The Multimillion-Dollar Machines at the Center of the U.S.-China Rivalry

They are smooth white boxes, roughly the size of large cargo vans, and they are now at the heart of the U.S.-Chinese technology conflict.

As the United States tries to slow China’s progress toward technological advances that could help its military, the complex lithography machines that print intricate circuitry on computer chips have become a key choke point.

The machines are central to China’s efforts to develop its own chip-making industry, but China does not yet have the technology to make them, at least in their most advanced forms. This week, U.S. officials took steps to curb China’s progress toward that goal by barring companies globally from sending additional types of chip-making machines to China, unless they obtain a special license from the U.S. government.

The move could be a significant blow to China’s chip-manufacturing ambitions. It is also an unusual flexing of American regulatory power. American officials took the position that they could regulate equipment manufactured outside the United States if it contains even just one American-made part.

That decision gives U.S. officials new sway over companies in the Netherlands and Japan, where some of the most advanced chip machinery is made. In particular, U.S. rules will now stop shipments of some machines that use deep ultraviolet, or DUV, technology made mainly by the Dutch firm ASML, which dominates the lithography market.

Vera Kranenburg, a China researcher at the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think tank, said that while ASML had made clear that it would follow the regulations, the company was already chafing under earlier regulations that barred it from exporting a more sophisticated lithography machine to China.