China is angry that the US has stopped approving licenses for American companies to export most items to China's hi-tech company, Huawei, accusing the US of deliberately targeting Chinese companies under the pretext of national security.
According to the report from unnamed sources, the US is creating a new formal policy of denial for shipping items to Huawei that would include items below the 5 G level, including 4 G items, wifi 6 and 7, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and cloud items.
Another source told Reuters that the move was expected to reflect the Biden administration's tightening of policy on Huawei over the past year. Licences for 4 G chips that could not be used for 5 G, which might have been approved earlier, were denied, the person said.
In November of this year, the Biden administration banned new telecommunications equipment from Huawei and ZTE because they pose an unacceptable risk to US national security.
Mao Ning, a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, accused the United States of deliberately using an overly broad notion of national security to suppress Chinese firms at a regular press conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
Mao said that China strongly opposes the US government's uncrupulous and unjustified suppression of Chinese companies by stretching the concept of national security and abusing state power.
She told reporters that such moves violate the principles of market economy and international trade rules and dampen international confidence in the US business environment.
A US commerce department spokeswoman said officials constantly assess policies and regulations but did not comment on talks with specific companies.
Huawei and Qualcomm didn't want to say anything. The Financial Times and the Bloomberg reported on the move.
In the year 2019 American officials placed Huawei on a trade blacklist, restricting most US suppliers from shipping goods and technology to the company unless they were granted licenses. The controls were tightened to cut off Huawei's ability to buy or design the semiconductor chips that power most of its products, although licences were granted that allowed Huawei to receive some products. From April through November 2021, suppliers to Huawei got licences worth $61 billion to sell equipment giant to the telecoms equipment giant.
The US Department of Commerce has granted licenses for some American companies to sell certain goods and technologies to the company, despite US export restrictions on items for 5 G and other technologies for several years. In 2020, Qualcomm will be able to sell 4 G smartphone chips to Huawei.
In December, Huawei said its total revenue was around $91.53 billion, down only slightly from 2021, when US sanctions caused its sales to fall by nearly a third.