U.S. Depletes China's Chips Brain Trust

One dramatic, and potentially disruptive aspect of the rules imposed by US President Joe Biden is the ban on American citizens and legal residents working with Chinese chip firms, Laura He reported for CNN Business.

Photo Insert: Vice chairman Shu Qingming and deputy general manager Cheng Taiyi at GigaDevice Semiconductor, an advanced memory chip firm, are US citizens.

Dane Chamorro, a partner at Control Risks, a global risk consultancy based in London, said such measures are usually “only enacted against ‘rogue regimes’” like Iran and North Korea. The decision to use this against China is “unprecedented,” Chamorro said.

Many executives working for Chinese firms may now have to choose between keeping their jobs or acting as lawful US residents. “You can’t do both,” Chamorro said.

The ban could lead to a mass resignation of top executives and core research staff working at Chinese chip firms, which will hit the industry hard, Arthur Dong from Georgetown University said. So far, it’s not clear exactly how many American workers there are in China’s domestic chip industry.

But an examination of company filings indicates that more than a dozen chip firms have senior executives holding US citizenship or green cards.

At Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment China (AMEC), one of the country’s largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers, at least seven executives, including founder and chairman Gerald Yin, hold US citizenship, the latest company documents show.

Other examples include vice chairman Shu Qingming and deputy general manager Cheng Taiyi at GigaDevice Semiconductor, an advanced memory chip firm.

The Financial Times said in a recent report that Yangtze Memory Technologies has already asked American employees in core tech positions to leave, citing anonymous sources. But it’s unclear how many.

If these senior executives depart, “this will create a leadership and technological void within China’s chipmaking industry,” Dong said, as the country loses executives with years of chipmaking experience in an industry with “one of the most complex manufacturing processes known to mankind.”

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