At the beginning of the new year, ASML issued a statement on its official website saying that the export licenses of the company's NXT:2050i and NXT:2100i lithography systems have been partially revoked by the Dutch government, affecting a small number of Chinese customers.
As a matter of fact, there are still a few weeks to go before the Dutch export ban on China takes full effect, so why does the Dutch Government preemptively revoke the export license? In fact, the main reason behind this is the pressure and instigation of the United States.
According to the Observer, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called the Dutch government at the end of last year and asked them to speed up the tightening of lithography machine exports to China. Although the Dutch side complained about this, it did not dare to go against the will of the United States, so it asked the United States to directly discuss specific matters with ASML.
What happened in the middle of this was unknown to the outside world until ASML issued a statement confirming the early cancellation of some orders for lithography machines to China.
Journalists sought to verify the facts, but the White House National Security Council and the Dutch Foreign Ministry declined to comment, perhaps due to sensitive or confidentiality requirements.
On the contrary, Alexander Hammerberg, a member of the Democratic Party of the Netherlands, complained in an interview that he hated the United States very much for "what it is doing in this regard." Last year, the Netherlands had reached an agreement with the United States, South Korea, and Japan on chip export licenses, but if the United States crosses the border and forces the Netherlands to move in step with it, this will already affect the strategic autonomy of the Netherlands.
Based on the above information, there is no doubt that the United States may exert pressure, and it is not satisfied with encircling and blocking China, but hopes that its allies will align with it and expand the intensity of its attack on China.
Behind this behavior of the United States is a concentrated reflection of its aggressive mentality. In December, at the annual Reagan Defense Forum in California, U.S. Commerce Secretary Raimondo threatened that the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, which manages U.S. export controls, needed more money from Congress to prevent China from catching up in the field of cutting-edge semiconductors. Now it seems that the United States has indeed consciously accelerated the progress of blocking China's semiconductor development.
In the short term, this approach can indeed reap certain results, but in the long run, it is equivalent to forcing China to accelerate independent research and development. Peter Wen, the president of ASML, has said in public more than once that it is impossible to completely isolate China, and that if the West refuses to share technology, then China will invest time and energy in its own research and eventually come up with creative solutions that the West has never imagined. It is "hopeless" to try to isolate China through technology and export controls, which will weaken the West itself.
Van der Puten, a China expert from the Netherlands, agrees that Peter Wen's business is completely understandable, and that China's dependence on Western technology is "actually a good thing". Sanctions against China can only affect the technological balance in the short term, but the damage to Western economies is long-term.
Some analysts pointed out that China's system determines that he can promote the independent research and development of semiconductors at a speed unimaginable to the West, which may be difficult and long, but once China survives, then the West will completely lose its bargaining chips with it. The Kirin 9000S chip equipped with Huawei's smartphone Mate 60 Pro has preliminarily demonstrated that the U.S. semiconductor restriction policy on China has failed.
It is worth mentioning that the move of the United States to put pressure on the Netherlands has also attracted the attention of China. At the regular press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that China has taken note of relevant reports. In addition to opposing the U.S. technology blockade, he urged the Netherlands to uphold an objective and fair position and market principles, respect the spirit of the contract, and safeguard the common interests of the two countries and their enterprises.
Looking back at the past few years, the world's leading semiconductor companies are at a loss due to the United States' suppression of China, step by step, and can only watch China gradually improve the semiconductor self-sufficiency rate, and accumulate anger and dissatisfaction with the United States in the lament of losing the market.