US President Joe Biden and his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, have little in common.

One policy area in which the two men have been in full agreement, though, is China.

The Trump administration made a number of interventions aimed at blocking Chinese economic interests, for example slapping tariffs on steel and aluminium imports and blocking the $117bn (£105.8bn) Chinese-backed bid for US chipmaker Qualcomm.

He declared war on Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker, barring foreign chip manufacturers who use American software and technology from making products available to the company.

Mr Trump also targeted Semiconductor Manufacturing International, China's largest chip manufacturer and a major supplier to Huawei, ordering US companies to obtain licences before exporting certain technologies to the company. He followed that up, in the dying days of his presidency, by adding the company to an export blacklist.

Mr Biden built on those restrictions in the summer when he told US chip companies, including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, they would be required to obtain licences from the government when selling certain products and services to China and Russia.

The latest instalment

On Friday, he went further, slapping a fresh set of export control restrictions on chip companies.

Specifically, the White House sought to restrict China's ability to "obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors".

It added: "These items and capabilities are used by [China] to produce advanced military systems including weapons of mass destruction; Boost the speed and accuracy of its military decision making, planning, and logistics, as well as of its autonomous military systems; and commit human rights abuses…these rules make clear that foreign government actions that prevent [the US government] from making compliance determinations will impact a company's access to US technology."

This latter measure is significant in that it could also affect Taiwanese and South Korean chip companies with operations in China.

It was notable that, in addition to the resulting share price declines in Chinese chip companies such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International (which fell by 4%) and Hua Hong Semiconductor (which fell by 9.5%), there were also more modest declines in non-Chinese players today such as the Dutch group ASML and the German group Infineon. Chinese tech stocks were also badly hit, including Alibaba (down 3.25%) and Tencent (down 2.5%), helping drag down the Shanghai Composite, which fell by 1.67% and the blue-chip CSI 300, which fell by 2.2%.

Shifting gears

America's motivation here appears to be broader than in the recent past. Previous moves, such as those targeting Huawei, seemed specifically aimed at hobbling the Chinese military whereas these latest measures can be interpreted as having a broader aim of ensuring that the US retains global leadership in chipmaking and supercomputers.

This was confirmed by Thea Rozman Kendler, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration, who said: "[China] has poured resources into developing supercomputing capabilities and seeks to become a world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. It is using these capabilities to monitor, track, and surveil their own citizens, and fuel its military modernisation.

"Our actions will protect US national security and foreign policy interests while also sending a clear message that US technological leadership is about values as well as innovation."

Beijing has certainly interpreted the latest measures as being broader than just an attempt to hamper its military. It responded to the measures on Saturday by suggesting they were an abuse of trade measures aimed at maintaining what it called America's "technological hegemony".

Supply chain risk

The collateral damage, though, could go beyond the wider Chinese tech and manufacturing sectors. They may also make global supply chains operate less smoothly than before and, potentially, push up prices of goods for consumers everywhere.

What has particularly startled observers is that, in addition to the controls on chips and chip equipment, the White House has also slapped restrictions on US citizens from supporting Chinese chip producers. This is seen as especially far-reaching.

The measures, though, spark a number of questions.

The first is the extent to which other governments align themselves with the US. Mr Trump's moves to single out Huawei were followed by similar measures from the UK, France and Australia, although Germany initially resisted banning the company from 5G roll-out, before eventually falling into line with the rest of the EU.

An early test of the UK's approach will be in the much-delayed decision over whether or not to allow Chinese-backed Nexperia to buy the Welsh company Newport Wafer Fab, owner of the UK's largest semiconductor factory, a deal first announced last year but then referred to the national security adviser by Boris Johnson.

A second big question is how China responds to these measures. The expectation is that the country will now have to work even harder to find alternatives to US technology and may resort to intellectual property theft to ensure it does not fall behind.

Perhaps the biggest of all, though, is how America seeks to enforce these measures. They are big and broad - but making them stick and have real impact could turn out to be hard work.

© Provided by Free Press Journal JEE Advanced 2022 Question Papers out; Know more

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, has released the question papers of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced 2022 for both the sessions. The question papers can be downloaded from the official website- jeeadv.ac.in.

JEE Advanced 2022 was held on Sunday, August 28 in two shifts; paper one between 9 am and 12 noon and paper two from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm. The candidates who appeared for both sessions of the exam, found the paper to be easy. According to experts, the paper was moderate and followed the pattern of JEE Advanced.

According to Mohammad Kashif Alam, Top IIT JEE Educator at Unacademy, "the Physics paper had questions largely from Modern Physics and Optics, Chemistry had a mix of Physical and Organic Chemistry questions while Maths paper had tricky questions from PNC and Calculus."

JEE Advanced 2022 answer key will be out on Saturday, September 3, to which the candidates can raise objections via the official website- jeeadv.ac.in till September 4. IIT Bombay will review the objections, and will accordingly release the final answer key and result on September 11.

Candidates who get selected can take part in the Joint Seat Allocation (JoSAA) counseling process to enter the IITs. The JoSAA counseling process will begin on September 12.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said “there’s no way the US can crush us”, adding, “the world cannot leave us because we are more advanced

Huawei Technologies founder Ren Zhengfei said “there’s no way the US can crush us”, according to an interview he gave to BBC. “The world cannot leave us because we are more advanced. Even if they persuade more countries not to use us temporarily, we can always scale things down a bit,” he said.

Ren also said the arrest of his daughter and Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou is politically motivated. “Firstly, I object to what the US has done. This kind of politically motivated act is not acceptable,” Ren told the BBC.

Canada arrested Meng on December first at the request of the United States. Meng was charged with bank and wire fraud to violate American sanctions against Iran.

The US Justice Department denied the charges were politically motivated.

“The Justice Department’s criminal case against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou is based solely on the evidence and the law. The Department pursues cases free of any political interference and follows the evidence and rule of law in pursuing criminal charges,” spokesman Nicole Navas said in an e-mail to Reuters.

Huawei, along with another Chinese network equipment company, ZTE Corp, has been accused by the US of working at the behest of the Chinese government. The United States has said their equipment could be used to spy on Americans. Huawei has repeatedly denied the claims.

Commenting on the spying concerns, the Huawei founder reiterated that the company will “never undertake” any spying activities.

Huawei, the world's biggest producer of telecoms equipment, faces intense scrutiny in the West over its relationship with the Chinese government and allegations of enabling state espionage, with the United States calling for its allies not to use its technology.

Ren said the company could downsize to weather such attempts by the United States.

“If the lights go out in the West, the East will still shine. And if the North goes dark, there is still the South. America doesn’t represent the world. America only represents a portion of the world,” Ren said.

”The world cannot leave us because we are more advanced. Even if they (US) persuade more countries not to use us temporarily, we can always scale things down a bit“.

In comments on a potential ban in the UK, Ren said it would not make the company withdraw its UK investments, adding that it will shift its investments to the UK from the United States if US actions against Huawei continue.

”We will invest even more in the UK. Because if the US doesn't trust us, then we will shift our investment from the US to UK on an even bigger scale,” Ren told the BBC.

On Monday it was reported that British security offcials do not support a full ban of Huawei from national telecoms networks despite US allegations against the Chinese firm.

Visions of a technologically ascendent China keep American strategists up at night. They see the contours of a surveillance state implementing the will of President Xi Jinping by algorithmic edict at home and projecting computing power abroad. To erase those contours for good, on October 7th President Joe Biden’s administration announced the most sweeping set of export controls in decades. The new rules cut off people and firms in China from many advanced technologies of American origin, and from products made using these. The list includes chips used for artificial intelligence (ai), software to design advanced chips and the machine tools to manufacture them. Selling such things to China is now barred without explicit permission from America’s government. Rulebreakers risk being cut off from American tech themselves.

The share prices of affected Chinese firms have sunk (see chart). China’s biggest producer of memory chips, the state-owned YMTC, has 60 days to allow American officials to inspect its operations for compliance. American companies that sell advanced semiconductor technology to China have also been hit, even as they reel from a deep cyclical slump in demand for their wares. This week it emerged that Intel, America’s chipmaking champion with Chinese sales of $21bn last year, is about to axe thousands of jobs.

America has previously used similar rules to kneecap Huawei, China’s telecoms-gear giant. Jake Sullivan, Mr Biden’s national security adviser, boasted recently that export controls have forced Russia to “use chips from dishwashers in its military equipment”, which will “over time degrade [its] battlefield capabilities”. In the case of China, America’s goal is likewise no longer just to stay ahead of its rival in the tech race but to “put the high-end Chinese chip-design industry out of business”, says Greg Allen, a former defence-department official who has studied the new rules.

Whether America gets its way depends on several factors. There are “real questions” about the rules’ legality, says Peter Lichtenbaum of Covington & Burling, a law firm in Washington. He expects someone to test the restrictions in court. Donald Trump’s administration was successfully sued over an executive order banning TikTok. Even legal export controls are leaky. Plugging the leaks requires more resources for the enforcers at the Commerce Department. “Their to-do list has exploded,” says Mr Allen. “Their budget has not.”

And China imports $400bn-worth of chips a year, more than any other country. Though private companies and allied countries might be happy to go along with the Americans now, the amount of money being left on the table by not selling to Chinese customers may start to rankle.

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© 2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.

From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on https://www.economist.com/business/2022/10/13/america-curbs-chinese-access-to-advanced-computing

Huawei, the Chinese technology group, is planning to relaunch 5G phones as soon as next year to overcome the stranglehold of US sanctions and win back market share.

The company is blacklisted by Washington from acquiring US technology for 5G smartphones but has been developing strategies to bypass the sanctions, according to three people familiar with the matter.

One approach is to redesign its smartphone without using restricted advanced chips, said two people familiar with the company’s plans. Huawei used to produce Kirin chipsets designed by HiSilicon and manufactured by leading chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co before the US tightened restrictions.

The company is reworking its phones to use less advanced chips made by Chinese companies that will enable 5G. The less advanced chips may impact user experience, especially compared with phones from Huawei’s previous generations and rival Apple’s iPhone 14.

Huawei, a Chinese national champion caught by rising geopolitical tension between Washington and Beijing, is working to reclaim lost market share after its sales plunged following the imposition of US sanctions in 2019. Revenues from its smartphone-led consumer business fell 50 per cent year on year in 2021.

“This company cannot wait endlessly and needs to bring 5G phones back to the market as soon as possible,” said one person familiar with Huawei’s plans.

“Huawei has lost its leading position in the mobile phone market to American sanctions years ago. Now even their domestic market share keeps dwindling.”

Another sanctions workaround that Huawei is considering is collaborating on a phone case product which enables 5G, according to two people briefed on the matter.

There are already phone cases on the market. One case, developed by Shenzhen-listed company Soyea Technology, has a built-in eSIM module with chips that support a 5G connection.

Within weeks of Huawei launching its Mate 50 series in September, China Telecom, a Chinese state telecom group, began to sell the phone with the cases. This year, Soyea also launched phone cases for Huawei’s P50 Pro.

“The company is trying its best to appeal to users at a time when the consumer market is weak,” said a Shanghai-based tech analyst, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions.

Huawei’s quest to overcome the US restrictions and reclaim its position as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor is a matter of national importance to Beijing as it works to develop technological self-sufficiency, said analysts.

“China’s technology self-sufficiency plan could be a potential driver in helping Huawei to join the 5G competition,” said Will Wong, a Singapore-based analyst at research company IDC.

But as long as the US sanctions are in place, Huawei is at a severe disadvantage, experts said.

“It would take Huawei so long to build up internally or externally the supply chain it needs to pull this off from that we’ll probably be in the 6G era before this can be done,” said Douglas Fuller, an expert in China’s semiconductor industry.

The sanctions have frustrated Huawei’s plans to take on Apple. Richard Yu, chief executive of Huawei’s consumer business group, admitted in a July media interview that the group was “the only manufacturer selling 4G phones in the 5G era”, which he said was “a joke”.

Customers in China have started pushing back against the high price tag of Huawei’s phones lacking 5G services.

“In just a week [after Huawei launched Mate 50], hundreds of people have approached me to modify their Mate 50 so that it can support 5G networks,” said Michael Li, owner of a Shenzhen-based repair shop.

Some customers even brought in their Mate 40, a previous generation Huawei 5G phone, and asked if Li could put old phones’ chips into the new one. “Of course, that is beyond my ability.”

Huawei did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The Autonomous Networks Leadership Forum was successfully held by TM Forum during Digital Transformation World (DTW). The industry leaders from AIS, MTN, and Telecom Argentina shared their Autonomous Networks (AN) strategies, thoughts and practices. Marvin Liu, Huawei ADN industry Marketing Director, delivered a speech titled Pave the Way to High-Level Autonomous Networks with Huawei ADN Solution.

In the speech, Liu pointed out that Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) is the key strategy of Huawei’s Intelligent World 2030 and a key technical component in the 5.5G era. Huawei ADN features a three-layer AI architecture to help operators achieve Level 4 AN:

– At the network element (NE) layer, AI Native is implemented to upgrade traditional NEs to intelligent NEs.

– At the network management and control layer, digital twins and telecom foundation models are introduced to significantly Boost operations efficiency.

– At the business and service layer, the intelligent service engine is built to implement closed-loop management.

With the full-stack AI architecture, Huawei ADN can deliver a Zero-X (zero-wait, zero-touch, zero-trouble) experience to customers, and develop Self-X (self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing) network O&M capabilities for network operations personnel.

In addition, Huawei is committed to joint innovation with network operators to overcome the challenges in high-value scenarios and Boost ADN solution capabilities, facilitating both technology innovation and business success. Over the past three years, Huawei and China Mobile have continuously carried out strategic collaboration and innovative practices on AN, which have yielded a positive and significant result. In terms of the premium home broadband service, over 100 user labels, and network KPIs and KQIs are introduced to proactively assure experience and accurately identify potential customers. This improves customer satisfaction and the proactive upselling success rate. In terms of end-to-end 5G network O&M, intelligent alarm compression, multi-dimensional analysis algorithms, and machine learning are used to significantly reduce network alarms and tickets, continuously improving the accuracy of proactive prevention and reducing network O&M costs.

In terms of industry standards system, Huawei has been promoting collaboration and coordination among nine Standards Development Organizations, and improving the AN standards system. Over past three years, Huawei has played an active role in more than 36 AN standards projects and contributed more than 300 proposals.

“The large-scale application of AN definitely requires the close collaboration across the industry”, Liu concluded. “Huawei is willing to work with global partners to help more operators Boost the capabilities of intelligent network automation based on the TM Forum’s AN framework and the four-element implementation methodology of the target architecture, AN levels, effectiveness indicators, and operations practices, achieving the strategic goals of Level 3 by 2023 and Level 4 by 2025.”

© Provided by The Indian Express

The National Testing Agency, (NTA) has released an advanced intimation slip of examination city for PM YASASVI. The Prime Minister Young Achievers Scholarship Award Scheme for Vibrant India entrance test will be conducted on September 25. Candidates can check the cities in which their examination would be held at the official website– yet.nta.ac.in

Read |IIT Kanpur to offer 10 special scholarships to top 100 JEE Advanced rank holders

The scholarship is awarded at two levels, for students studying in classes 9 and 11. The candidates are selected based on a test known as the YASASVI entrance test (YET).

PM YASASVI 2022: How to check city intimation slip

Step 1: Go to the official website– yet.nta.ac.in

Step 2: Go to the link ‘download city intimation slip’

Step 3: Enter your credentials such as application number and date of birth

Step 4: Check the city and obtain it for future reference

The duration of the test is three hours. It will be conducted from 2 pm to 5 pm. There will be four subjects on which the students will be assessed, Mathematics comprising 30 questions and 120 marks, Science comprising 20 questions and 80 marks, Social Sciences and General knowledge and awareness comprising 25 questions and 50 marks each. The test will have a total of 100 questions for 400 marks.

The test is an objective type test comprising Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs). Each question will have four possible answer options. It will be conducted in Computer Based Test (CBT) mode.