With the escalating tensions between China and the United States, the competition in cutting-edge technology fields intensifies. On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it is urging some of its Chinese employees to consider relocating abroad.
Amid the intensifying US-China tech war, the United States has been tightening restrictions to prevent China from acquiring advanced artificial intelligence chips, aiming to deter the Chinese Communist Party from enhancing its military capabilities using high technology. American companies operating in China in this sector are feeling increasing pressure.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report this news, stating that Microsoft is asking approximately 700 to 800 employees engaged in machine learning and other cloud computing-related work to consider moving overseas.
According to Reuters, a Microsoft spokesperson stated in an email, “Providing internal opportunities is a routine part of managing our global business. As part of this process, we have shared an optional internal transfer opportunity with a portion of our employees.” The spokesperson did not specify the number of employees involved in this plan.
The Microsoft spokesperson emphasized that Microsoft remains committed to the Chinese market and will continue its operations in China and other markets.
Citing informed sources, Huaren reported that the affected employees are mainly Chinese engineers. Earlier this week, Microsoft presented them with options to relocate to the United States, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.
On Wednesday, the Chinese state media outlet The Paper reported that a Microsoft employee said, “Everyone is puzzled,” as the affected employees have less than a month to make a decision.
According to China’s financial media outlet Caixin, over a hundred employees are affected, and individuals have the option to choose not to move.
Epoch Times was unable to immediately verify these details.
Microsoft entered the Chinese market in 1992 and is one of the largest American companies operating in China with a major research and development center.
Huaren reported that industry analysts stated that the relocation of Microsoft’s staff in China to other locations could indeed pose an indirect risk to the Chinese Communist Party’s artificial intelligence vision, especially considering the scarcity of top engineering talent globally. They mentioned that Microsoft engineers stationed abroad may find the prospect of returning to work for Chinese employers less appealing.
The report mentioned that Microsoft’s Asia Pacific research team employs around 7,000 engineers, with the majority of them located in China.
This move comes as the United States works to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology for military purposes. Over the past two years, the US has imposed successive restrictions on China, limiting its purchase of advanced chips and chip manufacturing equipment used for training artificial intelligence models.
A few days ago, the Biden administration raised tariffs on various Chinese imports, including electric vehicle batteries, semiconductors, and medical products.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the US Department of Commerce is considering new regulatory measures to restrict the export of proprietary or closed-source artificial intelligence models, where the software and training data are classified.
The US is concerned that artificial intelligence models that generate content by mining large amounts of data could be used for cyberattacks or producing biological weapons.
Earlier this year, Microsoft released a report indicating that state-supported hackers from Russia, China, and Iran have been using OpenAI tools to train hacker skills and support hacker activities.