The China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) announced it opposes export controls from the United States, Japan and the Netherlands.
“The restrictions will cause harm to the semiconductor industry in China, with detriment to the global economy, as well as long-term damages to the interests of consumers world-wide,” the association said in a statement.
CSIA also called on the Chinese government to establish rules for maintaining the healthy development of the global semiconductor industry ecology.
In January, media reports surfaced stating that Japan and the Netherlands had agreed to comply with export restrictions against China’s chip sector that the U.S. government had announced in October 2022.
The initial U.S. sanctions took aim at Chinese purchases of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) computing chips, as well as equipment that chip factories could use to produce leading-edge computing chips.
Japan and the Netherlands are market leaders in the latter category. Both countries are the only producers of market-competitive lithography machines, which are a key component in the chip manufacturing process.
The governments have not directly addressed reports that they are cooperating with the United States, and the degree of their compliance and the restrictions’ enforcement remains unclear.
The Netherlands’ ASML is the world’s dominant provider of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which it had already ceased selling to China in compliance with an earlier U.S. ban.
Along with ASML, Japan’s Nikon and Canon produce deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, which chip manufacturers use to make less advanced chips.
Shanghai-based chip foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) and Wuhan-based memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies are among the Chinese companies set to be affected by the restrictions.
