China’s top chipmaker SMIC may have broken US export regulations by making a chip to power Huawei’s smash-hit Mate 60 Pro phone, a senior Commerce Department official suggested.
When asked by Congressman Michael McCaul at a hearing on Thursday if SMIC broke US export rules to produce the chip, Alan Estevez, who oversees export policy, said “potentially, yes, we will have to assess.”
Washington has been building the pressure on SMIC’s operations, looking to cut its top chipmaking plant in China off from from US tech imports after it produced the surprisingly high-end chip for Huawei’s latest smartphone.
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The Commerce Department reportedly sent dozens of letters to US suppliers to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), suspending permission to sell to its most advanced plant, sources claimed.
While many companies had already stopped selling to SMIC South, as the unit is known, the letters are thought to have halted millions of dollars worth of shipments of chipmaking materials and parts from at least one supplier.
The Huawei Mate 60 Pro was seen as a symbol of the China’s technological resurgence despite Washington’s ongoing efforts to cripple its capacity to produce advanced semiconductors.
- Reuters with additional editing by Sean O’Meara
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