China is strongly supporting the development of its semiconductor industry against the backdrop of US restrictions on Chinese companies such as Huawei to obtain chips.
Bloomberg cited sources as saying in a report on September 3 that China is planning to develop a comprehensive set of new policies to develop the country's semiconductor industry, in response to the US government restrictions.
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According to the report, China has given the task the same kind of priority on the effort it accorded to building its atomic capability
The report cited unnamed sources with knowledge of the information that Beijing is preparing to provide extensive support for the "third generation of semiconductors" in the five years to 2025.
They said a series of measures have been added to China's 14th five-year draft plan to strengthen research, education, and financing for the industry.
Compared with traditional silicon materials, third-generation semiconductor gallium nitride, silicon carbide, zinc selenide, and other broadband semiconductor materials, is more suitable for manufacturing high temperature, high voltage, high current, high-frequency high-power devices.
According to the report, China is about to formulate its next five-year plan, including efforts to expand domestic consumption and manufacture key technology products domestically. China has pledged to invest about $1.4 trillion in technologies ranging from wireless networks to artificial intelligence by 2025.
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Semiconductors are, in fact, fundamental to all aspects of realizing China's technological ambitions, and an increasingly aggressive US government is threatening to cut off supplies to China.
"The Chinese leadership realizes that semiconductors underpin all advanced technologies and that it can no longer dependably rely on American supplies," said Dan Wang, a technology analyst at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics. "In the face of stricter US restrictions on-chip access, China’s response can only be to keep pushing its own industry to develop."
According to Chinese customs statistics, the value of China's chip imports in 2019 was $304 billion, down $8 billion, or 2.6 percent, from the same period last year.
The United States continues to use its dominant position in the global chip industry to block China, which also makes China realize that for the chip industry it can no longer be subject to others, said communications expert Xiang Ligang in an interview with the Global Times on September 3.
Richard Chang, founder and former CEO of Semiconductor Manufacturing International, recently said that when the US found out that China was putting a lot of competitive pressure on it, the head of the US administration will want to go for a crackdown.
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If fair competition doesn't win, it will take an administrative approach, he said.
He also mentioned that the US ability to constrain China is not as strong as it should be, but we should not take it lightly.
