China Retaliates After US Sanctions

The US Commerce Department received a swift response to its latest round of export controls meant to "impair" China's chipmaking industry. Shortly after the restrictions were announced Sunday, Beijing banned exports to the US of critical minerals used in military and civilian applications, including gallium, germanium, and antimony, Reuters reports. It also instituted stricter reviews of shipped items containing graphite, a component of EV batteries. Beijing began limiting exports of the minerals earlier this year, but this latest step, aimed only at the US, is seen as a direct response to Washington's new export controls on some 140 Chinese chipmaking tool manufacturers, including Huawei, per the Hill.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the restrictions were meant to "impair" China's "ability to indigenize the production of advanced technologies that pose a risk to our national security," per the Hill. "They're the strongest controls ever enacted by the US to degrade the People's Republic of China's ability to make the most advanced chips that they're using in their military modernization," she told reporters on Sunday, per Business Insider. But Chinese foreign ministry rep Lin Jian on Tuesday accused the US of "overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export controls, and wantonly imposing illegal unilateral sanctions and 'long-arm jurisdiction' over Chinese companies." He said the US was "maliciously suppressing China's technology progress."

Germanium or gallium are both used in semiconductors. China had shipped none to the US this year as of October, though the US "was the fourth and fifth-largest market for the minerals, respectively, a year earlier," per Reuters. A White House spokesperson said the administration was assessing the new restrictions and would take "necessary steps" in response. "These new controls only underscore the importance of strengthening our efforts with other countries to de-risk and diversify critical supply chains away from [China]," the rep said. President-elect Trump "is expected to continue or ramp up the Biden administration's hardline approach towards Chinese chip production," per the Hill. (More China stories.)