As dylan522p is saying, it depends very heavily on the actual agreement. Which unfortunately isn't public and has historically been very different in each case so we can't even look at similar agreements for guidance.
That being said, it wouldn't be totally out there for a clause in the agreement that doesn't allow export of chips with this IP, and that would probably be enforced as ITO judgements allowing seizing chips and end devices at ingress points. The ITO would essentially treat them as counterfeit if all of those assumptions hold true, similar to how how remanufactured and ghost shift iPhone replacement parts famously get labeled as counterfeit legally.
> Chips themselves can be sold, yes. The IP cannot be licensed to non Chinese based semi firms.
I'd be astonished if licenses to Chinese SoC designers prevented products with those SoC's being sold outside China. So RockChip, Spreadtrum etc would be cut off from the rest of the world? Or forced to license separately with Arm UK for chips for products that are to be exported? Seems very unlikely.
Plus I'd expect we'd have seen action taken already if they really had broken the terms of the licensing.
Agreed that we're all speculating to some extent though!
That being said, it wouldn't be totally out there for a clause in the agreement that doesn't allow export of chips with this IP, and that would probably be enforced as ITO judgements allowing seizing chips and end devices at ingress points. The ITO would essentially treat them as counterfeit if all of those assumptions hold true, similar to how how remanufactured and ghost shift iPhone replacement parts famously get labeled as counterfeit legally.