply chains.

Expressing confidence in economic recovery, Li said China’s gross domestic product (GDP) for the second quarter of the year is expected to grow faster than the first quarter, right on track to hit the growth target of around five percent set for the whole year. He suggested more stimulus policies in on the way. He vowed Beijing will introduce “more practical and effective measures” to further tap the potential of domestic demand, invigorate the market, make urban-rural and regional development more coordinated, accelerate the green transition and advance high-standard opening up.

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