Concerned about US-led semiconductor decoupling with China, says Chinese envoy to India

Expressing anguish over recent geopolitical manoeuvring, China’s chargé d'affaires to India said that it is “concerned” over the United States’ “decoupling and delinking” with China in semiconductors.

In an exclusive chat with ET, Ma Jia said, “Semiconductors are a very specific area of cooperation. Nowadays we are very much concerned over the US (doing)that kind of decoupling and delinking with other parts of the world, especially with China. So, we oppose that.”

Her comments come in the backdrop of the recent announcement that the United States CHIPS incentive programme will impose tighter restrictions around incentives for semiconductor companies operating in China.

The US Commerce Department’s proposed rules would limit recipients of funding from investing in the expansion of semiconductor manufacturing in foreign countries of concern. The statute identifies those countries as the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

On Tuesday, The US Department of Commerce released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the “guardrails” included in the CHIPS Incentives Program. “The national security guardrails are intended to ensure technology and innovation funded by the CHIPS and Science Act is not used for malign purposes by adversarial countries against the United States or its allies and partners,” the document said.

Semiconductor industry leaders like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Samsung Electronics Co. and Intel Corp., are all likely to get impacted by the new set of rules as they all operate in China.

Senior diplomat Ma has been in-charge of the Chinese mission in New Delhi after the last Ambassador Sun Weidong completed his tenure in August 2022. Ma claims that the United States’s move to restrict other countries in a global, interconnected sector like semiconductor manufacturing was not fair.

"You cannot make a parallel system, the world is deeply interconnected, so nobody can live without others. Semiconductor is a very complicated (technology), they have a lot of linkages. So, people cannot only live by themselves, so, I don't think they (US) can make it happen. Just like you build a wall, owning these countries to master the highest technology and to not make others come in or restrict others. I think it's not fair to other countries,” Ma said.

Pointing out that the industrial linkages play a crucial part in semiconductor manufacturing, Ma said, “They (US) cannot make it (semiconductors alone) because, all this is connected and industrial linkages will play a part. Yes, of course, India would like to play a part and that's natural. Other parts of the world, they also would like to develop their own semiconductor areas. So, that's also natural. So but, you know, we just oppose those kinds of, dominance of the word and cut this word into different parts.”

Commenting on the recent signing of a semiconductor MOU between India and the United States and whether that was designed to help Taiwanese companies, Ma said, "Already Taiwanese companies have invested a lot here in India. So that's what the US wants to see. This will help the rest of the Taiwanese companies to look here (India). But it's connected with each other. (There are) A lot of technical workers are from China. So you cannot just cut everything from other countries.”

On Taiwan Ma pointed out that the situation is getting intense and blamed the US for what she called its provocative actions. Ma said, "The situation is getting intense not because of China taking actions, it is because of other countries like the United States... they make provocative (actions) and they (US) just weakened the agreement and consensus reached by the two governments...we do not allow any country to sweep Taiwan (away) from China."

In a rare move by a Chinese diplomat, Ma accepted that the situation along the Indo-Chinese border is “fragile,” pointing that the two sides don’t want war or confrontation. She acknowledged the situation along the India China border as "very complicated" saying that the issue has to be solved "bilaterally".

Ma said, “I understand that projection says that the situation now is fragile…We are confident that China and India do not war and neither of us want war or confrontation.... Border issue is complicated and it has (been) left over from history for many years. So it's not very easy to reach an agreement."

According to Ma, since last year, China-India relations have held positive momentum. President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Modi attended three meetings and exchanged greetings on the sidelines of the G20 Bali Summit. State Councilor and foreign minister Wang Yi met with Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar three times in 2022.

Earlier this month, the new Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, during his visit to India to attend the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting, held bilateral talks with S. Jaishankar.