US government blacklists Huawei national security risksbut Chinese companies have apparently found ways to circumvent the sanctions.

As reported by Bloombergbased in Washington DC Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) believes Huawei is building a secret network of chip manufacturing facilities in China. So far, it has acquired at least two existing facilities and has at least three more under construction. The funding for this project will be part of the roughly $30 billion Huawei received from the Chinese government for chip production.

Huawei is on the US Entity List from 2019This means that a license is required before any US technology can be exported or transferred to the company. Huawei is not expected to be granted such a license as it is considered a national security risk.

Huawei is trying to circumvent those regulations by operating these factories under different names and not revealing its involvement, SIA said. It’s a “shadow manufacturing network” that exists to support Huawei’s business and establish itself as a leading chip producer in China.

The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) is aware of the situation and is actively monitoring it. Two companies identified as part of Huawei’s corporate network, Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuits Co., Ltd. and Peng Xinwei IC Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (PXW), have already been blacklisted. PXW made headlines last year It is run by a former Huawei executive.

In a statement to Bloomberg, the BIS said, “Given the stringent restrictions placed on Huawei, Fujian Jinhua, PXW and others, it is not surprising that they have sought so much state support to attempt to develop homegrown technology. No… BIS is under constant review.” And we will not hesitate to update our export controls based on the evolving threat environment and take appropriate action to protect the national security of the United States, as evidenced by the October 7, 2022 rule. deaf. “

Earlier this year, Huawei took a different approach to defeating US sanctions, replacing 13,000 parts and redesigning 4,000 circuit boards. We also develop operating systems (HarmonyOS), data systems, programming languages ​​(Cangjie), and compilers to be self-sufficient. But it still needs components, and Seagate was fined $300 million in April for selling millions of hard drives to Huawei.