(By Guancha Observer Network, Zhu Dong, edited by Zhang Guangkai)
The news that the U.S. requested a global ban on Huawei Ascend chips has drawn widespread attention.
The origin of the incident is that the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) recently repealed the "Artificial Intelligence Dissemination Rules" signed during the Biden administration, while announcing that it would take more measures to strengthen global chip export controls. The agency also issued three guidance documents to strengthen export controls related to China's AI. The main contents include: First, using Huawei Ascend chips anywhere in the world violates U.S. export control regulations; second, warning the public about the potential consequences of allowing U.S. AI chips to be used for training and inference of China's AI models; third, guiding U.S. companies to protect their supply chains and guard against supply chain transfer strategies. Among these, the prohibition of global use of Huawei Ascend chips once again demonstrates America's hegemonism under its long-arm jurisdiction.
Export control law expert and senior partner at Huiye Law Firm, Yang Jie, told the Guancha Observer Network that this move by the U.S. is suspected that Huawei Ascend chips utilize U.S. technology and software for design and development, or that Huawei uses equipment with U.S. technology for tape-out, but without any evidence, they have escalated sanctions. This measure is quite severe, but the reason is "without basis."
"This is a typical example of long-arm jurisdiction. If Huawei really used U.S. technology to develop chips, then it could be said that he violated U.S. export control regulations. But now, according to the original text of BIS, they suspect that Huawei seems to have used U.S. technology. This reflects the U.S.'s very arrogant mentality, essentially believing that Huawei could not produce such high-performance chips using only Chinese self-developed technology, so they concluded that Huawei violated the control regulations, which is very unreasonable," Yang Jie stated.
The purpose of various U.S. control measures against China is obvious: to block the development of China's technology industry. Especially with the development of artificial intelligence technology, the U.S. attempts to stop China from acquiring more computing power by controlling the export of high-end chips like those from NVIDIA and AMD. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's constant emphasis that Huawei is his strongest competitor undoubtedly stimulates the U.S. to take further actions against Huawei.
"The development of the AI industry requires international division of labor and cooperation. Now, with the U.S. issuing this regulation, the intention is clearly to hinder cooperation between Chinese companies and obstruct the development of China's AI industry," Yang Jie analyzed.
In fact, over many years, despite the continuous issuance of restrictive measures by the U.S., China's independent R&D capabilities have significantly improved. For instance, in the field of AI computing power, although domestic chip single-card computing power still lags behind NVIDIA, the ultimate competition in artificial intelligence will be based on cluster computing power. Recently, based on Huawei Ascend chips, Huawei Cloud launched the CloudMatrix 384 super node and through Ascend Cloud commercialization, the scale, performance, and reliability have fully surpassed NVIDIA NVL72; Baidu Cloud also launched a super node, supporting placing 64 Kunlun AI acceleration cards in the same cabinet, improving single-machine performance by 10 times. At the same time, many GPU startups have emerged domestically, and the three major operators have built multiple ten-thousand-card clusters based on domestic chips, alleviating domestic computing power anxiety to some extent.
The U.S. clearly does not want to let go of China's AI industry easily. After BIS issued the aforementioned regulations, it immediately released some details, mainly controlling advanced high-computing chips based on indicators such as "total processing performance," "performance density," and "memory bandwidth density." This means that not only Huawei Ascend chips, but any use of advanced computing chips exceeding the control requirements produced in China may face penalties from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the control targets are all entities globally. The institution claims that if the relevant ban is violated, violators may face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million.
So, under the U.S.'s domineering actions, will the cooperation between Chinese enterprises and Huawei also be affected?
"Now, it's different from when Trump first imposed sanctions on Huawei. We have our own countermeasures," Yang Jie pointed out to the Guancha Observer Network. Legally speaking, China has the Blocking Regulation issued by the Ministry of Commerce. If the Ministry determines that foreign laws and measures have inappropriate extraterritorial application, the State Council's competent department can issue an order not to recognize, not to enforce, and not to comply with the bans of foreign laws and measures. This measure is very targeted. If the Ministry of Commerce believes that the BIS improperly hinders normal economic and trade cooperation between Chinese companies and Huawei, it can issue a ban.
"Additionally, we have the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, where Article Twelve mentions that no organization or individual shall execute or assist in executing discriminatory restrictive measures taken by foreign countries against our citizens or organizations. Now, the BIS's regulation is clearly a typical discriminatory measure because it further sanctions Huawei on fabricated grounds. Of course, we can counteract it based on the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law. Chinese companies conducting any activities within China with Huawei must certainly comply with Chinese law, and we don't need to worry too much about that. As long as the Ministry of Commerce issues relevant bans or invokes the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, the U.S. Department of Commerce cannot directly determine that cooperation between Chinese companies and Huawei is illegal," he added.
The U.S. government has repeatedly imposed hefty fines on American companies for violating export control regulations, including a $300 million fine for hard drive company Seagate, which BIS accused of illegally exporting hard disk drives to Huawei. For Chinese companies, the U.S. often adopts blacklist tactics, such as listing component traders in the "Entity List," accusing them of illegally transferring controlled items.
Yang Jie pointed out to the Guancha Observer Network that in addition to the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, the Blocking Regulation, and the Unreliable Entity List, China can also respond accordingly through rare earth export controls.
"The U.S. cannot list all Chinese high-tech enterprises in the sanctions list in a short period of time. We should have full confidence and determination, rely on ourselves, and not stop scientific research efforts or normal economic and trade exchanges and cooperation with Huawei just because the U.S. government frequently issues unilateral control measures. This not only violates relevant provisions of our Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law but also encourages the U.S. unilateral sanctions. I think this approach is unacceptable," he said.
Besides government-level countermeasures, when companies encounter unreasonable pressure, they can seek legal support. In recent years, domestic semiconductor companies such as Zhongwei Company and Changjiang Memory have taken legal action against U.S. companies and the government. After Zhongwei Company won the lawsuit, it was removed from the blacklist by the U.S. Department of Defense.
"If a certain Chinese company is penalized by the U.S. Department of Commerce for being determined to have engaged in transactions violating regulations with Huawei, it can choose to file an administrative lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Commerce in the court of Washington D.C., rather than being passive after being sanctioned. During the litigation process, it can force the U.S. Department of Commerce to provide substantive evidence to prove the reasons why the rule determines that Huawei Ascend chips violate U.S. export controls. In such litigation processes, they must provide evidence," Yang Jie analyzed to the Guancha Observer Network.
In the afternoon of May 15th, He Yongqian, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, responded to the U.S. regulation by pointing out that the U.S. abuses export control measures, imposing unwarranted restrictions on Chinese chip products, seriously damaging the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, severely threatening the stability of the global semiconductor supply chain, and severely undermining market rules and international economic and trade order. This move is detrimental to long-term mutually beneficial, sustainable cooperation and development between both parties. The Chinese side urges the U.S. to immediately correct its erroneous practices and will take resolute measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.
(Intern Yang Yiting also contributed to this article)
Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7504605368523031076/
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