China links chip access to climate action in G20 talks

China has raised the issue of improved access to advanced semiconductors in international discussions over progress on tackling climate change, according to people familiar with preparations for the Group of 20 summit.

Chinese officials brought up the prospect of developed countries delivering more financing and technology — including chips — to aid efforts to combat global warming, the people said. All asked not to be named discussing negotiations that are ongoing and private.

China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to questions after normal business hours.

Negotiations on climate action are among the most fraught in the run-up to this weekend’s meeting in New Delhi, which Chinese President Xi Jinping has opted to skip amid tensions with both India and the US.

Xi’s administration has repeatedly condemned President Joe Biden’s move to tighten export controls on leading-edge chip technology to China on national security grounds, saying it amounts to containment of the world’s second-largest economy. China’s gambit in talks with G-20 counterparts, including the US and other chip powers such as Japan and South Korea, suggests that those restrictions are hurting – and that efforts to link chip access to climate action are unlikely to succeed.

Chips are used in applications that are required to speed the energy transition, such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. In an April speech outlining US industrial policy and Washington’s competition with China, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned that “clean-energy supply chains are at risk of being weaponized,” similarly to oil in the 1970s.

The US is looking into revelations that Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co. produced a smartphone with an advanced processor at its core to determine whether sanctions have been breached. Bloomberg