China's Ministry of Commerce has announced that starting on August 1, export restrictions will apply to gallium and germanium and industrial products and materials containing them, according to local media.
Companies who want to export these materials would reportedly have to procure the appropriate exporting licenses. In order to do so, they would have to submit the appropriate applications to the Ministry of Commerce which may review them together with "relevant departments."
Han also reportedly said that the export restriction may be a "countermeasure" against the efforts led by the US to control the export of microchips to China.
China is reportedly the current "dominant global producer" of gallium and germanium, as one Western media outlet put it.
In recent years, the United States and its allies moved to impose severe restrictions on the export of semiconductors and microchips to China, as relations between Washington and Beijing continued to deteriorate since then-US President Donald Trump started the US-Chinese trade war in 2018.
The US also seeks to thwart Beijing’s attempts to develop a domestic microchip industry, seeking to limit the export of chip technology to China.