(Bloomberg) – Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called on nations to reject decoupling and cutting off supply chains, a day after his country imposed limits on exports of two key metals used to make chips to counter threats. Western restrictions on Beijing.
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The world’s second-largest economy wants to work with nations to ‘reject attempts to erect barriers, decouple and disrupt supply chains,’ Xi said in virtual address to Shanghai Cooperation Organization leaders .
“We should enlarge the pie of win-win cooperation and ensure that more development gains are shared more equitably by people around the world,” he said, according to a text of the comments published Tuesday evening by the official Xinhua news agency. .
The remarks contrast with the Xi government’s decision on Monday to subject gallium and germanium, and their chemical compounds, to export controls. China’s Ministry of Commerce said the move was to protect national security.
Export controls on metals are “just the beginning” and China will step up countermeasures if the United States imposes more technology restrictions, said Wei Jianguo, a former vice minister of commerce.
Wei told the state-run China Daily that he expected the controls to put a lot of pressure on some countries. China’s move, which comes just ahead of US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing, could accelerate countries’ efforts to reduce their reliance on the world’s second-largest economy.
The United States has taken increasingly aggressive steps to curb China’s technological ambitions, largely to limit military advances, and has worked to convince its allies in Europe and Asia to do the same.
The United States is now preparing to restrict Chinese companies’ access to cloud computing services, including those provided by Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation. .
Washington is considering requiring cloud providers to seek government permission before serving Chinese companies that use such platforms to train AI models, the Journal reported.
Beijing has previously complained about the decoupling or risk reduction of nations vis-à-vis China. Last week, Premier Li Qiang warned that governments trying to politicize their economies will only fragment the world.
“The invisible barriers erected by some people in recent years are becoming widespread and pushing the world towards fragmentation and even confrontation,” he said.
In a sign of China’s efforts to counter any attempts to reduce risk, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao told former Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono in Beijing on Tuesday that the two countries should work to ensure the stability of the chains. supply.
(Updates with comments from the former Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce.)
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