In the first five months of this year, the growth rate of China's chip imports was much lower than the growth rate of exports, which means that Chinese chips began to enter the international market, competing for the market of United States chips in just a few years, China has become a major chip exporter from a chip importer, which may exceed United States' expectations.
Data show that in the first five months of this year, China's chip exports reached 62.7 billion US dollars (about 460 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 21%; In the same period, China's chip imports were 148.4 billion US dollars, with a year-on-year growth rate of only 13%, and the growth rate of China's chip exports was significantly higher than the growth rate of imports, which means that China's chips have really begun to enter the international market.
In the past, the growth rate of China's chip imports was significantly higher than the growth rate of exports, because at that time, in addition to the chips purchased by China for manufacturing goods, some domestic chip packaging companies were responsible for the packaging business of some United States chips, so the chips purchased by China were not all for goods made in China.
Now it is different, China has made breakthroughs in many chip industries, China's manufacturing efforts to replace imported chips with domestic chips, such as memory chips, 5G RF chips, CMOS chips, etc., domestic chips have replaced imported chips, natural chip imports have gradually decreased, it is reported that China's chip imports have fallen by about 100 billion US dollars in 3 years.
In 2018, the United States blocked ASML from selling advanced EUV lithography machines to China, and the United States thought that restricting advanced lithography equipment could prevent China from developing advanced chips, but China's chip industry realized that even the development of mature process chips was promising.
Made in China needs many kinds of chips, of which mature process chips account for more than seventy percent, the development of mature process chips, can also replace imported chips, the process required for the above-mentioned memory chips is more than 10 nanometers, 5G RF chips, CMOS chips, etc. can be produced with mature processes, memory chips once led the world in 2022, and CMOS chips have been compared with Samsung and Sony.
China's development of mature process chips can also cultivate its own industrial chain, the well-known domestic chip equipment company North Huachuang has achieved substantial growth year after year, with a year-on-year increase of 50% since 2023.
China can also develop mature technology, cultivate their own chip technology talents, the industry knows that chip technology talents are very important, TSMC is because of the cultivation of their own advanced talents, so in the case of United States Intel priority access to advanced lithography machines, TSMC can surpass in chip manufacturing process, Samsung's advanced process research and development success by poaching TSMC technical talents, which also shows that the Chinese are indeed talented in chip technology research and development.
After the breakthrough of Chinese chips, now that Chinese chips have begun to enter the international market, United States home appliance manufacturers have recognized Chinese chips, believing that Chinese chips have reached the technical level of United States chips, and the price is more affordable, showing that even United States companies are willing to purchase Chinese chips.
This has dealt a blow to United States chips, on the one hand, United States chips are gradually difficult to sell, Texas Instruments pointed out that chip inventories are high, Intel has delayed the mass production of hundreds of billions of factories because of high-end chips are not good to sell, Intel executives have said that if they do not sell chips to China, then its hundreds of billions of factories will not need to be put into production, which is now becoming a fact.
United States chips have lost revenue, in technology research and development will only be able to reduce investment, which will lead to the further loss of United States chip innovation advantages, because United States chips lost the leading edge of chip manufacturing process, United States chip bargaining power is lost, recently there is news that United States chip companies accepted TSMC's request for price increases.
United States chips and Chinese chips are a trade-off relationship, United States chip innovation is weak to provide time for Chinese chips to catch up, Chinese chips get more revenue to accelerate innovation, the technology gap between the two sides will be an accelerated reduction trend, it can be expected that the competitiveness of Chinese chips will become stronger and stronger, and the pace of going to overseas markets will continue to accelerate.