US blacklists Chinese supercomputer manufacturers

The US administration of President Biden has listed seven Chinese supercomputing companies on its entity list of companies that pose a risk to the country’s national security.

The addition of the seven manufacturers means they fall under the trade barriers the US has put in place against Chinese companies and, for example, US companies must obtain special licenses if they want to trade with the manufacturers. The seven companies include the National Supercomputing Centers of Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi and Zhengzhou, Sunway Microelectronics, the Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center and Tianjin Phytium Information Technology.

These companies, according to the Biden administration, are engaged in “activities that are contrary to national security or the interests of the foreign policy of the United States.” In concrete terms, according to the US, this involves building supercomputers that are used by the Chinese defense for, among other things, making weapons of mass destruction. In the statement, the US said the Department of the Economy will do everything in its power to prevent China from using US technology for its “destabilizing” military modernization.

The expansion of the entity list is one of many in recent years. The US blacklisted network and smartphone companies Huawei and ZTE, among others. The country also introduced trade barriers to TikTok, WeChat, DJI and chip maker SMIC to protect national security. The barriers have prompted China to accelerate its efforts to develop and manufacture its own technology. The TaihuLight supercomputing cluster located in National Supercomputing Center Wuxi contains China-developed and RISC-based ShenWei processors.

Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer