For China's semiconductor chip industry, the United States "dies and dies", after constantly modifying chip rules and restricting Meixin manufacturers' shipments to China. Under the framework of the United States, Japan and the Netherlands semiconductor agreement, the United States once again sacrificed a "loss move", coerced and pressured Japan and the Netherlands to implement export controls on a variety of semiconductor production equipment including 14nm lithography machines, exposure equipment and tempering equipment. You know, because of the lack of technical reserves and other aspects, the mainland has a high degree of dependence on related semiconductor equipment, and the Americans have directly limited our domestic chip manufacturing process to more than 14 nanometers.
It is reported that Biden also intends to completely block ASML's shipments of DUV lithography machines to China by invoking FDP rules, and list all equipment involving American technology as a control object. In addition, by invoking the rule, the US side can even ask ASML to stop providing after-sales guarantee services for the lithography equipment sold in China. According to relevant sources, once the United States invokes FDP rules to fully restrict shipments of all equipment to China, this may lead to a decade backwards for China's semiconductor industry. Once ASML cuts off the after-sales service of the lithography machine that China has purchased, the lithography machine purchased by many domestic manufacturers will likely become a pile of scrap iron.
In the face of endless malicious suppression and restrictions by the United States, we finally did not choose to swallow our anger, and the Ministry of Commerce of the mainland officially took countermeasures not long ago, implementing export controls on gallium, germanium and other metal raw materials in Western countries, and completely banning the sale. Now, Japan, South Korea, led by the United States, and Western allies are deeply in the crisis of cutting off the supply of rare earths, and it can be said that China's move has weakened the way for the United States and its accomplices to easily obtain rare earths and other metal raw materials, and let them experience the pain of "lifting a stone and shooting themselves in the foot".
China's interruption of gallium and germanium supplies caused international shocks
Since August 1, the two major metal raw materials of gallium and germanium, which have been officially banned from sale in the mainland, are indispensable key materials in the electronics and communications industry, among which germanium is the earliest application material for semiconductor chips, and the world's first transistor is made of germanium. Until now, germanium metal is still the core material in the field of optical fiber communication, in view of the high refractive index of germanium, the application in optical fiber, can effectively improve the transmission efficiency and transmission distance of signals.
For gallium, its application scenarios are more, our current mobile phone use of fast charging charger, charging plug with gallium nitride material. Moreover, gallium is also widely used in radar, wireless communication equipment, radio frequency communication fields, gallium compounds are also a key material for emitters, receivers, enhancers and other equipment.
However, these metal raw materials, which were easily available to countries such as the United States, are now cut off by China. Needless to say, this is really a thunderbolt for the Western countries led by the United States. In the past, countries such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries used rare earths and other metal raw materials imported from the mainland to manufacture chips and chip equipment, and finally sold them to us at a high price, and as the United States continued to increase sanctions, they used the chips and related equipment in their hands to jam our necks.
As far as we are concerned, if their chips and equipment cannot be manufactured anyway, they will not change the status quo that the United States has cut off our supply, since we can't get the chips, why should we be soft on their continuous suppression and restrictions? Therefore, in the face of our raw material supply cuts, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany and other countries have shouted to us, hoping that we can lift export restrictions and restore the normal supply of gallium, germanium and other metals.
However, now that the global semiconductor supply chain has been completely torn apart by the United States, and the restrictions and containment of us by the United States and its servant countries have not stopped, why should we take the initiative to compromise and resume supply?
The United States found a "solution", and China's gallium and germanium supply failed?
In the face of China's cut-off of gallium and germanium metal raw materials, many countries wailed, but the United States still spoke hard, saying that it would "work with allies to solve the supply problem." However, everyone knows that China has the world's largest gallium and germanium mineral resources, accounting for about 50%-80% of global mineral reserves, and has a market share of more than half of the global gallium and germanium market. But in the case of the United States, which imports more than half of its imports from China each year, it is not easy to find a solution to the supply problem of gallium and germanium raw materials without China's participation.
Although, of the 8,600 tons of germanium reserves that have been proven in the world, the United States sits on 3,870 tons of them, which is even more than China's reserves. However, the United States has already "abolished its martial arts" in the field of related metal development and smelting, and there is basically no possibility of "making a comeback" in mining and metallurgy. To this end, foreign media said that now China has completely made things bigger, but the United States has no effective way to crack it, so it has to solve the urgent need by "collecting waste".
It is reported that the US Department of Defense has passed the so-called Defense Production Act, which plans to reduce dependence on imported products by recycling gallium from waste electronic products. Meanwhile, a U.S. company called Aqua Metals has said it has developed an innovative technology for wet recycling gallium. At present, the US Environmental Protection Agency has also taken frequent actions to extract gallium from discarded mobile phones, tablets and other electronic products.
However, in view of the strong demand for gallium, germanium and other metal materials in the United States, the gallium and germanium metal recovered by "collecting waste products" alone is really a "drop in the bucket", moreover, the United States has always been a major exporter of "foreign garbage", how many waste electronic products can be used for metal recycling in the United States?
Therefore, in our opinion, to solve the current dilemma of rare earth raw materials in the United States, we can only wait for the United States to wake up and restrain itself from the cliff on the road to reverse, otherwise, once China further increases the export restrictions on rare earth materials, the United States will face greater trouble, and it is impossible to let the world's largest country pick up electronic waste all over the world, right?