Beijing is shaking its control in Chinese technology, aiming to maintain critical knowledge within its borders while trade tensions with the US and Europe escalate.
Chinese authorities in recent months have made it harder for some engineers and equipment to leave the country, proposed new export checks to keep key batteries technologies and moved to limit critical mineral processing technologies, according to figures numerous industry and ministry announcements.
Protecting the country for the main technologies comes amid fees added by US President Donald Trump and a trade line with Europe over cars, which threaten to promote more local and foreign groups to move out elsewhere.
Among the companies to be hit is the main manufacturer partner of Apple Foxconn, who has led the Diversification of the Silicon Valley Group supply chain in India.
People familiar with the case said Chinese officials had made it difficult for Taiwan ownership manufacturer to send Chinese machinery and technical managers to India, where Apple is inclined to build its supply chain.
A manager at another electronic Taiwanese company said they too were facing challenges by sending some equipment from China to plants in India, though he noted that remittances remained normal.
An Indian official alleged that China was using customs delays to prevent the flow of ingredients and equipment heading south. “The electronic industry supply players have been told not to create manufacturing operations and assembly in India,” the official said, demanding that he not be named. The media site the rest of the world previously reported on some of Foxconn’s issues.
Analysts say the Beijing Games Book resembles the restrictions of the transfer of Western technology that has been unjustly criticized. Informal controls appear in particular to aim for China’s geopolitical rival India, with some Chinese groups saying that projects in South East Asia and the Middle East remain unaffected. But Beijing is also distributing more and more official export restrictions to the main technologies that are implemented worldwide.
“A strong supply chain and a skilled workforce are some of the few advantages China still has these days,” said an investor in a company facing issues that move some technical engineers abroad. “You don’t want to lose it in other places.”
The Ministry of Trade of China last month proposed restrictions on the export of technologies related to lithium extraction and advanced battery materials, both areas where the country has a steering position.
“China is building a large export control muscle and being deliberate in what they choose to control,” said Antonia Hmaidi, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China. “Basically it is about keeping Central China for global supply chains,” she said.
Hmaidi said that Beijing was often targeting areas near the top of the supply chain, where Chinese groups controlled materials and technological processes while leaving uncontrolled end products.
Cory Combs in Consulting Trivium China said that the interventions that Beijing had presented in the battery supply chain represented “a new class of export controls”.
If fully approved, controls can prevent China’s battery giants with factories in Europe from moving their entire supply chain abroad. Groups such as catl may need to continue importing battery materials such as advanced iron phosphate cathodes lithium (LFP) from China instead of being able to produce or buy them, according to one person informed about this issue.
Chinese advances in LFP technology have supported the rise of its battery giants, shifting South Korean and Japanese groups, which once prevailed in the battery industry.
Trying to capture, Korean groups had begun the partnership and purchase of LFP cathodes from China, which last year produced 99 percent of all active LFP Cathode materials, according to the Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
New checks can threaten those agreements. A spokesman for a leading Korean battery manufacturer who demanded that their company be not named, said they had communicated their concerns to the Chinese Ministry of Trade.
“We cannot rule out some harmful effects on our partnership with a Chinese company if the instructions do not reflect our concerns,” the person said.
Sam Adham, chief of search batteries at Cru Group analysis firm, said: “Koreans need high -level Chinese technology, but (with new export controls) they may be able to access only technologies last year-namely those on the road at the moment. “
The curves described for the export of lithium extraction technology may complicate the developments in the ECB in South America. A person close to Catl said the group will need to apply for export licenses to use Chinese technology in a $ 1.4bn project in Bolivia to extract lithium from the country’s salt flats.
Anna Ashton, founder of China -focused consulting Ashton Analytics, said Chinese groups had pioneer technologies to draw and process ribbons from underground depths making many new mining projects.
“Ironically, contracting with Chinese companies is currently the most effective tool to bring non-Kinous resources of mined and elaborate online,” she said.
In strategic materials and minerals, Beijing has gradually expanded its curves to include both controlling exports of key elements – such as rare soils, tungsten and tellurium, among other things – to limit the technologies used for extraction, refining or processing them.
In December 2023, China expanded the controls even further in the technology and processes that turn the rare lands refined into permanent metals and magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and electronics.
“China produces something like 95 percent of the world’s permanent magnets,” said one US group employee who builds an alternative supply chain.
“The net effect of these export controls is that industrial diversification in some of these supply chains is limited.”
China’s Ministry of Trade did not respond to a request for comment. Foxconn and Catl refused to comment.
Additional reporting from Gloria Li to Hong Kong, Song Jung-A in Seoul, Nian Liu in Beijing
