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The Netherlands, Europe's premier maker of the machines used to manufacture microchips, has been pushed by Washington to impose curbs similar to those announced by US authorities last year.
The export curb, revealed in a letter by Dutch Foreign Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher in a letter to parliament on Wednesday, comes less than two months after the country's Prime Minister Mark Rutte discussed the issue with US President Joe Biden during a visit to Washington.
Chinese foreign spokesperson told a press briefing Thursday that "a certain country has overextended the concept of national security, politicising and instrumentalising economic, trade and technological issues" in recent years -- an apparent reference to the US.
This is done "in order to deprive China of its development rights and maintain its own hegemony", she said.
"Even at the expense of the interests of its allies, (a certain country) has coerced and induced some countries to impose export restrictions on China. The relevant acts of bullying and hegemony seriously undermine market rules and the international trade order," Mao added.
Recent years have seen a ratcheting up of tensions surrounding the global computer chips market as Western officials raise alarm bells over the provision of core technological components by increasingly adversarial trading partners.
The latest restrictions are expected to affect Dutch-based ASML, Europe's largest semiconductor tech company.
Although Dutch authorities did not mention the firm by name, the restrictions were said to target Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography, a technique for printing tiny circuits on microchips in which ASML specialises.
The aim of the export controls was to prevent military use, and to protect the Netherlands' "unique and leading position" in such technologies, the government said.
pfc/dhc
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