China says U.S. warnings on Huawei chips undermine their recent trade talks
The Chinese government has accused U.S. President Donald Trump's administration of undermining recent trade talks in Geneva with its warning that using Huawei Technologies' artificial intelligence chips "anywhere in the world' would violate U.S. export controls.
The U.S. Commerce Department had said in a statement last week that it was issuing guidance to make clear that the use of Huawei Ascend chips is a breach of the U.S. government's export controls. The agency said at the time that it would also warn the public about "the potential consequences of allowing U.S. AI chips to be used for training and inference of Chinese AI models.'
The department's statement has since changed to say that the agency was issuing guidance about "the risks of using PRC advanced computing ICs, including specific Huawei Ascend chips,' stripping the "anywhere in the world' reference. PRC is the abbreviation for China's formal name, the People's Republic of China, while ICs refers to integrated circuits, or chips.
The formal Commerce Department guidance, dated May 13, says using Huawei's Ascend chips "risks' violating export controls.
The changes weren't enough to appease Beijing, which issued a statement Monday saying it had "negotiated and communicated with the U.S. at all levels through the China-U.S. economic and trade consultation mechanism, pointing out that the U.S.'s actions seriously undermined the consensus reached at the high-level talks between China and the U.S. in Geneva.'
China's Commerce Ministry demanded in the statement that the U.S. "correct its mistakes.'
Spokespeople for the U.S. Commerce Department and the White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tensions over Huawei's next generation of chips underscore how fragile trade talks remain between the U.S. and China. The Commerce Department's guidance last week stood to make it all the more difficult for Shenzhen-based Huawei to fulfill its ambitions of developing more powerful semiconductors for AI and smartphones, efforts that have already hit major snags because of U.S. sanctions.
Despite rolling back a set of regulations on AI chip exports introduced by former U.S. President Joe Biden, the Trump administration has made clear that it will continue to drive efforts to keep advanced technologies away from China.
China noted in its statement that U.S. had recently "adjusted' the wording of its guidelines around Huawei chips, but the Asian nation maintained that they remain "discriminatory measures.'
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