U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen began her visit to China on April 4, during which she met with senior officials including Vice Premier He Lifeng, former Vice Premier Liu He, Secretary of the Treasury Lan Foan, and Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng.
During Yellen's visit to China, the two sides reached consensus on ongoing exchanges on anti-money laundering and maintaining financial stability.
The Chinese side also expressed concern about the U.S. sanctions restricting Chinese companies and other actions that harm the rights and interests of Chinese companies. Yellen also reiterated her attitude of not decoupling from China.
In fact, long before Yellen's visit to China, another American bigwig expressed to China that he was unwilling to decouple from China, that is, US President Joe Biden.
On the evening of April 2, Beijing time, the top level of the Chinese side was invited to have a telephone communication with Biden. During the call, Biden not only reiterated the United States' proposition of pursuing the one-China principle, but also emphasized that the United States does not seek to "decouple" from China and does not seek to "contain" China's development.
But as always, the United States tends to say one thing and do another. While the President and Treasury Secretary have made commitments to China, the US Secretary of State and the US Trade Representative have been making trouble in Europe in an attempt to strangle China's semiconductor industry together with the EU.
At the recently concluded U.S.-EU trade conference, the Western world once again set its sights on China's semiconductor industry.
At the meeting, it was announced that they would extend their cooperation on dealing with so-called "market interventions" in the semiconductor industry for another three years, and specifically targeted China's "monopolistic behavior" in the "traditional chips" market.
Perhaps it was Huawei's sudden release of the Kirin 7nm chip last year that hit the United States with no urgency, and this time the United States and Europe emphasized in their statements that they plan to share intelligence on non-market policies and practices. In other words, they want to crack down on China's semiconductor industry through closer intelligence cooperation.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo's speech was even more direct to the central issue.
"At present, about 60% of traditional chips are made in China, which highlights China's important position in the global semiconductor industry," she said. But with the Chinese government heavily subsidizing the industry, this could cause serious market distortions. ”
Raimondo's remarks are exactly the same as China's "overcapacity" remarks made before Yellen's visit to China, which are both "false propositions", both are excuses for trade protectionism, and they are all groundless "nonsense".
According to market research firm TrendForce, by 2027, Chinese companies may be able to generate 39% of the world's traditional chip production capacity.
So what are traditional chips? Those chips that are not the most advanced, but are widely used in life scenarios. For example, if Apple's A17 chip is currently the most advanced chip in the world, then a 28nm chip such as the Qualcomm 805 chip is a traditional chip.
Although there is a gap in performance, but its mature process, high yield rate, and favorable price, these traditional chips are widely used in automobiles, aircraft, household appliances, broadband equipment, and medical equipment. At present, China's 28nm chip production capacity accounts for 29% of the world's production capacity.
But it is this 29% that also makes the United States and Europe feel threatened, but it is worth noting that in terms of sanctions against China, the cooperation between the United States and Europe is no longer monolithic.
According to media reports, the United States and Europe have obvious differences in their attitudes toward China, which makes the "alliance" between the two sides look very fragile.
According to sources, when drafting this agreement, the United States and Europe also experienced a "maximum pull". The United States has demanded that China be mentioned every two sentences, in an attempt to turn this document into a shackle specially prepared for China.
But the Europeans are trying to avoid this, knowing that the agreement was theoretically drafted for the semiconductor industry, not for a particular country. The EU does not want to tear itself up with China, so it tries to avoid mentioning China multiple times in the document, and in the end the 12-page document "only" mentions China in three places.
For the United States, Europe's new moves, most of the industry is not optimistic, the British famous consulting company Future Horizons CEO Payne said that the behavior of Europe and the United States can only delay China's rush to the end, but can not prevent this from happening, and for the chip gap generated after restricting China, it will take at least 3 years to be filled.
As for such unreasonable actions by Europe and the United States, China will certainly not sit idly by. In response to the U.S. response to the U.S. response to the U.S. eventually, after the U.S. and its allies imposed a technology blockade on China.
After all, in the phone call on April 2, the Chinese side clearly told Biden at the highest level that if the United States insists on suppressing China's high-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate development rights, we will never sit idly by.