The situation has reversed! American and South Korean chip giants are collectively fighting back. Foreign media reports: the ban may be lifted, and the U.S. export policy towards China may undergo significant changes. Shirt West Gate Meilan 2025-11-06 16:55 Fujian Focus on AI Guide #Hotspot Observer# Have you ever thought about how a carefully laid out “general’s” chess game could end up with itself almost checkmated? It sounds absurd, but it is the most accurate portrayal of the global chip war in recent years. The U.S. has been stirring things up since 2018, thinking that by holding the string of chips, it could tighten its grip on others. However, it unexpectedly found that this string had wrapped around its own giants’ feet tightly. At first, everyone was watching how the U.S. would strike, with wave after wave of bans causing widespread anxiety. But while everyone was focused on chips, China quietly made a move from another place, under the table, directly executing a “cutting off the water supply” strategy. Starting in July last year, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce suddenly announced export controls on gallium and germanium. Many people may not have even heard of these two names, thinking it was inconsequential. But those in the know felt a chill. These materials are the lifeblood of manufacturing high-performance chips, radars, and solar panels; calling them “industrial vitamins” is not an exaggeration. The key is that China’s production accounts for the vast majority of the global supply, nearly 70-80%. This control is equivalent to directly squeezing the throat of the downstream industrial chain. Before Western countries could react, by December, the controls were upgraded, adding antimony to the list, and in October of this year, five more rare earth elements were added. This series of moves had an immediate effect. Now it was the Western manufacturers who couldn’t sleep. They suddenly realized that the high-tech production lines they were proud of had their most fundamental sources in someone else’s hands. Want to build the most advanced electric vehicles? Sorry, the rare earth motors need China’s approval. Want to develop cutting-edge radars for national defense? Sorry, the supply of gallium and germanium depends on their whims. This boomerang hit accurately and hard, exploding right in America’s backyard. The first to be unsettled were not the politicians, but the tech giants at the top of the pyramid. The CEO of the Dutch lithography machine giant ASML, Peter Wennink, is quite an interesting old man. Over the past two years, he has become something of a “prophet,” repeatedly stating in various public forums that these blockades are useless and will only force China to invest more money and manpower into developing its own complete industrial chain. He said that the laws of physics are the same in China as they are elsewhere in the world; given time, they can produce anything. When that happens, you Western suppliers can expect to completely lose the world’s largest market. His words were like a bucket of cold water, but at the time, few people were willing to listen, thinking he was alarmist for his own business. As it turns out, his words are gradually becoming reality. Complaints from within the U.S. have grown louder. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing almost all semiconductor companies in the U.S., publicly issued a statement last year, and the tone was quite impolite. They directly addressed the White House, stating that these “overly broad and vague” unilateral restrictions are seriously undermining America’s global leadership position. This translates to: “Big brother, stop messing around. If this continues, all our customers will run away, and we won’t have money for R&D. In the end, we will be the first to go down.” This is no longer just a few companies grumbling privately; it is the entire industry laying it out in the open, almost a public “rebellion.” If anyone is suffering the most, it might be NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang. This “AI godfather” known for his signature leather jacket was once riding high, almost monopolizing the Chinese AI chip market with a 95% share, making money effortlessly. But with the ban, first, high-end chips were prohibited from being sold, and then their painstakingly developed “special edition” downgraded chip H20, which cost $2 billion in R&D, faced twists and turns. First, it was banned from sale, then it was said to be allowed, but with a bizarre condition: the company had to give 15% of its revenue to the government. Huang probably accepted it reluctantly, as selling is better than having it all go to waste. But the most dramatic moment came in October this year when Huang stated at a conference the words that silenced the entire industry. He said that NVIDIA’s market share in China’s AI market had dropped from a peak of 95% to “zero.” In one sentence, he encapsulated the absurdity and helplessness of companies caught in the middle of this game. Just when everyone thought this chess game would remain deadlocked, an unexpected “turnaround” occurred. In October last year, the U.S. Department of Commerce suddenly announced an “indefinite exemption” for South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix. What does this mean? It means that these two companies are allowed to transport U.S. equipment to their factories in China without restrictions. Not long before this, the U.S. had revoked their exemption, clearly intending to let these two companies’ factories in China “wither away.” This 180-degree turn left everyone dumbfounded. Why did this happen? Did the White House suddenly have a change of heart? Of course not. The underlying reason is somewhat amusing. The Americans calculated that they simply could not do without Samsung and SK Hynix’s factories in China. These two companies’ factories in Xi’an and Wuxi produce nearly 40% of the world’s NAND flash memory chips. If these two factories were truly choked off, the global storage chip market would immediately collapse. At that point, forget about phones and computers; all electronic products requiring storage chips would see prices skyrocket, and this inflation would ultimately burn back to the U.S. itself. In short, this is not a compromise; it is a forced capitulation to reality. It directly proves that in the vast web of globalization, if you try to unilaterally cut one thread, you often end up tearing the entire web apart, causing everyone to fall together. This chip war that began in 2018 has now reached a point where it is increasingly unclear who the winner and loser are. The U.S. intended to build a technological wall to trap its opponents inside, only to find that this wall has no door, and it cannot escape either. The latest data shows that the global semiconductor market has reached $600 billion, with China accounting for more than a third of that. In contrast, those leading American and South Korean companies have already incurred losses exceeding $50 billion. This tangible loss is more real than any slogan.