Preface
On April 13, 2024, according to sources from Bloomberg, the U.S. presidential election is imminent, and the Biden administration is putting pressure on allies such as the Netherlands and Japan in order to increase obstacles to the development of China's semiconductor chip industry.
In this way, it is hoped that the export of chips from friendly countries to China will be blocked, but this behavior has been strongly opposed by friendly countries.
Why did these allies, who once held the United States on high spirits, strongly resist the orders of the United States this time?
China's chip technology is restricted by the United States
To explain the abnormal behavior of these allies, we must start with the restrictions imposed by the United States on the mainland's semiconductor chip field.
In recent decades, under the vigorous promotion of the state, the mainland has not only made great progress in the overall economic level, but also achieved superior results in the semiconductor chip industry.
In the face of the mainland's big strides, the United States, which is at the top of the industry, feels tremendous pressure, and in order to maintain its leading position in the field of science and technology, the United States has taken a very extreme measure - restricting the export of chips to China.
On the grounds of national security, the United States has imposed strict controls on chip companies that increase production and cooperate in scientific research in China.
Once this decree was issued, many chip companies that received federal funding were subject to extremely strict export restrictions, and many projects that had been carried out or were being prepared had to be forced to stop.
Even, the United States has also clearly stipulated that it prohibits chip companies that receive federal financial support from communicating with Chinese companies on technical research, and many companies have to cut off cooperative relations with Chinese companies, which makes many Chinese companies miserable.
For example, in order to chase a girl, you invite people to eat and give gifts.
When the relationship between the two people is about to be further developed, the girl's father suddenly intervenes sideways and does not allow the two of you to develop.
This feeling and situation is what Chinese chip companies are currently experiencing.
Back to the topic, for those companies that are particularly dependent on US federal funds, this decree issued by the United States can be said to be the last straw that crushes them.
These companies were forced to stop their projects overnight, and re-fell into the global layout of the enterprise and their own development strategic positioning.
It's like when a person who has just received a great revelation is about to go all out for a new life, but the difficulties of life give him a kick in the door, and he falls back into deep thought.
The ambition of the United States is not only limited to restricting its own domestic enterprises, but also turning the spearhead to its allies, and even relying on its position to exert strong pressure on allies.
So, what is the pressure that the United States exerts on its allies?
The United States is putting pressure on its allies
The Netherlands was the first country to come under pressure from the United States. U.S. government officials have met with Dutch officials on several occasions
The Dutch company ASML was asked to stop providing after-sales and maintenance services for chips to China, and no longer sell lithography machines to China, and even the United States asked the Netherlands to stop exporting a variety of raw materials for chip manufacturing to China.
Lithography machine is a machine that provides direct service functions for chip manufacturing, and ASML is a traditional enterprise in the field of chip manufacturing in the world
The lithography machine technology is also very advanced, so it is regarded as the big brother in the field of chip manufacturing.
ASML's cooperation with China is a win-win deal, as China provides ASML with a large market and sufficient capital, and ASML's lithography machine technology also contributes to the development of China's chip industry.
And the behavior of the United States is not only to impose it, but also to make ASML give up the huge market.
In the so-called business, it is impossible for the Netherlands to give up China, a huge financier, with a single sentence from the United States, and the interests of enterprises and the country are always the first factor considered by the government.
During the meeting, Dutch officials also said on more than one occasion that they were observing recent changes in the situation to gauge whether to implement the new US regulations.
The Dutch prime minister also made it clear at a meeting in Beijing that the Netherlands will not succumb to US pressure and will maintain in-depth cooperation with China in many industries.
The United States, having eaten the closed door in the Netherlands, reversed course, this time in the direction of Japan and South Korea.
As soon as the U.S. restrictions were promulgated, the U.S. established a chip alliance, hoping to take the chip giants into its own hands, and the first one to win over was South Korea.
But South Korea is not stupid, and not everyone is willing to give up the allure of the market.
In the end, although he was very reluctant to accept China's huge market and profits, he was forced to join under the threat of the United States.
Since Japan has not made substantial cooperation in China's chip field, it is difficult for the United States to interfere to play a role, but it still strictly stated to Japan that Japan is required to restrict the export of Japanese chemicals to China.
Japan's attitude is even clearer, and when the Japanese prime minister went to the United States for a meeting, he made it clear that he did not know whether the United States had made demands on the Japanese side before.
It is not difficult to see from the attitude of these allies of the United States that the "order" of the United States seems to have failed, but the United States restriction decree is still being implemented, so what impact will the US restriction order have?
The impact of everything the United States has done
U.S. local chip companies account for a large proportion of the world's chip market, but once the government decree on chip restrictions on China was issued, the United States was forced to abandon China's chip market, and the damage to U.S. local companies is incalculable.
At present, the world's chip field is in the cold winter period of the industry, the drama said, the United States chip industry leader AMD said that the company's revenue in the third quarter was more than 50% lower than expected, and South Korean chip industry giant Samsung also said that the company's profit in the third quarter fell by 32% compared with the same period.
The restrictions on the export of chips to China by the United States, coupled with the cold winter of the industry, have made a large number of American chip companies not only have to give up China's huge market, but also swallow the bitter water of the cold winter of the industry, and the companies that are already in the cold are even worse.
According to statistics, in just one day, the stock markets of Nvidia and AMD gave the green light, falling by 8% and 13.8% respectively, and their market value evaporated by $15.18 billion on the day.
If you convert this money into RMB, it is equivalent to a huge "building" 25 meters long and 30 meters high, which is equivalent to a ten-story residential building crammed into the past.
Unlike the mainland, political elections in the United States are selected through the support of various democratic political parties in the country and the votes of the American people, of which the people's votes are the most important part.
In 2023, the immigration turmoil in Texas, USA, is in full swing, with more than 2.5 million Mexicans smuggling immigrants from the Texas border to the United States due to domestic reasons in Mexico.
With the arrival of a large number of immigrants, the local people in Texas felt a huge crisis, and in order to maintain local law and order, they immediately erected barbed wire fences on the Texas border to prevent the expansion of the immigration situation.
The Biden administration, which is in the middle of the election season, is very dissatisfied with this, enacting the "Immigration Law" that has caused huge controversy in the United States in 2023, and ordering the military to dismantle the barbed wire.
It doesn't matter if this is demolished, the people of Texas can't sit still, and although the power of the people is insignificant to the government, the U.S. government can't change the right to vote in the hands of the people.
In the electoral circles of the United States, former President Trump surpassed Biden in terms of approval rating and became the first presidential candidate in the United States.
On the other hand, the technological restrictions of the United States do not seem to have a negative effect on the mainland's chip companies, but are more like a catalyst, constantly stimulating the motivation of the mainland's scientific research field.
Huawei's Kirin chips, Taiji chips, Loongson chips and other heavy chip products have been released one after another, which not only broke the technical restrictions of the United States on the mainland, but also surpassed the United States in many fields and was at the forefront of the world.
So, in the face of the U.S. technological monopoly, how did the mainland break the situation?
How can the mainland break the deadlock?
5G technology and artificial intelligence are extremely important new areas in the world, and there is a lot of room for development.
The mainland has firmly grasped the development potential of these two technologies and vigorously built infrastructure facilities, forming a relatively stable and exclusive 5G information chain for the mainland.
Continental has made full use of 5G's leading position in the industry to make revolutionary breakthroughs in a number of technologies.
For example, Huawei's Kirin 9000 chip is equipped with a 5G SOC chip for the first time, breaking the signal problem that has plagued the mobile phone industry for a long time.
During the research and development of the Taiji chip, the scientific research team broke through the bottleneck of optical computing for the first time, got rid of the limited computing power of traditional computing, and created the core position of mainland China in the field of optical computing......
In recent years, such examples have been emerging like springs in the mainland, and behind this is not only the strong support of the state and the unremitting efforts of technical personnel, but also the full embodiment of the mainland's strong technological self-confidence.
After a long period of development, the mainland has formed a relatively complete chip manufacturing industry chain in China.
It can basically be self-sufficient in some ordinary chip fields, which has a visible improvement in the production efficiency of the mainland's current chip industry.
In the future development, we must strengthen the technical confidence of some industries in the mainland, be unrelenting in key areas, and continue to complete the rise of the mainland's chip industry.
epilogue
The development of the world will inevitably not be a unilateral development of the United States, and the bullying of the United States with its scientific and technological strength is only temporary.
The end of the unlimited suppression will only end with the United States lifting a stone to hit itself in the foot, and the development of science and technology in the world is inseparable from the support of every country.
Key Sources:
Huanqiu.com, "Additional restrictions on chips on China, the United States is frustrated by pressure on allies" 2024.4.15
Global Times, "Additional Restrictions on Chinese Chips, US Pressure on Allies Frustrated" 2024.4.15
Observer.com, "The United States was exposed to pressure the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, and South Korea to expand export controls on new products to China, but some countries resisted" 2024.3.7
The website of the China Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission, "The United States Continues to Expand the Concept of National Security and Abuse Export Control Measures and "Technology Bullying" is Doomed to Failure", 2023.10.31