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On August 29 – during Raimondo's visit to China – Huawei launched its Mate60 Pro smartphone, which uses its self-developed Kirin 9000s processor.

Techinsights, a Canadian research firm, said on September 3 that the Kirin 9000s chip was made by China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), the country's top chipmaker.

Chinese media said SMIC, led by former TSMC engineer Liang Mong-song, used its N+2 processing technology to make 7nm chips for Huawei, although the production might be costly as it requires multiple exposures using deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography equipment.

On September 20, Raimondo told US lawmakers that she was“upset” by the launch of Mate60 pro during her China trip. She said the only good news was that there was no evidence that China can make 7nm chips“at scale.”

She also said that the Commerce Department was still investigating whether any company had circumvented the US export controls.

For their part, US legislators were impatient about the investigation's progress. On September 14, a group of 10 Republican lawmakers called on the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to deny all export items for Huawei, SMIC and their units including Honor, the Huawei spinoff firm that took over its budget phone business in 2020.

Some commentators have pointed out that the existing US curbs have loopholes as they do not forbid non-American engineers from working for the sanctioned Huawei and SMIC while the re-sale of lithography equipment within China is not monitored. They also note it takes time to identify small traders that source US items destined for sanctioned Chinese firms.

Critical technologies

Nikkei reported on Thursday that Taiwan is set to announce this year a list of critical technologies it wants to bar from reaching China.

Wellington Koo, secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council, said in the report that the list will clearly define the core technologies in the semiconductor, agriculture, aerospace and information and communications technology (ICT) sectors.

In particular, Koo said Taiwan wants to prevent mainland China from obtaining its chip design technologies.
The European Commission Tuesday announced on Tuesday its own list of critical technologies and called on the European Union's member states to assess their security risks.

The technology areas include:

• advanced semiconductors,
• artificial intelligence,
• quantum,
• cyber security,
• advanced sensing,
• space and propulsion,
• energy and advanced materials,
• manufacturing and recycling technologies,
• biotechnology,
• robotics and
• autonomous systems.
  

Huawei's investments

In late September, Huawei released its founder Ren Zhengfei's comments made in July and August about the impact of the US sanctions on his company.

“US sanctions are indeed pressure on us, but pressure is also motivation,” Ren told a group of students who participated in the International Collegiate Programming Contest in two meetings on August 21 and 26.

“In the past, we built our basic platform in the US. But after the US sanctioned us, we were forced to switch to a new platform. The process was difficult,” Ren said.

“After these four years of hard work involving 200,000 employees, we have basically established our own platform,” he said.“In the future, we may not necessarily run on the same basis as the US platform, but there will still be certain interconnections.”