China is the world's largest semiconductor chip consumer market, but it has long relied heavily on imports. President Xi Jinping said last week that a truly great power device must be held in its own hands. Core technologies, key technologies, and economic ties cannot be achieved , to fight hard on their own. He also instructed to accelerate the major breakthrough in the chip technology.
In order to get rid of the passive status, China has listed the semiconductor industry as a national priority policy, placed it at the key position of the “Made in China 2025” development strategy, and established a national integrated circuit industry fund with a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars. In the middle of last month, Reuters stated that , China is seeking to accelerate the development plan of the domestic chip industry.
The "Asian Review" (ASIA REVIEW) article of the Nikkei Group states that whether it is the Chinese government's ambition in the semiconductor field or the Chinese companies that have flocked to the industry, their goals are very clear: Breaking the United States, South Korea , Taiwan and Japanese companies dominate the semiconductor chip industry.
The article believes that the Chinese government hopes to support a group of China's leading chip manufacturing companies with leading positions in the industry, and then led by these companies to allow China to leap forward in the competition of advanced chips for artificial intelligence.
The Chinese government put forward a rather ambitious goal. The State Council proposed in China Manufacturing 2025, published in 2015, that by 2020 China’s chip self-sufficiency rate will reach 40%, and by 2025 it will reach 50%, which means that it will surpass the US at that time. Ranked No. 1 in the world. The Ministry of Industry and Technology put forward higher requirements. By 2025, China's chip self-sufficiency rate should reach 70%, that is, China's integrated circuit industry must account for 49% of the world's total.
For the Chinese government's efforts to create a home-grown semiconductor industry, the Economist commented that 'ambition is big, budget is high, never seen before.'
The key question is: No one can guarantee that China's efforts to develop its own chips will succeed.
China has had a history of failure in research and development of chips. In the 1990s, even the simplest integrated circuits in China could not be manufactured. For this reason, the government tried to build the domestic semiconductor chip industry, but it ended in failure.
The current situation is simply not optimistic: According to estimates of research firm International Business Strategies, nearly 90% of China's chips are imported or produced in China.
Last year, China spent more than 260 billion U.S. dollars on imported semiconductors and related products, which is almost twice the amount of imported oil. (The figure below is from Credit Agricole, France)
Ni Guangnan, a 79-year-old academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in an interview with the China-Singapore Jingwei client last week that the chip industry is mainly divided into two major blocks: design and manufacturing. China's short board is mainly manufactured, if it is to catch up with the US The level needs at least ten years and eight years.
According to Natixis, China’s chip industry technology lags far behind the reality of international giants, and the government’s goal of achieving 70% self-sufficiency before 2025 appears to be 'very ambitious’.
However, this time, it may not be the same as in the 1990s.
"Asian Review" quoted Bernstein Research analyst Mark Li's point of view:
Today, the situation is completely different from the frustrating experience of China establishing the semiconductor industry out of thin air several decades ago.
This time, for China, it is a completely new story. Because China currently has all the appropriate development factors, including a huge consumer market, and strong local smartphones, televisions, computers and automobiles. In order to support the development of the chip industry, the Chinese government plans to invest huge sums of money, considering only policy funds such as national and local governments have already exceeded 500 billion, and then considering the drive of industrial capital and financial capital, it will invest in the integrated circuit industry in the next decade. Funds are expected to reach the trillion level.
According to estimates by Morgan Stanley, in the second half of the 1990s, the Chinese government invested less than one billion U.S. dollars in its efforts to promote the semiconductor industry. Moreover, due to the past year, the government’s investment was extremely fragmented. Bad.
According to Credit Suisse estimates, China has invested about 140 billion U.S. dollars (about 889 billion yuan) in its own chip industry.
Today, the Chinese government has not chosen to “build cars behind closed doors”. Instead, it has continuously increased its efforts to open up the country to seek to attract overseas enterprises to enter the country and set up factories with advanced technology in the country, so as to introduce advanced scientific and technological knowledge from the outside. This will help To create a complete supply chain and attract high-end talents from overseas.
Morgan Stanley analysts believe that Chinese companies are likely to reach the world level in certain areas of the semiconductor industry. Local chip companies may become significant in television, mobile phones and computers—China's production of these products. Both consumption and consumption are dominant. Regulators may issue some local standards or implement localization requirements, further tilt the policy, and support their favored companies.
ASIA TIMES commented that the pace of change in China’s creation of its own chip industry will appear to be faster than anyone expects. Chinese technology entrants not only want to compete fiercely with international rivals, but also aim to defeat them. they.
Alibaba announced on April 20 its wholly-owned acquisition of Hangzhou Zhongtian Microsystem Co., Ltd., a Chinese independent embedded CPU IP core company, to create its own “China Core”. They also invested in the Cambrian, deep-seated, and energy-resistant. (Kneron), ASR and many other chip companies.
Chairman of the board of directors Ari Ma, who first responded to the acquisition of Zhongtian Weishi at Waseda University on April 25, pointed out that both China and Japan need to develop their own semiconductor core technologies to get rid of the U.S. control of the global chip market.
'Roads can be bumpy, but we do need to have our own chips, and at the initial stage, we don’t care whether we make profits, or if we will cause prices to collapse in the market. ' The Asia Times quoted Ma's words Writes.
'For them (Chinese government and enterprises), obtaining fruit is only a matter of time.' Bernstein Research analyst Mark Li said.