The United States has gone all out to suppress China's semiconductors, and the biggest "wronged leader" has surfaced, but who is this "wronged leader" and what impact has it caused? How has China responded to the fact that the United States has closed the door to Sino-US negotiations while seeking cooperation with China?
In recent years, the United States has been escalating its suppression of China in the semiconductor field, which can be summed up in at least five points: first, using the dominant position in the supply chain to suppress, second, the United States and its allies and partners to jointly suppress, third, suppressing high-end talents in the chip industry, fourth, plugging various loopholes, implementing seamless suppression, and fifth, formulating new regulations to implement continuous suppression. Among these five ways, especially the second one, the United States has united its allies and partners to jointly suppress the United States. It is also the United States in the process of suppressing China's semiconductors that has brought to the surface one of the biggest "wrongs", which is South Korea. Recently, some South Korean media publicly complained that since the United States banned the export of advanced semiconductor equipment to China in October 2022, South Korea has become the "hardest" country among the major semiconductor equipment producers, in contrast, Japan and the Netherlands have shown an increase in exports to China in related fields. South Korean media pointed out that most of the equipment exported by South Korean companies to China is not the object of restrictions, but only general-purpose equipment, but last year's exports shrank by more than 20% compared with 2022.
In fact, the reason is very simple: due to the pressure of the United States, South Korean semiconductor and automobile companies, which were originally based on the Chinese market to become bigger and stronger, were forced to choose between "the United States or China", and the South Korean semiconductor giants Samsung Electronics and SK hynix reduced their plans to upgrade and expand their factories in China. This action triggered a "domino effect" that affected domestic equipment companies. As these domestic manufacturers reduce their investment in China, Korean equipment companies will also fall into trouble. Since those semiconductor products in South Korea are not irreplaceable, this has led to a significant increase in demand for products from the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands, and prices have also risen. In other words, the United States has restricted China's semiconductor industry with great fanfare, but in the end, it is South Korea that chooses to side with the United States.
He pointed out that trade and scientific and technological cooperation between countries should be conducive to maintaining the stability and smoothness of the global production and supply chain, China and South Korea have close economic ties, the production and supply chain is highly interconnected, and the semiconductor industry is upstream and downstream of each other.
At present, the Biden administration is still increasing its efforts to suppress China's semiconductor industry, and a few days ago, the US media revealed that the Biden administration is planning to put pressure on the Dutch government to ask the country's lithography machine giant ASML to stop providing equipment maintenance services to China. According to other British media sources, the United States is also working on a list of China's advanced chip manufacturers that are prohibited from receiving key equipment and tools, so as to make it "easier for American companies to comply with the regulations and prevent technology from flowing into China." In addition, in an interview with the media, U.S. Ambassador to China Burns talked about the U.S. ban on chips in China, and he did not shy away from saying bluntly that the United States would not negotiate or compromise on this issue. It is not difficult to see from the above-mentioned words and deeds of the US side that the United States has completely closed the door to Sino-US negotiations on the issue of suppressing the mainland's semiconductor industry.
Recently, visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has repeatedly stressed that the U.S. does not seek to "decouple" from China, and that China and the United States have close economic ties, and "decoupling" will bring disastrous consequences. After Yellen, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also start his visit to China. The attitude of the US side in backtracking is very clear, and cooperation is okay, but first show sincerity. If the US side always has the attitude of saying one thing and doing another, then China and the United States have nothing to talk about, and even if US officials visit China frequently, in the end they are just empty talk and have no practical significance.