Abstract: Japan has long relied on the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls and the Wassenaar Arrangement to impose export controls on China. In recent years, with the steady rise of China's comprehensive national strength, and particularly under the spillover effects of the U.S. semiconductor control policies toward China, Japan has begun to tighten its export restrictions on China, with semiconductor manufacturing equipment as a primary target. Using data from 2007 to 2025, this paper empirically examines the backlash effects of Japan's export controls on China on its own semiconductor equipment exports. The empirical results show that Japan's restrictions on China not only significantly suppress its semiconductor equipment exports to China, but also reduce its exports of similar equipment to other global markets. These findings remain robust after a series of robustness checks and hold true even when considering the heterogeneity between critical and non-critical semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Based on this, it is recommended that China closely monitor Japan's regulatory trends, improve risk information early warning and corporate compliance system construction; strengthen the new national system, and advance core technology research in semiconductor manufacturing equipment; integrate the dual advantages of key minerals and markets to build a multi-level economic and trade response and coordination mechanism with Japan; and deepen diversified international cooperation to disperse the risks of technology introduction.

Key words: Wassenaar Arrangement, export controls, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, backlash effect