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Reference News reported on July 21 According to a report on the Russian website of the Herald on July 18, the US government is studying the possibility of imposing the "toughest" restrictions on the export of lithography machines to China, a move that will involve two US allies. If the two leading companies in the world's lithography machine manufacturing industry, ASML Holding of the Netherlands and Tokyo Electron of Japan, continue to cooperate with China in the field of advanced chip manufacturing, the United States will introduce new restrictions.

According to Bloomberg, the new restrictions first involve the maintenance of equipment sold by the two Dutch and Japanese companies to China before the United States tightened restrictions on the sale of lithography machines to China in October 2022.

It is worth noting that the Netherlands and Japan do not want to succumb to the veiled threats from the US authorities on the chip issue before the US presidential election. An anonymous Japanese official has said that Japan does not intend to act in accordance with the US's request. At the same time, the US government is under pressure from its own companies. These companies believe that they now have to comply with the measures introduced by the White House against the Chinese market.

The Chinese market is crucial for Japan's Tokyo Electron and ASML.

Vladimir Nelidov, an expert at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, pointed out that even in its relations with the United States, Japan often adopts a pragmatic approach, putting its own economic interests above the unity of the two countries. In the 1980s, a real trade war even broke out between the United States and Japan because the Americans were worried that their auto industry could not compete with Japan.

Nelidov said this happened because business lobbies are seen as important players in Japanese politics, so the government's economic department often takes a different stance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The expert concluded that in the long run, if the confrontation between the United States and China continues, Japan will reduce its cooperation with China, but in the short term, Japan will not do so even if it is under pressure from the United States. (Compiled by Liu Yang)

Tokyo Electron's logo (Reuters file photo)