What? Pooping in the Commerce Department? Unbelievable...
"Beijing is banning iPhones, Washington is taking a close look at a new Huawei model. The conflict between the USA and China is escalating again to a worrying level.
A small cluster has formed in the middle of Shanghai around the latest geopolitical bone of contention. A dozen customers stand around the table in the store with the latest smartphone and examine the devices on display. “Huawei Mate 60 Pro” is emblazoned on the large screens in the flagship store.
The conflict between the USA and China has probably never been so focused on one device. The new phone is much better, the chips built into it are much more advanced than most observers would have thought possible due to the US sanctions against Huawei. According to Huawei, satellite telephony is now possible. Above all, according to tests, the device appears to be 5G-capable and the semiconductors have a structure size of 7 nanometers.
Huawei has found it difficult to produce a 5G-capable cell phone in recent years due to the sanctions. The American Department of Commerce announced an investigation into the device at the end of the week. The Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted promptly. When asked about the investigation, a spokeswoman criticized in a press conference that the USA was abusing its power to suppress Chinese companies.
Huawei cell phone sold out quickly
The trade war, which has long been a semiconductor war, also became a cell phone war last week. Because while China celebrated the Huawei cell phone and calls for new sanctions were loud in the USA, Apple simultaneously became the new plaything of geopolitics. The company, whose suppliers employ millions of people in China, lost $200 billion in market value on the stock market within two days. Investors were spooked by reports that Beijing is banning iPhones from more government departments and state-owned companies.
Huawei, on the other hand, seems to have willingly brought its latest smartphone onto the world political stage. While US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo visited China a week and a half ago, the company quietly put the device up for sale. The timing may have been chosen deliberately; even state media put the word “coincidentally” in quotation marks in their reporting. In any case, there is no longer any sign of the relaxation that Raimondo's visit was supposed to bring.
Shortly afterwards, the Huawei cell phone was sold out everywhere and there was huge excitement in China. The device dominated the debate on social networks, and speculation was rife as to how Huawei could produce such a cell phone. There was also patriotism. A vulgar post that said you only need to pay the price of 6,999 RMB to defecate at the US Department of Commerce received more than 50,000 likes from users on the Chinese version of Tiktok.
Communist newspaper is happy about shockwaves
The state media continued to fan the flames of patriotism. The "Global Times", a newspaper of the Communist Party, celebrated the device, was pleased about the "shock waves" that the cell phone had caused in the USA, and even worked on individual articles in American media about the device. The company itself is holding back and watching the goings-on.
The new processor is said to deliver twice as much top performance as its predecessor and leave behind a number of comparable products such as those from the US chip company Qualcomm. The previous model, the Mate 40 Pro, was controlled by a processor that Huawei had designed at least important parts in-house via its own chip design company HiSilicon. Huawei has further developed the processor over the past three years and then had it mass-produced by the Chinese contract manufacturer SMIC, which is also subject to US sanctions.
The component shows that China is apparently able to mass produce chips with structure sizes of 7 nanometers - and the finer the structures, the more powerful a smartphone chip can be. The feature size is also what the US is most concerned about: "We are working to obtain more information about the character and composition of the alleged 7-nanometer chip," said the US Commerce Department spokeswoman, commenting on the investigation announced. Until now, it was thought that only Taiwanese, Korean and American manufacturers were able to do this.
Most components come from Chinese production
Western chip specialists who took a closer look at the new smartphone model also found numerous innovations in central parts such as self-developed computing cores, graphics components and artificial intelligence functionalities. Most of the components actually come from Chinese production, but some special chips come from the Korean memory chip manufacturer SK Hynix. The Koreans immediately launched an internal investigation. Since the Chinese were hit by the Americans' ban, the Koreans no longer maintain official relations with Huawei. However, SK Hynix manufactures its chips in China, among other places.
In view of the export restrictions imposed by Washington on entire machine parks for the production of semiconductors, the 7-nanometer chips are no small thing. Europe cannot currently offer anything comparable; in America, the industry leader there, Intel, is struggling to master the processes. So the question that people in the West are currently asking themselves is: How did the Chinese do it? Chips require special machines with very complicated lithography systems.
But they are only controlled by a few in the world. This is where all the threads come together at the Dutch ASML Group. However, the company is prohibited from delivering its most advanced machines to the Middle Kingdom. Chinese contract manufacturers like SMIC equipped their factories with older machines long before the embargo.
Huawei is said to be in the process of further developing these systems on its own. ASML chief Peter Wennink warned in an interview in the Netherlands this week that isolating China is hopeless and "is forcing the country to become very innovative." [1]
1. Aus Handelskrieg wird Handykrieg. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (online)Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH. Sep 10, 2023. Von Stephan Finsterbusch und Gustav Theile
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