TMTPost -- China urges the Japanese government to stop wrong practices as Tokyo intends to tighten tech controls.

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Japan should correct its wrong practices in a timely manner as its proposed measures will seriously affect the normal trade between Chinese and Japanese enterprises and harm the stability of the global supply chain, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce of China said, Xinhua News Agency cited a statement of the ministry.

As the semiconductor industry is highly globalized, a few countries' moves to generalize the concept of national security, abuse export control measures and fragment the global market have seriously deviated from the principles of free trade and multilateral trade rules, and impacted the stability of the global industrial and supply chains, the spokesperson said. The spokesperson stated China will take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of its enterprises.

China’s warnining came days after the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI) last Friday released a plan to expand restrictions on exports of four technologies related to semiconductors or quantum computing. The proposed new restrictions will affect Japanese exports to all countries and region, scanning electron microscopes (SEMs), the instruments used to analyze nanoparticle images, gate-all-around transistors, and quantum computers along with its related technology cryogenic CMOS circuits.

Japanese new restrictions require companies to obtain approval from the Japanese government in case of export of advanced materials and equipment that could be used for military applications. If exporters want to take the form of production in countries and regions outside Japan for technology transfers involved products that Japaneses supplies occupy a high share of the global market, they have to report to METI before they execute the transfer deal. The plan will come into effect as soon as July after a period of public comment through May 25.

The new measures mark Tokyo’s further tightening after it more than a year ago expanded export controls on 23 types of leading-edge chipmaking equipment, spanning cleaning, deposition, annealing, lithography, etching and testing. They are also the results of the U.S. efforts to curb Chinese high-tech. The U.S. Department of Commerce introduced last October a rule to reinforce the export controls launched in October 2022 to restrict China’s both purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips critical for military advantage. The rule was supposed to come into effect following a 30-day public comment period. However,  Nvidia Corporation, the artificial intelligence (AI) chip leader,disclosed on October 25 that the U.S. government informed the licensing requirements of the rule applicable to products having a “total processing performance” of 4800 or more and designed or marketed for data centers, was effective immediately.

Bloomberg reported last month that the Biden administration is pressing allies including the Netherlands, Germany, South Korea and Japan to further tighten restrictions on China’s access to semiconductor technology. The U.S. push aims to plug the holes in export controls it’s levied over the past two years and restrain China’s progress in developing domestic chip capabilities, accordin to the report. The U.S. was reported to seek the Netherlands to stop ASML Holding NV from servicing and repairing sensitive chipmaking equipments that the company’s Chinese customers purchased priort to limits on sales of those devices went into effect this year, and also seek Japan to limit exports of specialized chemicals critical for chipmaking.