China has added battery cathode material manufacturing technology and technologies related to minerals such as lithium to its list of export-controlled items.
On July 15, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China announced that they had revised the "Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export in China" (originally established in 2001) to include battery cathode material manufacturing technology.
The newly added technologies include lithium iron phosphate manufacturing technology for batteries, lithium manganese iron phosphate manufacturing technology for batteries, and phosphate cathode material manufacturing technology. In addition, China revised the export control list for the non-ferrous metal metallurgy sector to add technologies such as producing lithium carbonate from spodumene, extracting and producing lithium hydroxide from spodumene, manufacturing metallic lithium (and its alloys) and lithium materials, extracting lithium from brine, and producing lithium-containing purification solutions.
The "Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export," based on China's Foreign Trade Law, is a measure that regulates the external transfer of general industrial technologies designated as requiring management.
Technologies listed as export-prohibited cannot be exported at all. For technologies under export control, transfer is only possible with official approval.
Earlier, in January of this year, China announced that it would solicit opinions from various sectors to revise the scope of export controls on battery and lithium technologies. This measure came about a month after China banned exports of key semiconductor minerals such as gallium, germanium, and antimony to the United States in response to U.S. semiconductor controls at the end of last year.
The Korea Strategic Trade Institute, in a report published in January this year when China began gathering opinions on battery cathode material and lithium technology export controls, warned, "If China designates these technologies as dual-use items, it may require overseas companies utilizing these technologies to comply with Chinese export controls."
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