Suppliers to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and China’s top chipmaker SMIC got billions of dollars worth of licenses from November through April to sell them goods and technology despite their being on a US trade blacklist, documents seen by Reuters showed on Thursday.
According to the documents, 113 export licenses worth $61 billion were approved for suppliers to ship products to Huawei while another 188 licenses valued at nearly $42 billion were greenlighted for Semiconductor Manufacturing International.
The data also showed that more than 9 out of 10 license applications were granted to SMIC suppliers while 69% of requests to ship to Huawei were approved over the same period.
The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee on Thursday voted to grant a request by its top Republican member Michael McCaul to release the licensing data, which it received from the Commerce Department in May.
House Republicans on the committee provided the documents to Reuters following the authorization, at Reuters request. The documents are expected to be posted publicly soon.
The numbers could enrage China hawks in Washington, who have made a concerted effort to deprive Chinese companies of access to advanced U.S. technology.
“It’s clearly in our national interest to increase transparency and public scrutiny on how our nation transfers its technology to an adversary,” McCaul said in a statement.
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