The Biden administration is expected to further scale back its upcoming outbound investment screening executive order to focus on “increasing transparency” for certain outbound investments in China instead of potentially blocking investments in several sectors, Politico reported Feb. 28. The report said the EO may still block certain investments in China’s advanced semiconductor industry, but it will “likely not block money from flowing to other parts of China’s high-tech economy,” including the artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology industries.
Officials from South Korea, Japan and the Biden administration met in Hawaii, the White House said Feb. 28, and talked about how to increase supply chain resilience "in semiconductors, batteries, and critical minerals." The officials also talked about how to coordinate on measures to protect sensitive technologies, the readout said.
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Myron Brilliant, who leads the international division at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asked Ambassador Nicholas Burns where the economic relationship with China is heading -- it's a trillion dollars worth of business, Brilliant noted, even with American businesses' concerns about discriminatory regulations and the effects of state-owned enterprises.
South Korean chip companies are dealing with significant “uncertainty” stemming from U.S. chip controls issued in October against China (see 2210070049) and are concerned about the looming expiration of a one-year authorization from the Commerce Department, a Korean economic security expert said last week. Although Bureau of Industry and Security Undersecretary Alan Estevez said the agency is working with Korean companies on potentially extending certain aspects of the authorization, details of those conversations remain unclear.
The proposed Chip 4 Alliance of the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (see 2212280035 and 2210050009) likely will not be enough to keep U.S. semiconductor technology ahead of China, one lawmaker and several experts said during a Feb. 22 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. For the U.S. to achieve true multilateral chip cooperation, including with the EU, experts said, the U.S. may have to settle for watered-down restrictions.
The Bureau of Industry and Security announced a range of updates to its export regulations stemming from agreements made during the 2021 Wassenaar Arrangement plenary meeting, including revisions to the Commerce Control List and the license exceptions Adjusted Peak Performance (APP) and Strategic Trade Authorization (STA). The agency also made several corrections to the Export Administration Regulations, including to align the scope of its Significant Item (SI) license requirements throughout the EAR.
Europe has so far “neglected” the increasing competitiveness of Chinese chip design companies, presenting “challenges across the dimensions of national security, supply chain resilience and technological competitiveness for Europe,” European research institutions said in a recent report. Written by the Digital Power China research consortium and the Leiden Asia Centre, the report said the EU should better invest in its own chip design capabilities, strengthen the “indispensability” of its chip firms through “policy interventions,” “map the risk profile of increasing reliance on Chinese chip design” and more.
Top Chinese academics believe the country should “amass a portfolio of patents that govern the next generation of chipmaking” to allow the country to counter U.S. semiconductor export controls, according to a Feb. 20 Bloomberg report. The report cites a bulletin recently published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the country’s “most influential scientific body,” which could represent China’s plan to evade U.S. export restrictions and demonstrate how it “could win a crucial technological conflict with Washington,” the report said.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.