The "overtaking in corners" plan failed?ASML announced a major decision, and foreign media paid attention.
As the world's largest chip consumer market, in recent years, many foreign-funded enterprises have begun to explore the Chinese market, Apple, Samsung, etc. have sold their products to the Chinese market, and with the strength and advantages of their products, they have occupied a large market share.
Especially in the field of chip semiconductors, because China's semiconductors started late, and chips are an indispensable part of modern industry, a large number of chips are imported every year. According to statistics, in 2018 alone, China's funds for chip imports were as high as 400 billion US dollars!
Although we have achieved the most advanced process technology in the semiconductor industry in recent years, the emergence of Huawei Kirin chips has given us hope for the rise of domestic chips, but it has also encountered the division and suppression of the United States, resulting in the chip field being stuck in the neck.
In order to sanction and suppress Huawei, the United States not only changed the regulations on wafers many times, but also made Huawei finally fall into it through wafers"No cores are available"The dilemma of Kirin Wafer was forced to stop production.
In order to completely get rid of the dependence on imported chips and break through the technological blockade of the United States, China set a target of up to 70% of the localization rate of chips for 2025 last year, and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission also took out huge subsidies and incentives to encourage and support enterprises to accelerate the pace of independent core replacement.
The United States will not sit idly by and launch a series of sanctions against Chinese companies. So far, the United States has listed more than 1,200 Chinese companies in the so-called"Blacklist"At the same time, it also united allies to establish"Quadripartite Chip Alliance", signed"Tripartite agreement", launched a siege of China's semiconductors, hoping to exclude China from the global chip industry chain and completely put China's semiconductors outside 14 nanometers!
But what Biden didn't expect was that even in the face of the encirclement of the United States and its allies, Huawei and other Chinese companies have never compromised, but began to comprehensively lay out independent research and development of chips, Ren Zhengfei made the decision that 20% of the revenue must be used for R&D funding, and SMIC also began to continue to make efforts, spending 170 billion yuan in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing and other places last year. It has built four mature chip factories, as well as Shanghai Microelectronics, HITEC in the United States and other countries. There are also Shanghai Microelectronics, Harbin Institute of Technology and other enterprises and universities in the field of semiconductors.
Chinese chips have already begun"Overtaking in corners"The United States could not stand still and did not have much time for Japan and the Netherlands to fulfill the pressure of the tripartite agreement as soon as possible, so Japan announced that it would add 23 kinds of semiconductor equipment, including lithography machines, engraving machines and display machines, to the export restriction list, and restrict the 45nm process from the production line;The Netherlands** also said it would further restrict shipments of DUV lithography machines. In this regard, some foreign media claimed: Chinese chips"Overtaking in corners"has failed.
However, things are not so simple, just when the tripartite agreement is about to land, ASML suddenly announced important news, saying that it has obtained a DUV immersion lithography machine shipment license from the Netherlands**, and until January 1, 2024, ASML can continue to ship 2000i and later models of DUV lithography machines, that is, we can still buy DUV lithography machines normally this year. That is to say, this year we can still buy DUV lithography machines normally.
In addition, since the United States began to impose sanctions on Huawei, many domestic companies have embarked on the road of independent research and development, so in recent years, imported chips have been"Crazy chopping orders"。According to statistics, from 2022 to some time ago, China has reduced its chip imports by a total of 157 billion, replaced by domestic substitution, which shows that the core of the United States in the Chinese market has been gradually exhausted, and ASML does not want to completely lose the Chinese market even in the face of strong pressure from the United States, and it can only find a way to ship to the Chinese market if it wants to stabilize its income.
But now Huawei has once again become an indisputable fact with Kirin chips, and foreign media said: Things are getting bigger. It is foreseeable that the rise of China's semiconductors has been unstoppable, and it is only a matter of time before the blockade is broken