Reuters: China will not have enough government support measures to overcome the backlog in the production of chips

According to analysts interviewed Reuters, China may not be able to use government bailouts alone to overcome the impact of US high-tech sanctions and catch up with the semiconductor manufacturing gap in general. The government has allocated about $140 billion to develop local semiconductor manufacturing, but “money alone may not be enough to catch up with Western rivals that are generations ahead.”

One of the problems is that Chinese manufacturers are closed in their domestic market and do not have experience and access to large foreign markets with a developed production and scientific and technical base, such as South Korean Samsung or Taiwanese TSMC. “This situation does not allow us to separate scientific research from mass production,” says Mark Lee, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “Even if we buy (the most modern.— “b”) machines, we don’t know how to maintain and repair them,” one of the engineers at Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group told Reuters.

Some experts believe that a possible way out of this situation is to rethink the very approach to the development of the semiconductor industry in China. In their opinion, it is necessary to develop next-generation technologies, and not just compete with Western companies in who will make a thinner chip.

At the beginning of the year, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences published an article calling for a focus on research and development, rather than copying and catching up with existing foreign technologies. “By obtaining our own patents, we can overcome barriers to international trade and apply our own countermeasures against the sanctions imposed on us,” the scientists believe.

Evgeniy Khvostik