U.S. Senate from Both Parties Writes a Letter to Commerce Department Requesting Blacklisting CCP’s YMTC

On July 28th , U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and six other Senators from across the aisle sent a joint letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, stating that a number of CCP linked semiconductor manufacturing companies like Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd. (YMTC) pose an increasing threat to U.S. national security and its chip manufacturing companies. Therefore, it is recommended that YMTC be included in the trade blacklist.

The letter mentions that YMTC is a supplier to Huawei, and that not including YMTC on the trade blacklist would invalidate the U.S. sanctions against Huawei.

According to a media reported on Aug 1st , the U.S. was considering restricting the export of U.S. chip manufacturing equipment to Chinese chip manufacturing companies, including YMTC. The order under consideration by U.S. officials would prohibit the sale of equipment that can be used to produce more than 128 layers of NAND chips to the Communist China. If the order is implemented, it will be the first time that the United States has targeted memory chips that are not specifically used by the CCP for military use in export control measures, which would indicate that the United States has a broader definition of national security implications than before.

CCP-controlled YMTC produces NAND flash memory that can be used to store data in smart phones, personal computers, data centers and other devices. YMTC is one of Huawei’s suppliers. The White House reported in June last year that YMTC, founded in 2016, is a rising NAND chip maker that has received $24 billion in subsidies from the Chinese Communist Party. YMTC, backed by the CCP subsidies was able to compete in the market with lower prices, posing a direct threat of unfair competition to two U.S. memory chip makers, Western Digital Corp. and Micron Technology Inc.