[WASHINGTON] Suppliers to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and China's top chipmaker SMIC got billions of dollars worth of licences from November through April to sell them goods and technology despite their being on a US trade blacklist, documents released by Congress showed on Thursday (Oct 21).

According to the documents, first obtained by Reuters, 113 export licences worth US$61 billion were approved for suppliers to ship products to Huawei while another 188 licences valued at nearly US$42 billion were greenlighted for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).

The data also showed that more than 9 out of 10 licence applications were granted to SMIC suppliers while 69 per cent of requests to ship to Huawei were approved over the same period.

The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee on Thursday voted to grant a request by its top Republican member Michael McCaul to release the licensing data, which it received from the Commerce Department in May.

The numbers enraged China hawks in Washington, who have made a concerted effort to deprive Chinese companies of access to advanced US technology.

Republican senator Marco Rubio told Reuters he thinks President Joe Biden needs to explain why the companies have continued to receive "waivers". "It is just another example of President Biden not taking the economic and security threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party seriously," he said.