China Bans Unlicensed Exportation of High-Performance Drones and Supercomputers

The tightening of regulations comes two weeks after an incident in which the Pakistan Army shot down an Indian spy drone.

China’s Ministry of Commerce and its Customs Office new rules mean that drones that can stay airborne for longer than an hour, fly in bad weather and reach altitudes of 1 mile will have to have an additional licence to be exported for national security reasons starting mid-August.

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the restrictions earlier this week, but did not specify exactly how the hardware was a threat to national security.

Leading Chinese maker DJI dominates the global market and has said that its products “were not involved in these (new) export controls”, according to a statement reported by Chinese media, suggesting the government was mainly interested in restricting exports of military technology.

The limits placed on high-power computer chips could potentially be the result of renewed competition between China and the US in the field of supercomputers. The country has exported $120 million worth of drones.

“The ban is targeting drones not designed for commercial use, and will protect key technologies of Chinese companies”, said Shao Jianhuo, DJI vice-president.

The moves come soon after the US clamped down on the computer hardware that firms can sell to China.

While its technology lags behind the United States and Israel, the biggest vendors of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), China is attracting a growing list of foreign buyers including Nigeria, Pakistan and Egypt.

Under the new regulation, high-performance supercomputers that can perform 8 teraflops per second are restricted from export. The Tianhe-2 in Guangzhou is now the world’s fastest supercomputer, capable of speeds of 33.86 petaflops, but plans were afoot for China to create an even more powerful machine using Intel processors.