Didn't they pass the law where those American IC equipment makers cannot allow their people to interact with the Chinese IC customer?
In other words, the US government barred service reps from AMAT or LAM from working with their customers in China.
We have to assume that this ban on servicing machines inside China is in place.
Does not matter if the US government says something one day, and the next day says something that is the opposite. If they are talking about bans, then that is it. China will go do it without them.
I'm assuming they got blow back from the industry telling them how stupid and utterly ridiculous these laws are. They don't seem to understand that you cannot sell tools if you can't service them. That's what we are dealing with here! Career bureaucrats who have never run or operated any businesses.
Even if they revert that and say we will only enforce it now for the advanced nodes, who in China can live with that kind of uncertainty? It's entirely arbitrary based on the whim of some bureaucrats on whether or not they chose to enforce it. On top of that, you have to apply for permission (in the best case scenario) just to get serviced.
Maybe the industry has now explained to us gov't that they are unable to sell even mature node equipment to China. They really messed up with these ridiculous laws. So, they are trying to walk back and make the laws sound less ridiculous.
Translation: Chinese domestic chip tool makers and fabs already have the ability to independently make trailing edge chips so we are going to keep trying to sell ours to them instead, to deprive their nascent domestic industry of sales.
No, the Washington bureaucrats are too stupid and arrogant to realize that. They are just concerned that they are losing the mature node tools to Japan and European countries.
It's up to China to convince other Asian countries that they will be able to produce complete supply chain independent of America and ask them to join up and work with them.
