Hong Kong "South China Morning Post" July 4th article, original title: China will rely on the core technology of the United States for a period of time, but the world is so following the so-called ZTE incident into the next stage, Chinese public opinion began to lament the existence or It requires a 'great gap' that more than one generation has worked hard to overcome. Although such shrewd words are intended to play down China's strength, it is true.
Not only China, but global prosperity is built on 'sand'. This is because sand is the raw material used to produce silicon, the most well-known microchip base material for semiconductors. Semiconductors are the most imported products in China, even exceeding Oil. Despite decades of efforts to catch up with the West, Silicon is still the Achilles heir of Chinese technology.
Since the transistor inventor William Shockley opened a successful silicon-based transistor manufacturing business in California, the United States has harvested 'silicon dividends' for more than 50 years. Many people have called for China to achieve self-sufficiency in core technology. In fact, the last century In the 1990s, China invested heavily in new semiconductor production lines, only to find that these 'wafers' were out of date. Most of China’s efforts to acquire US semiconductor business technology through legal acquisitions also failed, because it was national security in Washington. For the sake of blocking.
Chinese technology supporters like to mention Huawei-designed Kirin mobile phone chips as an example of Chinese companies' reliance on foreign core technologies.
But if China's long-term goal is to reduce its dependence on geopolitical rivals such as the United States, then acquiring chip design technology is only the first step, and it needs to have a local chip manufacturing industry, which is far more difficult than the first step. The problem is Huawei. Can't produce autonomous chips, and Qualcomm is unable to do so. These companies are outsourcing this extremely complex and capital-intensive production to independent fabs. Around the world, the leading wafer manufacturer is Taiwan. TSMC has accounted for 56% of the industry's revenue in the first half of this year. It is followed by the US company Grofund Semiconductor Co., Ltd. The largest wafer manufacturing company in mainland China is only about 6% of the global market. SMIC.
Although Huawei's fans may be pleased to believe that the company has not made any mistakes relying on US chips, they may be surprised to learn that most of the fabs that manufacture Kirin chips rely on equipment from US companies. In the manufacturing equipment market, in 2017, three companies in Silicon Valley accounted for about 55%, and two companies in Japan and Europe accounted for 38%.
Even so, China is not completely self-defending. China is firmly in control of the supply of rare earths that are vital to many electronic products, and can also use market access for technology. But given that it will still rely on US core technology for the foreseeable future, China Investment in semiconductor original R&D should be carefully increased – but don’t be vigorously rendered, as Deng Xiaoping said, “Looking at the light”.