Nvidia Photo: VCG

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent implied during an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday that the US approved Nvidia’s H20 sales to China because Huawei can already make equivalent chips. 

“I think that [US government approving Nvidia’s export license] would be a judgment that the Chinese indigenous manufacturers, namely Huawei and some others, already have an equivalent chip. So, if there is an equivalent chip, then the Nvidia H20 could be sold,” Bessent said.

Bessent claimed that the one thing the US did not want was a digital Belt and Road springing up around the world because other countries or China were substituting for American chip manufacturers.

The remarks made by the US Treasury Secretary essentially serve as a defense for America's chip hegemony. The global semiconductor industry is inherently a globalized market, where mutual exchange of needed goods, together constitute a normal development ecosystem for the artificial intelligence and chip industries, Ma Jihua, a veteran telecom industry observer, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Driven by its own self-interest, the US seeks to dominate this industry alone and suppress challenges from other countries and enterprises. It assumes that after Chinese enterprises are able to produce such products, they will, like the US, control the entire ecosystem, Ma said.

From the perspective of the global chip industry, there should be several companies capable of production in every link to form healthy competition. Such competition will promote innovation in the entire industry. The fact that the US does not want such a scenario to happen is equivalent to hindering global industrial innovation, Ma said.

In response to a question about Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang's announcement on Tuesday that the US government has approved Nvidia's export license and Nvidia will start selling H20 chips to the Chinese market, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that "we generally do not make specific comments on the behavior of companies."

China's position of opposing the politicization, instrumentalization, and weaponization of science and technology and economic and trade issues and malicious blockade and suppression of China is consistent and clear, Lin said, noting that such practices disrupt the stability of the global industrial chain and are not in the interests of any party.

Global Times