Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba is nixing plans to spin off its cloud computing division due to “uncertainties” caused by recently updated U.S. chip export controls on China. Alibaba was planning to publicly list its Cloud Intelligence Group, a cloud computing services business, but said last week it fears “these new restrictions may materially and adversely affect” the cloud computing division’s “ability to offer products and services and to perform under existing contracts.”
Exports to China
Officials from the U.S. and China will meet in January to hold “technical discussions” on ways to better protect trade secrets, the Commerce Department said in a readout of a meeting last week between Secretary Gina Raimondo and Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao. Commerce said the two countries will bring together “subject matter experts” to talk about “strengthening the protection of trade secrets and confidential business information during administrative licensing proceedings."
An academic and journalists from England and Foreign Policy magazine agreed that President Joe Biden got more out of the meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping than Xi did.
The Bureau of Industry and Security this week removed a Chinese scientific institute from the Entity List that the agency had originally added in 2020 for ties to human rights abuses in Xinjiang (see 2005220058). The move, outlined in a final rule effective Nov. 16, removed the Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science of China from the list.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is working to convince more countries to place export controls on advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment destined to China, but the agency couldn’t afford to delay its most recent chip controls as other nations mulled them over, said Thea Kendler, BIS assistant secretary for export administration. While the agency prefers to implement its chip controls and other restrictions alongside allies, “we will not hesitate to act unilaterally to protect U.S. national security,” Kendler said.
As the Bureau of Industry and Security adds new export controls on emerging technologies, it should also remove outdated restrictions on items that may no longer warrant licensing requirements, such as life jackets and fire extinguishers, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a report. The think tank also urged BIS to shrink the Entity List to only entities that pose the most serious national security threats and consider giving preferential licensing treatment to a broader set of countries, including Vietnam and Moldova.
Congress should order a review of U.S. semiconductor export controls against China and ask the administration to create a public database of entities connected to China’s military, which would help U.S. companies with their compliance practices, a congressional commission said this week. The bipartisan commission also said Congress should explore the idea of a single export licensing system to streamline export requirements overseen by both the Commerce and State departments.
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will touch on some trade issues during a planned meeting in California on Nov. 15, but the two leaders won’t delve into specifics, a senior administration official said during a call with reporters last week. The two sides aren’t expecting a “long list of outcomes or deliverables” to result from the meeting, the official said. “The goals here really are about managing the competition, preventing the downside risk of conflict and ensuring channels of communication are open."
House Select Committee on China Republicans wrote to President Joe Biden, asking him to make human rights and military demands of Chinese President Xi Jinping when they meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which will happen Nov. 15-17.
Trade ministers from Japan, the U.S., the EU, the U.K., France, Canada, Germany and Italy said they will work to reach an agreement on World Trade Organization reform "with the view to having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024." The binding appellate level of dispute settlement at the WTO has been defunct since late 2019, because the U.S. blocked all appointments to the appellate body.