Beijing has urged the United States to quit the “unreasonable suppression of Huawei and Chinese enterprises” after Washington declared new export controls to restrict the tech giant’s obtain to semiconductor technology.

The most current constraints on the world’s next-largest smartphone company, which is at the centre of US spying allegations, are a new escalation in the US-China struggle for world technological dominance.

“The Chinese government will firmly uphold Chinese firms’ reputable and lawful legal rights and pursuits,” the Ministry of Overseas Affairs claimed in a statement Saturday.

“We urge the US aspect to instantly prevent its unreasonable suppression of Huawei and Chinese enterprises.”

The ministry claimed the Trump administration’s actions “ruin worldwide production, supply and benefit chains”.

The US Commerce Office explained Friday the controls would “narrowly and strategically focus on Huawei’s acquisition of semiconductors that are the immediate product or service of certain US computer software and engineering.”

US officials have regularly accused the Chinese technological know-how big of thieving American trade strategies and aiding China’s espionage efforts, ramping up tensions with the rival superpower though equally sides have been associated in a very long-simmering trade war.

As a outcome, Huawei has more and more relied on domestically produced technologies, but the most current policies will also ban foreign firms that use US technological know-how from transport semiconductors to Huawei without US authorization.

The new limits will reduce off Huawei’s entry to one particular of its significant suppliers, the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, which also manufactures chips for Apple and other tech corporations.

The US previous calendar year banned Huawei from applying US-made semiconductors in their solutions.

China has threatened retaliation versus the US for the shift, like imposing restrictions on key US firms and placing them on an “unreliable entity list”, in accordance to an nameless government supply quoted in the Communist Celebration tabloid International Periods on Friday.

US tech giants Apple, Cisco, Qualcomm, and planemaker Boeing are amongst the firms that may possibly be focused, the report claimed.

US-China relations are once again on the rocks with Washington and Beijing buying and selling barbs in excess of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

About the past 7 days, China has also threatened retaliatory actions in opposition to the US for restricting the visa keep boundaries of Chinese journalists, and for quite a few lawsuits submitted by US lawmakers from China for the coronavirus pandemic.

Huawei has not still responded to requests for comment.