— company uses black sticker to erase origin information
Hardware leaker MEGAsizeGPU just shared on X (formerly Twitter) a photograph of the packaging for the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X3D. Apparently, AMD has placed a long black sticker on the lower left corner, seemingly to remove mentions of Taiwan. That appears to be convenient timing as the new 7600X3D chips are slated for release in China on September 20, and the country has a history of forbidding mentions of Taiwan on product packaging.
The hidden text shows the origin of the Ryzen processor: “AMD processors are diffused and/or made in one or more of the following countries and/or regions: USA, Germany, Singapore, China, Malaysia, or Taiwan.” Although we don’t have confirmation from AMD on the reason behind this change, we can surmise that the company is doing this to soothe Beijing’s ruffled feathers, which claims Taiwan is part of China and has previously slapped import restrictions on products mentioning Taiwan as the place of manufacture.
It isn’t the first time that AMD has seemingly acquiesced to the demands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In January, it removed the ‘Diffused in Taiwan’ silkscreen from the Ryzen 7000 chips. Although the company says it did this to standardize production with the products from its Xilinx acquisition, it does have the convenient side effect of keeping Beijing happy.
On the surface, this recent change — adding a sticker that covers ‘Taiwan’ on the box — doesn’t seem to have any other reason except to address the CCP’s likely complaints. The leaker also wondered why AMD had to add the sticker on the Ryzen 5 7600X3D, especially as it was initially exclusive to the U.S. market. Still, it eventually made its way to Germany, and the chips will now also be sold in China starting September 20.
Another hardware detective, HXL, theorized in a reply (via machine translation) that AMD likely wants to simplify its packaging process, so the company likely just decided to cover all offending boxes with this sticker, regardless of their destination.
China is still a major market for many companies despite the limitations imposed by Washington on the country through its numerous bans and sanctions. That means AMD and other companies likely have no other recourse and must comply with the company's import restrictions, as they could potentially lose billions of dollars in business if Beijing retaliates against it in one way or another.