WASHINGTON D.C.: The Biden administration has stopped issuing export licenses to US companies seeking to ship most items to China's Huawei.

While officials in the U.S. Department of Commerce have granted licenses for some American firms to sell certain goods and technologies, Huawei has faced US export restrictions involving items for 5G and other technologies for several years.

In 2020, Qualcomm received permission to sell 4G smartphone chips to Huawei.

Huawei and Qualcomm declined to comment on the report, which was earlier reported by Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

"China opposes the US abusing an overly broad notion of national security to suppress Chinese firms unreasonably," Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during a press conference in Beijing this week.

The US move "goes against the principles of the market economy and rules of international trade and finance, hurts the confidence the international community has in the US business environment and is blatant technological hegemony," Mao added.

In 2019, Huawei was placed on a US trade blacklist in 2019, restricting most US companies from supplying it with goods and technologies, unless granted approval.

US officials have continued to tighten controls, in an effort to stop Huawei from buying or designing the semiconductor chips used in most of its products.

In December, Huawei said its overall revenue was some $91.53 billion, slightly lower than in 2021 when US sanctions caused its sales to decline by some 30 percent.