It is "arrogant and ignorant" to call Taiwan a country and its future can only be decided by China's 1.4 billion people, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday in a rebuff to the democratically-governed island's foreign minister.

China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has stepped up military and political pressure to assert those claims, including increasing the intensity of war games, saying the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.

Taiwan's formal name is the Republic of China, the name of the government which in 1949 fled to the island after losing a bloody civil war with Mao Zedong's communists, who established the People's Republic of China.

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it will continue its efforts to prevent advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology from reaching China, dismissing requests from Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang to relax chip export limitations to the country,

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang criticized U.S. export controls blocking the sale of its AI chips to China. Last month, the chipmaker noted a $5.5 billion write-down to its inventory, after the U.S. demanded companies get a license to sell their AI chips to China.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has called U.S. semiconductor export controls on China “a failure,” and many chip analysts and pundits think he has a point.