
China squandered its chance to build a home-grown semiconductor industry - smacktoward
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3024687/how-china-still-paying-price-squandering-its-chance-build-home-grown
======
dragonelite
Yeah lets see again in 2025~2030, that is when China plans to be the top of
these sectors with the Chinese Made in China 2025 plan.

Semis are already feeling Huawei presence in the world, huawei designs its own
soc and some of its components. The bigger Huawei market share the smaller
amount of US components need to be exported.

------
5822130027
I do not think China ever prioritized home grown semis, since its viewed as
"plumbing" for more lucrative things built on top of chips ( software, etc).

Why focus on it when South Korea, Taiwan was already doing it ?

As the article states, it's a 500 billion dollar industry.

Compared to energy, defense it's much less important ( but critical ).

Now that the US is threatening to shut them off, they are being forced to
invest more heavily.

I saw a graph the other day, within 2030 or something, china was poised to
hold a monopsony position in semis, something like 80% of global semi
consumption is going to come from China.

It's just surprising that the US would kick their biggest semiconductor
customer in the head.

~~~
opportune
Is that consumption measured by units or total value? I'm sure China could
compete for cheap smartphone chips and microcontrollers but it would take them
a while to make something like a Xeon.

~~~
lnsru
You are making assumption, that they will stick to x86 architecture. What if
they don’t want this old thing with all the microcode and hacks inside? What
if they start on clean page with RISC-V or alike and software for it? Or China
will just buy company building competitive chips:
[https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-server-chip-
exit-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-server-chip-exit-china-
centriq-2400,38223.html)

~~~
opportune
I just meant a high-quality vectorized server CPU by referring to the Xeon,
didn't mean to imply any architecture

~~~
esmi
Posted a few months ago. Admittedly it’s not a Xeon but these things are
becoming commodities.

> Ara runs at 1.2 GHz in the typical corner (TT/0.80 V/25 oC), achieving a
> performance up to 34 DP-GFLOPS. In terms of energy efficiency, Ara achieves
> up to 67 DP-GFLOPS/W under the same conditions, which is 56% higher than
> similar vector processors found in literature.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20126280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20126280)

------
chlee
A quick note --just because China is not a major player in the semiconductor
industry today, doesn't the CCP is not placing its state resources (both state
financial backing [1] and the industrial espionage kind [2][3][4][5]) to try
and incubate a semiconductor industry

[1][https://outline.com/j35sNG](https://outline.com/j35sNG)

[2][https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3005738/ch...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3005738/chinese-
spies-stole-dutch-chip-machinery-giants-secrets)

[3][https://www.wired.com/story/us-accuses-chinese-stealing-
micr...](https://www.wired.com/story/us-accuses-chinese-stealing-micron-trade-
secrets/)

[4][https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/prc-state-owned-company-
taiwa...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/prc-state-owned-company-taiwan-
company-and-three-individuals-charged-economic-espionage)

[5][https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-technology-secrets-
come...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-technology-secrets-come-under-
assault-from-china-1530468440)

What I've read about made in 2025 in the past few years, the motto of CCP can
be distilled down to:

1) Whatever CCP can't build, it will try to buy

2) Whatever CCP can't buy, it will try to steal

~~~
megaremote
> just because China is not a major player in the semiconductor industry
> today, doesn't the CCP is not placing its state resources (both state
> financial backing [1] and the industrial espionage kind [2][3][4][5]) to try
> and incubate a semiconductor industry

Did anyone ever think that?

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mymythisisthis
China's major problem is that it's not the USA. The USA has lots of capital to
throw around, it can shift manufacturing to other countries. The USA is also
the leader in style, culture, and innovation - China just plays catchup. With
a centralized government, you'll always be playing catchup.

China may led the world in cheap electronic components, but there is no reason
that India couldn't do the same if the USA trade war with China keeps
escalating. Italy also has many small workshop that can crank out small
precision parts. Sooner or latter Eastern Europe will get back into the game.

~~~
tanilama
> China just plays catchup. With a centralized government, you'll always be
> playing catchup.

Japan/S Korea/Taiwan beg to differ. Those are under democratic governance, but
'centralized' never the less. Japan has lion share of Semiconductor equipment,
while South Korea and Taiwan are leading the most advanced foundry business.

~~~
rayiner
Centralized in what sense? Those are all free market economies. On Heritage
Foundation’s economic freedom index, Taiwan ranks in the top 10, ahead of the
US, while South Korea and Japan rank around Germany or Norway, and ahead of
Spain, Italy, or France:
[https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking](https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking).

------
sgt101
Where does ARM fit into this picture - it's clearly hugely significant, but
doesn't feature in any of the tables shown...

Also it's noticeable that Japan doesn't feature, why's that and why are the
Japanese cool about that?

~~~
fmajid
The Japanese (Softbank) own ARM.

------
lambdasquirrel
It’s not like it’s too late, especially with the US pursuing 19th century
solutions to 21st century problems. The level of understanding possessed by
the US presidential candidates for the 2020 elections is a little worrying.
For starters, we have a number of folks who want to break up big tech without
a corresponding plan to break up the oligarchies held by the big telcos.

The article alludes to a major Chinese shortcoming: that it thought it could
own semiconductor manufacturing by owning the equipment. A lot of US
nationalism is centered on how the US leads in terms of culture. It would be
precarious to assume that we should really be so advantaged, or more broadly,
_to pin your success on the failure of your competitor._

~~~
Fjolsvith
> It’s not like it’s too late, especially with the US pursuing 19th century
> solutions to 21st century problems.

Of course not. It just requires China actually do the research for the tech
instead of stealing it.

> The level of understanding possessed by the US presidential candidates for
> the 2020 elections is a little worrying. For starters, we have a number of
> folks who want to break up big tech without a corresponding plan to break up
> the oligarchies held by the big telcos.

Another set of 19th century solutions.

> The article alludes to a major Chinese shortcoming: that it thought it could
> own semiconductor manufacturing by owning the equipment.

IP theft isn't the same as IP research.

> A lot of US nationalism is centered on how the US leads in terms of culture.
> It would be precarious to assume that we should really be so advantaged, or
> more broadly, to pin your success on the failure of your competitor.

It's more than just culture. We have a set of law that protects our research
efforts. In China, what protection is there from competition or even the
government?

