China requires the U.S. to rush to HBM export ban expert: equivalent to assisting China

Recently, China and the United States have mainly focused on the "H20" specially provided by NVIDIA (Nvidia Corp.) in the Chinese market. However, the news shows that the Beijing authorities have set their sights further and hope that the United States will relax the export control of high-frequency broad memory (HBM) in order to serve as a exchange condition for Chinese President Joe Jinping and US President Donald Trump.

The British Financial Times quoted an unnamed source on the 10th as reported that US Secretary of Finance Scott Bessent has led a team to conduct three-wheel trade deals with China in the past three months, and the team led by He Lifeng, deputy general manager of the Chinese Academy of Commerce, raised the HBM discussion questions. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick revealed last week that the Trump administration will extend the ceasefire period between China and the United States for another 90 days (it was originally scheduled to expire on August 12).

The export control ban issued by former US President Joe Biden in 2022 reinvigorates China's ability to purchase or manufacture advanced AI chips. In 2024, Biden banned HBM sales, blocking China's SMIC's research and development process.

People familiar with the matter revealed that although H20 is the focus of recent consultations between China and the United States, China is more concerned about the US export controls on HBM because this severely limits the ability of Chinese companies to develop their own AI chips. China's direction of promotion has aroused the concern of Washington officials because it shows that Trump seems willing to relax the control in order to follow the meeting with Jinping.

Previous news showed that the U.S. Department of Commerce was told that the new export controls on China should be suspended to avoid angering Beijing. After the U.S. government banned H20 market in April, Trump changed his words in June to relax the ban.

Gregory Allen, an AI expert at the Center for Strategic and International Research (CSIS), a US Smart Bank, said that HBM is very important to advanced AI chips, accounting for about 50% of the chip value. "Allowing more advanced HBM sales to China is equivalent to helping China replace NVIDIA to create better performance AI chips."

Extended reading: The United States claims China only wins NVIDIA's "fourth best" chips, everything is rare earth