China accuses US of undermining trade talks with warnings against Huawei chips

[TAIPEI] The Chinese government accused the Trump administration of undermining recent trade talks in Geneva with its warning that using Huawei Technologies’ artificial intelligence (AI) chips “anywhere in the world” would violate US export controls.

The 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 US government’s export controls. The agency said at the time that it would also warn the public about “the potential consequences of allowing US AI chips to be used for training and inference of Chinese AI models”.

The Commerce 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. The formal Commerce guidance, dated May 13, says using Huawei’s Ascend chips “risks” violating export controls.

The changes were not enough to appease Beijing, which issued a statement on Monday saying it had “negotiated and communicated with the US at all levels through the China-US economic and trade consultation mechanism, pointing out that the US’s actions seriously undermined the consensus reached at the high-level talks between China and the US in Geneva”.

The Asian nation’s Commerce Ministry demanded in the statement that the US “correct its mistakes”.

Spokespeople for the US Commerce Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tensions over Huawei’s next-generation of chips underscore how fragile trade talks remain between the US and China. The Commerce Department’s guidance last week stood to make it all the more difficult for Shenzhen-based Huawei to fulfil its ambitions of developing more powerful semiconductors for AI and smartphones, efforts that have already hit major snags because of US sanctions.

Despite rolling back a set of Biden administration-era regulations on AI chip exports, 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 US had recently “adjusted” the wording of its guidelines around Huawei chips, but the Asian nation maintained that they remain “discriminatory measures”. BLOOMBERG