Senate backing for anti-China amendment 'abuse' of US power

The US Senate's support for a key legislation aimed at thwarting Chinese technological growth highlights once again how the United States is trying to abuse state power to disrupt normal business activities, experts said.

The US Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly backed legislation that would require US companies to notify federal agencies of investments in Chinese technology companies related to semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

The 100-member Senate ruled 91-6 in favor of the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.

The NDAA sets policy for the Department of Defense and is expected to become law later this year, Reuters reported.

Despite Washington's shift in rhetoric from "decoupling" to "de-risking" in key supply chains, the US government is afraid of China's technological prowess, and wants to disrupt normal investment by US firms in Chinese tech companies, said Bai Ming, deputy director of international market research at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

The US has already adopted a string of measures to contain Chinese tech companies. Apart from levying additional tariffs on a large number of Chinese products, it has included many Chinese market entities on its export control list, imposed sanctions on Chinese enterprises and is reportedly planning to restrict US investment in some Chinese tech enterprises, experts said.

Such moves, however, run counter to US companies' own interests, said Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Information Consumption Alliance, a telecommunications industry association.

Executives from three major US chip giants of Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia reportedly held talks with US government officials recently, seeking a halt to planned additional restrictions on chip exports to China. The companies have previously said that these restrictions will hurt efforts to build a more productive bilateral relationship and will harm companies' profits.

Last week, the US-based Semiconductor Industry Association also urged the US government to "refrain from further restrictions "on China. It is important to allow the chip industry to have continued access to the Chinese market, the world's largest for commodity semiconductors, the SIA said in a statement.

The association asked the US government to engage "more extensively with industry and experts to assess the impact of current and potential restrictions to determine whether they are narrow and clearly defined, consistently applied, and fully coordinated with allies".

In a previous interview with the Financial Times, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, also warned about the implications of further trade restrictions on China.

"If we are deprived of the Chinese market, we don't have a contingency for that. There is no other China, there is only one China," Huang said.

Last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a news conference in Beijing that China is always opposed to the politicization and weaponization of economic and trade issues.

"We hope that the US side will deliver on US President Joe Biden's promise of not decoupling from China, not obstructing China's economic development and not containing China, and create a favorable environment for China-US economic and trade cooperation," Mao said.