Huawei and CETC also make high end ADC.
Chinese semiconductor industry
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Xinlei Group's annual production capacity of about 90,000 pieces/year large-scale integrated circuit diamond substrate production base project signed Dongxiang
On February 18, the first investment attraction project in Dongxiang County, Gansu Province in 2023, the large-scale integrated circuit diamond substrate production base project invested by Hangzhou Xinlei Group with an investment of 1.5 billion yuan, was successfully signed in Suzhou.
Hangzhou Xinlei Group is a key enterprise introduced by the Hangzhou Municipal Government. It is mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of optoelectronic devices, optoelectronic materials, solar cell components, control software for solar application products, and the design, installation and operation of solar power station projects.
At present, the total distributed business reserve of the group exceeds 800MW, and the total investment exceeds RMB 5 billion. The planned total investment of the successfully signed project is 1.5 billion yuan, mainly engaged in research and development, production, inspection, analysis, and testing equipment for the fourth-generation semiconductor growth equipment and complete materials. After the project is put into production, the annual production capacity will be about 90,000 pieces per year, and the sales volume is expected to be 900 million yuan, gradually building the fourth-generation semiconductor production base in Dongxiang County.
My preliminary comments:
I do not understand why so many persons insist that it is impossible for a single country to be able to possess the entire global supply chain of manufacturing processes in the semiconductor materials, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and IC chip and IC chip manufacturing industry, just because it has not happened and just because it not likely to be marketable. The US and most US commentators and analysts have an incentive to make such a proclamation that it is not possible and that it shouldn't be so, because that ensures US domination of the industry and influence of investment decisions.
The reason why such assertions are ridiculous is because China, with its huge domestic market alone, can, if it possesses the knowledge and capability to produce such materials, equipment, and chips, have a profitable industry across the entire value chain based entirely on the domestic market. Given that the United States is hell bent on persuading and coercing its various allies to ensure that China does not obtain the materials, equipment, and chips that the US does not want China to possess, and is having some measure of success in doing so, China has every incentive to COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY indigenize the supply chain as far as demonstrating the capability to replace foreign suppliers of all high end imports that it demands with domestic ones of similar quality. The option will then be left with foreign suppliers to decide whether they still want to restrict their sales to China or not. But one thing that is sure is that WHEN China matches foreign suppliers in terms of quality capability in the entire supply chain, foreign suppliers' market share within China will no longer be dominant. At the most extreme, it will cease completely.
A closeup of a silicon wafer on display at Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institution on September 16, 2022 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing capabilities are crucial to global supply chains, with megacap companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm heavily dependent on the island's exports. Taiwan accounts for some 60 percent of global semiconductor foundry revenue, according to media reports.
Annabelle Chih-Getty Images
IDEAS
BY
FEBRUARY 23, 2023 3:20 PM EST
is the Director of the AI Governance Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, he was the Director of Strategy and Policy at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.
Whether the topic of the day is Chinese spy balloons or American AI breakthroughs, and are increasingly seeing world events through the lens of a “tech war.” This ever intensifying rivalry is usually framed as “,” but that misses a key point: America is not alone.
America’s greatest competitive advantage over China is not wealth or weapons, but the fact that America has a lot of close friends, and China has none. In fact, The only country that has signed a treaty to support China in the event of a war is North Korea, an impoverished pariah state that nuclear tests and missile launches to embarrass China during high-profile diplomatic summits. Treaty or no, few would describe China and North Korea as friends.
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It’s good to have friends, especially since many of America’s are world leaders in technologies of major strategic and geopolitical importance, including semiconductors. Most Americans are at least vaguely aware that Saudi Arabia is a key player in the global economy because more than 10% of the world’s oil, but far fewer know that Taiwan produces of the world’s most advanced semiconductor computer chips or that a based in the Netherlands, ASML, produces 100% of the most advanced lithography machines that are irreplaceable equipment for computer chip factories. Today, computer chips are vital inputs not only to datacenters and smartphones, but also to cars, critical infrastructure and even household appliances like washing machines. As the global economy has become more and more digitized, it has also grown more and more dependent upon chips. It’s for good reason that national security experts routinely semiconductors to be “the new oil” when it comes to geopolitics and international security.
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CONTINUED...
In the Tech War with China, the U.S. Is Finding Friends
Which brings us to the Biden Administration’s remarkable string of tech diplomacy achievements over the past several months. On October 7, 2022, the Biden Administration unilaterally imposed a set of that restrict sales to China of advanced computer chips designed for running Artificial Intelligence applications and military supercomputers as well as the manufacturing equipment for making those chips. Since U.S. companies design 95% of the AI chips that are used in China, and also produce manufacturing equipment that is used in every single Chinese chip factory, these export controls pose an to to lead the world in AI technology and to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors.
Read More:
However, the export controls were also a major diplomatic gamble. If the U.S. forced U.S. industry to stop selling advanced chips and chip-making equipment to China, only for other countries to step in and replace the United States, the policy would have dealt a major blow to U.S. industry. The U.S. would suffer a huge loss of market share and revenue in China and gain in return only a fleeting national security benefit, perhaps setting China back only a matter of months. The policy’s success persuading U.S. allies—particularly Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Japan—to follow the U.S. lead and adopt similar export control regulations.
Taiwan was the first to signal that it was onboard with the new restrictions, on October 8th that it would no longer allow Chinese chip design companies to contract with Taiwanese chip factories to produce chips that could replace those that America is no longer allowing to be sold to China. China has world class chip designers, but its chip factories are significantly behind the state of the art in Taiwan. Taiwan has ample reason to support Washington, both because Joe Biden has been more open than any American president in decades about from possible Chinese invasion and also because the Taiwanese semiconductor industry has also been a serious victim of Chinese government- and campaigns. Taiwan’s government knows that China’s goal is to end its strategic semiconductor dependence upon Taiwan—which Taiwan refers to as its “”—as fast as possible. Naturally, Taiwan is onboard with U.S. policies that aim to prevent that, though they generally prefer to be as quiet as possible about it to minimize the blowback from China.
Like Taiwan, Japan and the Netherlands are also global giants in the semiconductor industry. They, along with the United States, dominate the market for the astonishingly complicated equipment that is a vital component of every chip factory on Earth. While there are Chinese companies that produce semiconductor manufacturing equipment, they only produce a fraction of the many different types of equipment that are required to produce chips, and the equipment that Chinese companies do produce is the state of the art in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Japan. The most advanced Dutch lithography machines, for example, contain more than 100,000 parts, cost more than , and the James Webb Space telescope or Large Hadron Collider in terms of technological complexity.
With the October 7th export controls, the U.S. cut China off from the most advanced U.S. semiconductor manufacturing equipment, but this would be a fleeting, hollow victory if Japan and the Netherlands did not immediately follow suit. There are some kinds of equipment that only U.S. companies can currently make, but Dutch and Japanese companies produce equivalently advanced machines in highly related technical disciplines. In other words, they could develop new products to replace U.S. tech relatively quickly—at least a decade faster than China by itself—if the reward was guaranteed monopoly access to a large Chinese customer base.
Unfortunately for China, Japan, and the Netherlands are not going to do that. In late January, the Biden Administration secured a remarkable diplomatic victory: a with the Netherlands and Japan to establish multilateral semiconductor technology export controls on China. Though the specific details of the deal
######
will take months of continued negotiation to finalize and likely will not be known until the Netherlands and Japan publish their updated export control regulations, two essential details are now known: Japan and the Netherlands will not allow their equipment companies to replace U.S. industry for sales to China, and the countries will broaden the set of export control restricted equipment to include items that U.S. industry does not make, including advanced lithography equipment. If adequately enforced, the deal will likely add a decade or two to the timeline for China’s plans for semiconductor self-sufficiency—and China may now never reach it at all.
Like Taiwan, Japanese and Dutch companies have been victims of China’s government-backed industrial espionage for semiconductor technology. And while they have historically feared Chinese retaliation for any measures taken to stop such provocations, they also have had to reassess their prior foreign policy positions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chinese support to Russia government has had disastrous consequences for China’s global image.
Just as important, though, Taiwan, Japan, and the Netherlands share America’s democratic values and interest in a peaceful, rules-based international order. For the most part, the U.S. did not reach this export controls agreement through diplomatic carrots and sticks, but through genuine persuasion on the merits of the policy as well as a genuine willingness to be persuaded when the allies made good points. For months before and after October 7th, U.S. diplomats have been engaging with their foreign counterparts, listening closely to concerns, and working diligently and collaboratively to address those concerns.
This is a hallmark of the Biden Administration’s approach to negotiation not only in foreign policy, but also domestically. After the 2021 passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill in Congress, Senator Mitt Romney praised the Biden Administration’s earnest collaborative approach: “You can tell the difference between an adversarial negotiation and a collaborative one,” he said. “In this case, when one side had a problem, the other side tried to solve the problem, rather than to walk away from the table.”
Obviously, that’s not the right negotiating style for every situation. But nothing works better when the goal requires deserving and preserving the trust of friends, and it’s good to have friends.
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In the Tech War with China, the U.S. Is Finding Friends
Which brings us to the Biden Administration’s remarkable string of tech diplomacy achievements over the past several months. On October 7, 2022, the Biden Administration unilaterally imposed a set of that restrict sales to China of advanced computer chips designed for running Artificial Intelligence applications and military supercomputers as well as the manufacturing equipment for making those chips. Since U.S. companies design 95% of the AI chips that are used in China, and also produce manufacturing equipment that is used in every single Chinese chip factory, these export controls pose an to to lead the world in AI technology and to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors.
Read More:
However, the export controls were also a major diplomatic gamble. If the U.S. forced U.S. industry to stop selling advanced chips and chip-making equipment to China, only for other countries to step in and replace the United States, the policy would have dealt a major blow to U.S. industry. The U.S. would suffer a huge loss of market share and revenue in China and gain in return only a fleeting national security benefit, perhaps setting China back only a matter of months. The policy’s success persuading U.S. allies—particularly Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Japan—to follow the U.S. lead and adopt similar export control regulations.
Taiwan was the first to signal that it was onboard with the new restrictions, on October 8th that it would no longer allow Chinese chip design companies to contract with Taiwanese chip factories to produce chips that could replace those that America is no longer allowing to be sold to China. China has world class chip designers, but its chip factories are significantly behind the state of the art in Taiwan. Taiwan has ample reason to support Washington, both because Joe Biden has been more open than any American president in decades about from possible Chinese invasion and also because the Taiwanese semiconductor industry has also been a serious victim of Chinese government- and campaigns. Taiwan’s government knows that China’s goal is to end its strategic semiconductor dependence upon Taiwan—which Taiwan refers to as its “”—as fast as possible. Naturally, Taiwan is onboard with U.S. policies that aim to prevent that, though they generally prefer to be as quiet as possible about it to minimize the blowback from China.
Like Taiwan, Japan and the Netherlands are also global giants in the semiconductor industry. They, along with the United States, dominate the market for the astonishingly complicated equipment that is a vital component of every chip factory on Earth. While there are Chinese companies that produce semiconductor manufacturing equipment, they only produce a fraction of the many different types of equipment that are required to produce chips, and the equipment that Chinese companies do produce is the state of the art in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Japan. The most advanced Dutch lithography machines, for example, contain more than 100,000 parts, cost more than , and the James Webb Space telescope or Large Hadron Collider in terms of technological complexity.
With the October 7th export controls, the U.S. cut China off from the most advanced U.S. semiconductor manufacturing equipment, but this would be a fleeting, hollow victory if Japan and the Netherlands did not immediately follow suit. There are some kinds of equipment that only U.S. companies can currently make, but Dutch and Japanese companies produce equivalently advanced machines in highly related technical disciplines. In other words, they could develop new products to replace U.S. tech relatively quickly—at least a decade faster than China by itself—if the reward was guaranteed monopoly access to a large Chinese customer base.
Unfortunately for China, Japan, and the Netherlands are not going to do that. In late January, the Biden Administration secured a remarkable diplomatic victory: a with the Netherlands and Japan to establish multilateral semiconductor technology export controls on China. Though the specific details of the deal
######
will take months of continued negotiation to finalize and likely will not be known until the Netherlands and Japan publish their updated export control regulations, two essential details are now known: Japan and the Netherlands will not allow their equipment companies to replace U.S. industry for sales to China, and the countries will broaden the set of export control restricted equipment to include items that U.S. industry does not make, including advanced lithography equipment. If adequately enforced, the deal will likely add a decade or two to the timeline for China’s plans for semiconductor self-sufficiency—and China may now never reach it at all.
Like Taiwan, Japanese and Dutch companies have been victims of China’s government-backed industrial espionage for semiconductor technology. And while they have historically feared Chinese retaliation for any measures taken to stop such provocations, they also have had to reassess their prior foreign policy positions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chinese support to Russia government has had disastrous consequences for China’s global image.
Just as important, though, Taiwan, Japan, and the Netherlands share America’s democratic values and interest in a peaceful, rules-based international order. For the most part, the U.S. did not reach this export controls agreement through diplomatic carrots and sticks, but through genuine persuasion on the merits of the policy as well as a genuine willingness to be persuaded when the allies made good points. For months before and after October 7th, U.S. diplomats have been engaging with their foreign counterparts, listening closely to concerns, and working diligently and collaboratively to address those concerns.
This is a hallmark of the Biden Administration’s approach to negotiation not only in foreign policy, but also domestically. After the 2021 passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill in Congress, Senator Mitt Romney praised the Biden Administration’s earnest collaborative approach: “You can tell the difference between an adversarial negotiation and a collaborative one,” he said. “In this case, when one side had a problem, the other side tried to solve the problem, rather than to walk away from the table.”
Obviously, that’s not the right negotiating style for every situation. But nothing works better when the goal requires deserving and preserving the trust of friends, and it’s good to have friends.
MORE MUST-READS FROM TIME
How the World Changed Since Russia's Invasion of Ukraine
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9 Photos That Capture a Year of Pain—and Resilience—in Ukraine
Having read the Time article before, it really just seems to be more of the same takes; China is magically behind, "rules based order", our friends will implement restrictions soonTM. Not surprising considering the author and typical think-tank nonsense being churned out these days, but there isn't anything new that hasn't been repeated ad nauseum for the past few months.
As threatening Japan with a IC chip, semiconductor materials, and equipment embargo as such would be completely laughable... Though it will be costly, Japan would then produce just about everything that it demands domestically in terms of that itself... Since it posses the ability to produce the materials and tools necessary to produce 7 nm and sub 7 nm chips, even though it doesn't produce them presently, it will very well be able in short time produce them.
China should reach that sort of capability. The Japanese capability of NOT BEING BLACKMAILED by anyone when it comes to the IC chip and semiconductor industry ...
Given, China's domestic market being much larger than Japan's, the economies of scale for China would make doing so on average much less costly...
Because it's propaganda.
The high-end semiconductor industry is dominated by the US, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the Netherlands. Collectively, they have less than half the population of China, and on a GDP basis, they have slightly more after accounting for purchasing power parity. Stating that "no country can go at it alone" is a deliberate attempt to portray an oligarchic monopoly as a global collaboration. If the semiconductor industry really was global, the US wouldn't have been able to sanction the supply chain by just getting its close allies on board.
The reality of the situation is, the US monopolized this industry in the beginning since it invented the core technologies, and then out sourced its capabilities to its satellites, first to Japan and the Netherlands, and then to Taiwan and South Korea. Gradually, the US itself lost competitiveness because of this out sourcing, but it's still very much a small, closed club of companies and governments who hold the keys to the industry. But by the same logic, if such a small group can monopolize semiconductor manufacturing, then there's no reason why China couldn't go at it alone (and China won't be alone - I'm sure the Russians, Iranians, etc. would love to participate).
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