Xi tells Biden not to curb China’s tech sector

Top leaders of the United States and China held a two-hour phone call on Tuesday, setting the tone before US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen meets with her Chinese counterparts in Guangzhou and Beijing on April 4-9.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden that the US side has adopted a string of measures to suppress China’s trade and technology development, and is adding more and more Chinese entities to its sanctions lists.

“This is not ‘de-risking,’ but creating risks,” Xi said. “If the US side is willing to seek mutually beneficial cooperation and share in China’s development dividends, it will always find China’s door open.”

“If the US is adamant on containing China’s hi-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development, China is not going to sit back and watch,” he said.

Xi’s comments came after the US Commerce Department on March 29 revised its chip export rules, which were announced last October, to make it harder for China to obtain US artificial intelligence (AI) chips and chip-making equipment.

The revised rules, which will take effect on Thursday, said restrictions on chip shipments to China also apply to laptops equipped with built-in advanced AI chips.

According to the rules, a license is required for the export of digital computers and electronic assemblies with adjusted-peak-performance (APP) exceeding 70 weighted teraflops (WT), and also for software specially designed or modified for the development or production of digital computers with APP exceeding 24 WT.

The US will adopt a presumption-of-denial policy for the license applications for the export to destinations including Macau and D:5 countries such as Russia and China. It will implement case-by-case