Countries should co-operate in developing the Internet, big data and artificial intelligence, China President Xi Jinping said in a letter to the China International Big Data Industry Expo that started Sunday in the southwestern city of Guiyang, Xinhua reports.

China attaches great importance to the development of the big data industry and is willing to explore a growth path with other nations for new technologies, Xi said in the letter, according to Xinhua.

The conference, which runs through to Wednesday, counts China tech giants including Alibaba Group, Tencent and Huawei among its exhibitors. International companies like Dell, Google’s China arm, NTT Docomo from Japan and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation are also on the exhibitor list.

The US government has announced a ban on exports from Huawei and barred the Chinese company from buying components from American firms. Washington also threatened to ban five other Chinese video-surveillance businesses.

Shares of semiconductor and chip suppliers have plunged over the past month amid trade-war tensions. Raymond James analyst Chris Caso said in a note to clients this week that he expects “many, if not most” chip companies may have to cut estimates.

“Negative total month-to-date returns for the investment-grade technology sector have been primarily driven by a semiconductor selloff, a trend unlikely to reverse until trade uncertainties dissipate,” Robert Schiffman, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, wrote in his note on 24 May.

The Huawei ban is a “rough’’ disruption to the market, Wang Zhijun, vice head of the ministry of industry & IT, said in an interview on state broadcaster China Central Television. He urged the US government to stop “unreasonable suppression” of China’s integrated circuit and electronic companies.

Data security, digital economy and technical innovation are the key topics at the China International Big Data Industry Expo, according to its website. — Reported by Venus Feng and Li Liu, (c) 2019 Bloomberg LP