Taipei. China on Saturday launched two investigations targeting the US semiconductor sector ahead of talks in Spain this week on trade, national security and ownership of social media platform TikTok.

China’s commerce ministry has announced that it has opened anti-dumping investigations into some U.S.-imported analogue IC chips. This research will target interface IC chips and gate driver IC chips. These chips are mostly produced by U.S. companies such as Texas Instruments and On Semiconductor.

The ministry also announced a separate anti-discrimination investigation against China’s chip industry, saying the US measures were discriminatory.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid from Sunday to Wednesday, his office said.

China claims that measures such as U.S. export restrictions and tariffs demonstrate “strategies to control and suppress the development of high-tech industries such as advanced computer chips and artificial intelligence (AI).”

The announcement came a day after the US added 23 Chinese companies to the “entity list”. Companies listed could face sanctions for acting against U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. Two of the companies are accused of providing chip production equipment to major Chinese chipmaker SMIC.

The Besant-Hay meeting in Madrid will be the next phase of talks aimed at easing trade tensions, suspending high taxes and improving mutual understanding.

Earlier, the two sides held talks in Geneva in May, London in June and Stockholm in July. Those talks have often led to 90-90 days of temporary pauses in mutual tariffs, which have helped avert a full-scale trade war.

Besant called the Stockholm talks “very result-oriented”. “We need to mitigate risk with some of the strategic industries such as rare earth metals, semiconductors or pharmaceuticals,” he said. We also discussed what we can do jointly to bring the relations to a balance. ’

US President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden have both banned the sale of chip manufacturing equipment in line with their policy of denying China access to advanced semiconductors.

While Washington has linked the move to national security, China says the sanctions are part of a US strategy to curb its technological growth.