On 16 October, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported a Bloomberg interview Economic Affairs Minister Kung Ming-hsin gave on 12 October. The account below follows the open relays: CNA, Taiwan News, Asia Business Daily, and Tom’s Hardware.
What the relays report
CNA, published 16 October at 17:24 Taipei time and updated 17 October at 07:45, says Kung told Bloomberg that Taiwan will add AI servers and advanced semiconductors to the export-control list. After the measures take effect, CNA says, shipping restricted AI hardware to China would be prosecuted under the Foreign Trade Act. He gave no implementation date. CNA dates the conversation to 12 October, a Monday, which matches Taiwan News’s “Monday interview.”
Taiwan News, 16 October at 20:16, reports the same list and the same missing date. It says unauthorized shipments of the restricted equipment could then be charged under the Foreign Trade Act, and that some controls would follow US rules. Asia Business Daily, Cha Minyoung, 16 October at 16:26 Korea time, says the Bloomberg piece appeared Friday local time, that he disclosed no start date, and that unauthorized export of AI semiconductors to China is not itself a crime in Taiwan today.
One sentence reaches English in two wordings. Tom’s Hardware, Jowi Morales, 17 October at 12:20 UTC, quotes: “Going forward, some of our measures on controlled items will correspond to American ones because we have made quite some commitments in the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade.” Asia Business Daily quotes: “As we made significant commitments in the reciprocal trade agreement with the United States, we will align some of our export control measures with U.S. measures going forward.” CNA’s Chinese, dated to 12 October, names the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade and makes the same point. These are three renderings of one interview.
The five-year ceiling already in the statute
Article 27 of the Foreign Trade Act, English text on the Ministry of Justice laws site, amended 25 December 2019, punishes unauthorized export of strategic high-tech goods to a restricted region with imprisonment of not more than five years, with detention, or, in lieu of or in addition to those, with a fine of not more than NT$3,000,000. It applies to goods already in the strategic high-tech categories.
CNA says courts have had to use other laws, because unauthorized AI-chip export to China is not currently a crime. Taiwan News’s 16 October story says advanced AI chips and servers are not specifically covered. Tom’s Hardware, citing Bloomberg, writes that smugglers would be “criminally charged under the Foreign Trade Act, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and/or a fine of around $92,500.” The five-year ceiling is Article 27. The dollar figure is Tom’s Hardware’s. The statute’s fine ceiling is NT$3,000,000.
No relay states an effective date or a bill number. A Taiwan News report dated 18 June 2026 said the Ministry of Economic Affairs had started drafting revisions and still needed national-security bodies, the National Science and Technology Council, and the Ministry of Finance. That was a legislative budget session. The October relays still describe a plan to add items to the list.
The August case, as Taiwan News reports it
The 16 October story points at an August indictment. The 24 August account says the Keelung District Prosecutors Office indicted nine people, including a manager at Nvidia’s Taiwan branch, over alleged sales of Supermicro servers with Nvidia B300 GPUs to China. Of 130 B300 servers, Taiwan News says, 74 were allegedly sent to China and 56 were stopped before export. The charges it names are breach of trust, document forgery, and special breach of trust under the Securities and Exchange Act, not a Foreign Trade Act count. It attributes parts of the account to UDN and Fount Media. This account rests on Taiwan News, not on the indictment text.
The 16 October summary repeats nine people, 130 servers, and 74 allegedly shipped through other countries on false documents. Tom’s Hardware writes that authorities raided Super Micro’s Taipei offices in the B300 probe. The 24 August story describes searches from 20 May, then the indictment.
The same week, China’s commerce ministry opened comment on a different list, technologies leaving China, in the 16 October account.
The Campfire
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