[News] China to Investigate U.S. Chip Subsidies, Suspected Legacy Chips Dumping

---

---

According to a Commercial Times report, citing Global Times, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on January 16th that it has received complaints from domestic companies regarding U.S. firms benefiting from subsidies under the U.S. CHIPS Act and exporting mature-node chips to China at low prices.

Applications have been submitted to initiate anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations into these U.S. companies. The Ministry of Commerce stated that it would conduct these investigations in compliance with WTO rules, as the report notes.

The report suggests that China’s actions may be a countermeasure to the U.S.’s Section 301 investigation into China’s mature-node chips, launched at the end of 2024.

A Ministry of Commerce spokesperson states that Chinese semiconductor companies have expressed concerns that subsidies provided under the CHIPS Act grant U.S. firms an unfair competitive edge, enabling them to export mature-node chips to China at reduced prices, as the report notes.

The report points out that the CHIPS Act subsidies announced thus far allocate the largest amounts to Intel (USD 7.86 billion), followed by TSMC (USD 6.6 billion), Samsung (USD 4.75 billion), Micron (USD 6.1 billion), Texas Instruments (USD 1.6 billion), GlobalFoundries (USD 1.5 billion), and Amkor (USD 407 million).

Efforts by the U.S. to limit China’s access to advanced chips have intensified. On January 16th, Reuters reported that 25 China-based companies and two Singapore-based firms, including AI model developer Zhipu AI and China’s Sophgo, were added to the U.S. trade blacklist.

Meanwhile, according to Tom’s Hardware, citing Bloomberg, the U.S. has introduced stricter regulations targeting chips with 30 billion or more transistors, produced at 14nm or 16nm process nodes or smaller. These measures expand licensing requirements for manufacturers such as TSMC, GlobalFoundries, Intel, and Samsung Foundry.

In addition, earlier this week, the Biden administration has also unveiled a three-tier system designed to further restrict the supply of AI accelerators to China.

Read more

• [News] Biden Tightens Control on 14/16nm Chip Exports; Expands Blacklist to Include China’s Sophgo
• [News] Biden’s AI Chip Export Curbs in the Works: Key Points of Three-Tier System at a Glance