US-China tech war: Japan, Netherlands poised to join Biden’s chip crackdown on Beijing
- Dutch and Japanese export controls may be agreed to and finalised as soon as the end of January, according to people familiar with the matter
- Beijing said the US effort showed its ‘selfish hegemonic interest’ and that Washington was ‘seeking to benefit itself at the expense of its allies’
The Netherlands and Japan, home to key suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, are close to joining a Biden administration-led effort to restrict exports of the technology to China and hobble its push into the chips industry.
The Dutch and Japanese export controls may be agreed to and finalised as soon as the end of January, according to people familiar with the matter. Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and the prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, discussed their plans with US President Joe Biden at the White House earlier this month.
“I’m fairly confident that we will get there,” Rutte said on Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The Hague and Tokyo likely won’t go as far as Washington’s restrictions, which not only limit exports of American-made machinery but also impede US citizens from working with Chinese chip makers. Even so, Beijing may find itself even more cut off from either the technology or know-how it needs to build the most advanced kinds of semiconductors once all three countries act.
While the US is home to the biggest group of chip-gear makers, the Netherlands boasts ASML Holding NV, which controls the market for lithography technology that’s one of the most important steps in producing the electronic components. Japan’s Tokyo Electron Ltd. is a major rival to US companies in other types of machinery. Without access to their state-of-the-art products and those supplied by US firms Applied Materials Inc., Lam Research Corp. and KLA Corp., Chinese companies would find it almost impossible to build production lines capable of the most advanced chip manufacturing, analysts say.