Inside China Tech: Questions mount over TikTok, Arm deals amid tech war
- Beijing’s main concern is the risk of Arm technology coming under US export control regulations if it is bought by Nvidia
- Just hours after launch, Genshin Impact had more than 110,000 concurrent viewers on live-streaming platform Twitch
Welcome to the latest edition of Inside China Tech, a wrap up of some of the week’s biggest stories.
Speculation grows Beijing will block Nvidia’s Arm deal
The former chief engineer of Chinese computer giant Lenovo Group believes Beijing may block Nvidia’s acquisition of SoftBank-owned chip architecture company Arm over fears that the technology would fall under US export controls, the SCMP’s Pan Che reported this week.
“I believe the Chinese commerce ministry will reject the acquisition,” said Ni Guangnan, 81, an academic under the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was speaking at a forum in Zhengzhou, Henan province, the transcript of which was posted on Chinese news portal Sina.com.
Ni, a strong advocate of China’s self-sufficiency in key technologies, said China would not be “comfortable” using the Arm chip architecture if it were owned by a US company. Early this month, SoftBank-owned Arm said Nivida, a leader in GPU and AI computing chips, agreed to buy Arm for US$40 billion.
However, China’s antitrust regulator could block the deal on the premise that it could create a monopoly for the supply of chip design tools. But Beijing’s main concern, according to most China watchers, is the risk of Arm technology coming under US export control regulations.
Relations between China and the US have reached their lowest point in decades after a protracted trade spat morphed into a full blown tech war.
After blocking China’s telecoms champion Huawei Technologies from buying semiconductors from global suppliers, Washington is now taking aim at China’s leading wafer foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).