China vows ‘forceful measures’ after Taiwan’s Huawei export curb

[BEIJING] Beijing vowed to respond to Taiwan’s “technological blockades” after the self-ruled island blacklisted Chinese companies including Huawei Technologies, limiting their ability to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI).

“We will take forceful measures to resolutely safeguard the normal order of cross-strait economic and trade exchange,” Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said on Wednesday (Jun 25) at a regular briefing in Beijing. She was responding to a question about Taiwan’s recent curbs on Chinese companies, and didn’t elaborate on how Beijing would respond.

Taiwan last week joined a yearslong US campaign to curtail China’s technological ascent by adding the country’s AI and chipmaking champions – Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) – to its entity list. That bars the island’s firms from doing business with the pair without a license, the first time Taipei has used the blacklist on major Chinese companies.

The new restrictions are likely to, at least partially, cut off Huawei and SMIC’s access to Taiwan’s plant construction technologies, materials and equipment essential to build AI chips, like those made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company for the likes of Nvidia.

Zhu condemned Taiwan’s decision as “despicable” and claimed it displayed President Lai Ching-te’s loyalty to the US government. US President Donald Trump’s administration has urged Taipei to take more ownership over chip restrictions on China, Bloomberg News previously reported.

“Attempts to decouple will not delay the progress of industrial upgrading on the mainland,” Zhu said, adding that such actions will only damage the competitiveness of Taiwanese enterprises and the island’s economy. BLOOMBERG