Pay attention to the aftermath of Jensen Huang... Chinese expert: "If US chip regulations are strengthened, China will fight back with rare earths."

In the aftermath of the resignation of former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, there is speculation that if the United States uses this as an opportunity to strengthen semiconductor export controls to China, China may fight back with rare earth cards.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), a Hong Kong media outlet, on the 13th (local time), Victor Gao, deputy director of the think tank Center for China and Globalization (CCG), said of the possibility of the United States using the Nvidia incident to pressure China, "It would be a complete misjudgment. China will tighten rare earth export controls."

Wang Yingliang, editor-in-chief of the economic analysis platform 'Sharp Voice', also said that by turning the issue of former CEO Hwang's affair into a security issue, the United States has gained a new justification for strengthening export controls on semiconductors to China, but said that China also has a countermeasure.

He mentioned the possibility that China could impose sanctions on U.S. companies and negotiate to obtain concessions on semiconductor export controls using trade negotiations and cooperation in rare earths, drugs, and telecommunications fraud as leverage.

However, he predicted that, as China's semiconductor inventory is significant and China's technological capabilities are increasing, the impact of strengthened sanctions can be alleviated in the short term, and "semiconductors will not have a significant impact on trade negotiations."

He predicted that U.S. President Donald Trump will maintain the current semiconductor export control policy as long as national security concerns do not spread further, although there are still uncertainties such as suspicions of Chinese espionage and the investigation into Alice Hwang, who was identified as former CEO Hwang's affair partner.

Xu Tianchen of the think tank Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said, "The 'constructive strategic stability' (agreed earlier) is a matter between China and President Trump, but President Trump has weakened (with the opposition Democratic Party winning a landslide victory in the U.S. midterm elections)," and said that the U.S.-China relationship has become more fragile.

President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to hold the third U.S.-China summit this year during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China on the 18th and 19th.

In the course of the trade war since the inauguration of the Trump administration, China's rare earth export controls and the U.S.'s restrictions on semiconductor exports to China have been evaluated as key 'weapons', and both sides are continuing a truce through negotiations.

Meanwhile, Chinese state-run media Global Times reported an expert's assessment that competition in the global semiconductor industry will intensify following the resignation of former CEO Huang, a symbolic figure in the AI ​​industry, but at the same time, opportunities will also increase.

Liu Shaosan, director of the Embodied Intelligence Center at the Shenzhen AI and Robotics Research Institute, said that following the resignation of former CEO Hwang, major companies are likely to speed up their own chip development and diversification of computing architecture.

He also said, “Future competition will increasingly go beyond computing power to encompass computing architecture, software ecosystem, and application costs,” adding, “This could open the Spring and Autumn Warring States era for the semiconductor industry.”

He added that former CEO Hwang's contribution was not only the development of graphics processing units (GPUs), but also the establishment of an extensive AI computing ecosystem through the 'CUDA' platform.