Bloomberg reported on September 7 that despite the strong obstruction by the Trump administration against countries using Huawei's AI chips, Malaysia still tends to rely on Huawei's AI chips to provide computing power for its sovereign AI projects.
According to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, Malaysia is carefully evaluating Huawei’s AI hardware as a key component of a project worth 2 billion ringgits (approximately 3.317 billion RMB). The goal of this project is to give Malaysia greater control over its own data. However, it is still unclear how many chips Malaysia will purchase.
Reports indicate that, in the face of restrictions imposed by the United States on its access to foreign production equipment over the years, Huawei has been working hard to improve the performance of its AI chips. Although there is still a significant gap between Huawei's AI chips and those of NVIDIA, as the manufacturing prospects of Huawei improve, the company is seeking to establish itself in the global data center market, including in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar said that Malaysia does not want to merely become a consumer of technology overseas. In addition to the infrastructure that may be provided by Huawei, the Anwar government also encourages local telecom companies to cooperate with foreign companies, aiming to create a broader framework for AI development.
Sources familiar with the matter revealed that the chip being evaluated in Malaysia is Huawei’s flagship product, the Ascend 910C. Last year, the Trump administration explicitly threatened that using chips like the Ascend 910C anywhere in the world could violate U.S. export control regulations.
According to reports, if Malaysia actually decides to use Huawei chips, it will become the first known case where a foreign government officially chooses Chinese AI chips over American products. This also means that Anwar is challenging the United States’ attempts to control global AI infrastructure.
According to the introduction, Malaysia's AI project focuses on ensuring that data including highly sensitive government information, military and intelligence materials remains within the country.
Anwar previously stated that relevant U.S. laws could pose challenges to this goal, especially the U.S. CLOUD Act, which came into effect during Trump’s first term in office. This law allows U.S. courts to request American technology companies to hand over electronic data, even if the data is stored overseas.
I believe that that legal document is unreasonable, but who could argue with President Trump? Anwar said this in April when he was engaging in a dialogue with university students.
According to reports by Bloomberg, neither the Office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, the Digital Department of Malaysia, nor representatives from Huawei responded to requests for comments. According to a person familiar with discussions within the Anwar government, the Malaysian government believes that any decisions regarding this matter are purely business-related.
In recent years, the United States has been intensifying its arbitrary suppression of Chinese companies. The US attempts to ban certain Chinese advanced computing chips, including Huawei's Ascend chips, worldwide. In a statement issued on May 21 last year, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce pointed out that these US measures are typical examples of unilateral bullying and protectionism, seriously undermining the stability of the global semiconductor industry chain and supply chain, and denying other countries the right to develop advanced computing chips and high-tech industries such as artificial intelligence.
The Chinese side believes that the US has abused export controls and is suppressing China, which violates international law and the basic norms of international relations. This seriously damages the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises and jeopardizes China's development interests.
China emphasizes that the US measures are suspected of constituting discriminatory restrictions against Chinese enterprises. Any organization or individual that implements or assists in implementing these US measures will be suspected of violating laws and regulations such as the 'Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law of the People's Republic of China', and must bear corresponding legal responsibilities.
