Trump blocked HieFo's acquisition of Emcore, claiming that HieFo is a company controlled by Chinese people. Trump's order stated: "This transaction is prohibited! The reason is that the transaction may pose a risk to national security."
HieFo Huanfu Optoelectronics is headquartered in California, USA, and focuses on the research and development and production of efficient optical chips: a company engaged in the development of data centers, telecommunications industry, AI interconnection, and optical sensors. On May 1, 2024, Huanfu Optoelectronics completed the comprehensive acquisition of the wafer manufacturing and optical chip-related assets of Emcore in the United States.
The South China Morning Post reported: In a news release in September 2025, HieFo confirmed Genzao Zhang (translated name) as the company's CEO and co-founder.
Although HieFo is a science and technology innovation enterprise registered in the United States, because its founder is Chinese, the Trump administration prohibited this merger under the Defense Production Act, citing the reason of national security risks, more importantly, due to the founder's Chinese identity!
Therefore, from the Biden era to Trump's administration, preventing the development of Chinese chips has become an important measure for the US government to counter China. The US always uses the excuse of national security to suppress Chinese tech companies in an attempt to maintain the first position of American chips.
This approach taken by the US is extremely contradictory. Regarding NVIDIA's H20 and then H200 chips, the US government has been actively promoting them to China. For NVIDIA, even if it pays 25% of sales fees to the US government, it tries to open the door for Chinese chips. The US government demands China to buy US-designated chips, while at the same time suppressing and blocking Chinese tech companies in the US. This seemingly contradictory approach ultimately aims to prevent the development of Chinese chips, which is the true intention of the US government.
As Chinese chip companies develop, including Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, ByteDance, all have joined and increased their investment in chip R&D, striving to achieve self-reliance and control in AI chips and break free from the US's encirclement of AI chips.
Ultimately, whether it is opposing Chinese acquisitions of US enterprises or pushing designated chips to China, China will continue to promote the development of independent and controllable chips. This momentum is impossible for the US to stop. And the US's use of national administrative measures to suppress Chinese chips will eventually fail!
Original: toutiao.com/article/1853261827095563/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.