Visitors at the booth of Nvidia Corp during an expo in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. (LONG WEI / FOR CHINA DAILY)

The US authorities' reported discussions with Nvidia Corp on permissible sale of artificial intelligence chips to China appear to show that the nation is an important market for the growth of US tech giants, and that politically motivated US controls will only cause huge losses to multinational companies, said industry experts on Tuesday.

The comments came after Reuters reported US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo as saying that Nvidia "can, will and should" sell AI chips to China, but that the company cannot sell its most advanced semiconductors to Chinese firms.

Just a week ago, Raimondo had warned chip companies like Nvidia at a forum. She had said that if any company redesigns a chip below a particular threshold drawn by the US Commerce Department that would enable China to make strides in AI, she is going to "control it the very next day".

Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Information Consumption Alliance, a telecom industry association in Beijing, said Raimondo's reported remarks appear to reflect the vital role of the Chinese market to the success of a string of US tech giants.

"Though the US government wants to restrict the export of AI chips to China, they have to consider the interests of US companies. The Chinese chip market is so big that any business from any country is not willing to sacrifice benefits and incur financial losses for the sake of biased political reasons," Xiang said.

"And the fact is that politically motivated US controls also motivated Chinese tech and internet companies to stock more types of AI chips rather than just one company's, and many of these firms are also accelerating the development of their own chips to avoid potential risks in the future," he added.

The United States will, Raimondo had also said, take the "strongest possible" action to protect its national security on being asked how the Commerce Department would respond to a recent chip-making breakthrough in China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a news conference on Tuesday that China is firmly opposed to the abuse of export control measures by the US, which has seriously damaged the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.

These measures are also not conducive to the stability of global chip production and supply chains, and violate the principles of market economy and fair competition, she said, emphasizing that they are not in the interests of any party.

US officials have repeatedly said that the country has no intention of decoupling from China or obstructing China's economic development, she said, adding that the US should implement these commitments.

Last year, China's semiconductor purchases totaled $180 billion, accounting for around a third of the worldwide total of $555.9 billion, consolidating the country's status as the largest single market for semiconductors, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

For instance, the Chinese market currently accounts for around 20 percent of Nvidia's total sales.

Its chief executive Jensen Huang said last week that the company is working closely with the US government to ensure that new chips for the Chinese market are compliant with the export curbs.

Though Nvidia is a dominant supplier of AI chips to the Chinese market, Huang said earlier this year that companies like Huawei Technologies Co are among "very formidable "competitors to Nvidia in the race to produce the best AI chips.

Nori Chiou, investment director at White Oak Capital, said in an interview that the original goal of the US was to slow down China's AI capabilities. But, in fact, related action has boosted China's self-development capability.

Many Chinese cloud giants are working on building their AI ecosystems without US chips due to these restrictions, he said.

Tao Qing, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said in October that China will step up the development of AI chips as part of efforts to promote fundamental technological breakthroughs in AI and introduce applications of the cutting-edge technology in more sectors.

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings, for instance, has a self-developed AI chip Zixiao, which is focused on processing images, video and natural language.

Contact the writers at chengyu@chinadaily.com.cn