China threatens chip war retaliation against Dutch, Japanese

Chinese state media and officials have threatened to retaliate against the Netherlands and Japan, urging them not to accept Washington’s requests to strengthen their chip export controls targeting China.

The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, says in a commentary that if the Dutch government follows Washington’s order to stop providing maintenance services to the high-end deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines in China, Beijing will take corresponding counter-measures, such as “imposing trade restrictions or seeking alternative suppliers, and reevaluating its cooperation with the Netherlands in more global areas.”

The comments come after Bloomberg reported on August 29 that Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof will likely not renew certain ASML licenses to service and provide spare parts in China when they expire at the end of this year.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said the Dutch government’s decision, which will cover ASML’s top-of-the-line DUV lithography machines, comes after some pressure from the United States.

It said the Biden administration had mulled the use of the United States’ Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR) to ban other countries from exporting products built with US-originated technology to China.

“We are in talks, good talks and we are also watching out very specifically for the economic interests of ASML, those need to be weighed against other risks and the economic interests are extremely important,” Schoof told Reuters on August 30.

“ASML is for the Netherlands an extremely important, innovative industry that should not suffer under any circumstances, because that would damage ASML’s global position,” he said.

The Netherlands is not the only