In recent years, China has been one of the world's largest chip consumers, but many of China's chips are currently dependent on external imports.
For example, in 2021, the import amount of integrated circuits in mainland China alone will reach about 400 billion US dollars, many of which are high-end chips, and even some chips are completely unable to be manufactured.
It is precisely because the dependence on chip imports is relatively high, so many people have predicted that once China's chips are subject to external restrictions, many industries may be affected.
But many people may not have expected that after being restricted, The development of China's chip industry is very rapid, but it is getting stronger and stronger.
Chinese chips are restricted.
In recent years, China's chips have been subject to many external restrictions, especially since 2019, China's chip imports have been greatly restricted.
Since 2019, there have been many chip-related enterprises and scientific research institutes and universities in the mainland that have been sanctioned by some countries in Europe and the United States, and many companies related to chip manufacturing and design have been inexplicably included in the "entity list".
Once on the entity list, these companies will not be able to buy some chips-related equipment and software from the United States, and even foundries will not be able to help them.
The reason why these Chinese enterprises are restricted, the United States casually put on a big hat, but in fact, these enterprises are just a normal market player, they are like other American companies, but only normal participation in market competition.
According to the logic of the United States, some companies such as Boeing and IBM in the United States should be restricted by other countries around the world, because these companies cooperate closely with the military.
Therefore, discerning people know that these reasons given by the United States are very perfunctory, and they are just looking for a reason to restrict the development of China's chip industry.
In the past few decades, China's economic development has been very rapid, especially in recent years, China's high-tech industry has developed very rapidly, and chips are a very critical component of the high-tech industry, which can be said to be the heart of modern industry.
Therefore, the United States is very aware of the status of chips in China's manufacturing industry, and they choose to restrict chip-related manufacturing and design companies, hoping that China's industry will fall into a "coreless" state, resulting in a decline in competitiveness.
And it turns out that this restriction in the United States has indeed played a certain effect, for example, at present, some companies in the mainland have been greatly affected by the mobile phone business because of the restriction of chips, and even the ranking has fallen from the top three in the world to the Other, and this impact is indeed immediate.
Bill Gates' prediction came true: After being restricted, China's chip industry became stronger.
The United States has actually shown two different attitudes toward restricting the export of parts and components and some services to some Chinese enterprises.
For example, Bill Gates opposes this restrictive behavior, in September 2020, Bill Gates mentioned in an interview with the media that he believes that the United States will not be good for the United States to carry out chip restrictions on China, but will lose a large number of jobs, and more importantly, after the restrictions, it will only allow China to invest more in the chip field, which will only promote China's self-sufficiency.
When Bill Gates said this, I'm sure many people disagreed, but only two years later, Bill Gates's prediction has begun to come true.
On June 21, 2022, according to Bloomberg, according to the data they collated, in the past four quarters, 19 of the world's 20 fastest-growing chip industry companies in each quarter were from China, compared with only 8 enterprises from China in the same period last year.
Among these 19 companies, many chip companies have a revenue growth rate that is even several times that of the global lithography machine giant ASML.
For the development of Chinese chips, Dr. Peng also specifically mentioned in the title that China's chip industry is growing faster than any other country in the world.
These data fully fulfill bill Gates's prediction, after being restricted, China's chips are indeed growing very fast, and getting stronger and stronger.
After China's chips were restricted, China fully realized the importance of chip independence, so in recent years, from the state to the local level, it attaches great importance to the development of chips, on the one hand, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund has increased support for some high-quality enterprises.
On the other hand, in the past two years, the mainland has launched many preferential policies for the chip industry, from financial support, to tax incentives, to talent support and other aspects have given full support.
Another is that local governments also attach great importance to the development of chips, and at present, including Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuxi and other places are constantly increasing investment in chips.
For example, Shenzhen has always been a city with very strong chip design capabilities in the mainland, but Shenzhen's chip manufacturing is relatively weak, in order to make up for this shortcoming, in March this year, Shenzhen state-owned assets set up a chip manufacturing company, that is, Sheng Weixu.
The chip company has a registered capital of 5 billion yuan and is 100% indirectly controlled by Shenzhen state-owned assets.
In addition to the direct establishment of enterprises by Shenzhen state-owned assets to cut into chip manufacturing, Shenzhen has also introduced many policies to encourage the development of the chip industry.
According to Shenzhen's plan, by 2025, the revenue of the integrated circuit industry will exceed 250 billion yuan, and more than 3 design enterprises with revenue of more than 10 billion yuan and a number of revenues of more than 1 billion yuan will be formed, and 3 manufacturing enterprises with revenue of more than 2 billion yuan will be introduced and cultivated.
In fact, Shenzhen is just a microcosm of the mainland's increased support for the chip industry in recent years, in addition to Shenzhen, including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Wuxi, Nanjing, Suzhou and other places have increased their support for chips.
In this context, the mainland chip industry has also begun to blossom in the past two years, and the sales of the mainland integrated circuit industry will exceed the trillion mark for the first time in 2021, and from 2018 to 2021, the annual compound growth rate of the mainland integrated circuit industry sales will be 17%, which is more than three times the global growth rate in the same period.
In addition to the rapid growth of integrated circuit sales, in fact, breakthroughs are also being achieved in some core technology areas.
For example, SMIC has been able to mass-produce 14-nanometer chips, Shanghai microelectronics 28-nanometer lithography machine is also about to enter the market, Nanjing University has successfully developed the world's first wide-ban semiconductor pn structure EUV detector, Huawei, Tencent and other companies have successfully applied for chip quantum patents and so on.
This fully shows that after being externally restricted, the quality and quantity of the mainland chip industry have made great progress, which further fulfills a law, that is, the more externally restricted the technology, the easier it is for China to achieve independence.
According to the Wassenaar agreement, many core technologies in Europe and the United States are prohibited from being exported to China, but China has cracked down on these core technologies one by one in the past few decades.
For example, the French media had listed in detail more than 350 kinds of technologies blocked by Europe and the United States, and now most of them have been broken by China, and China has fully mastered the independent technology.
These technologies range from shield machines, to high-speed rail technology, to aerospace technology, to aircraft carrier technology.
Now this law is being fulfilled in the chip industry, and as Europe and the United States continue to restrict Chinese chips, this will only strengthen China's determination to independently develop chips.
Give China another 5 to 10 years, I believe that from chip design to chip manufacturing, to lithography machine technology, all aspects of China will gradually narrow the gap with the world's top level, and even some technologies will be in a leading position in the world.