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As we all know, in order to curb China's development, the United States launched a "chip war" against China, and recently, the United States has taken another shot.
On December 21, local time, the U.S. Department of Commerce plans to conduct a thorough survey to understand the dependence of U.S. companies, especially strategic industries, on Chinese chips.
The survey is scheduled to start in January 2024, and according to Bloomberg, more than 100 companies are expected to participate in the Ministry of Commerce's **chain survey, covering multiple fields such as automotive, aerospace and defense.
The US media believes that this indicates that there is another arena in the chip battlefield between China and the United States.
So, what is the purpose of this move by the United States?What does it mean behind it?
The direct purpose of this move by the United States is to understand the situation of American companies purchasing mature process chips from China.
By starting to collect information about the semiconductor and chip chains, we can better understand how U.S. companies have access to mature process chips, and in particular China's role in the chain.
In short, it's about finding out how many mature chips are bought from China.
Mature process chips are relative to high-end chips, which refer to semiconductor products that are manufactured and produced using mature processes.
In layman's terms, "mature process" chips refer to 28nm and above process chips, and this definition comes from the U.S. "Chips and Science Act" that will come into effect in 2022.
Although the performance of mature process chips in terms of computing speed and energy consumption is not as good as that of high-end chips, their applications are very wide, and they are widely used in automobiles, home appliances, medical equipment, electronic equipment and even equipment.
How much does the artist rely on mature process chips?
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Raimondo said that the vast majority of chips used by U.S. industrial companies are "mature process" chips, which are widely used in tanks, drones, fighter jets, and all marine equipment.
Mature process chips are very important to a country's security, and she also emphasized that this investigation will help to conduct a continuous analysis of the challenges facing the U.S. semiconductor chain, so as to formulate relevant countermeasures and reduce the threat posed by China to the United States.
In recent years, the United States has obviously felt the pace of our country's catch-up, so it launched a "chip war" and hit two heavy blows.
The first is to attract domestic and foreign companies to set up factories in the United States and increase chip production capacity through huge subsidies.
Since the CHIPS and Science Act came into effect, the first subsidy from the U.S. Department of Commerce was given to the North American branch of British Aerospace Systems, amounting to $35 million.
The second is to strictly restrict the export of high-end chips to China through export control measures.
Previously, the United States' restrictions on chips were mainly at 14 nanometers and below, which made China's technology companies suffer from it for a while, especially in the field of high-end chips, and China has not yet had a good way to break the situation.
But in fact,China's current strength in the field of mature process chips is not unrelated to the suppression policy of the United States
The restrictions on the export of high-end chips by the United States have not only formed a dilemma for Chinese enterprises, but also made Chinese enterprises turn their attention to mature chip manufacturing processes with fewer restrictions.
A large number of chip manufacturers represented by SMIC have begun to lay out, and China's chip industry has shown an unprecedented vigorous development and prosperity.
So far, China has fully possessed the ability to produce mature process chipsThe 14-28nm semiconductor process is already easy to handle.
Therefore, although China has not yet established the process capacity of high-end chips, it has begun to take shape in terms of mature process chips and is becoming an increasingly non-negligible force.
According to the International Organization for Semiconductor Equipment and Materials**, from 2022 to 2026,The total number of new 8-inch and 12-inch wafer fabs in China will reach 26Far more than other countries and regions, toIn 2026, China's 12-inch wafer production capacity will surpass South Korea's, ranking first in the world.
The United States is deeply worried about this, and is worried that in the future, American companies will have to rely on a mature chip ** chain led by China.
In fact, America's concerns are not unreasonable, and it can even be said that it is very likely that something will happen.
Because the formation and development of the world's leading industry chain is the result of the joint action of the market and enterprise choice, artificial suppression and intervention is a violation of the law of economic development, which obviously cannot bring good results, and will eventually harm others and themselves.
History has proven countless times that the greater the suppression of China, the faster China's rise will be.
As a result, in just a few decades, China has achieved self-research and development of national defense military equipment, and a large number of tanks, missiles, fighters, bombers, early warning aircraft, transport planes, nuclear submarines, destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, and other equipment developed with domestic technology have appeared one by one, and China has become a real world military power.
The United States warned us with the shutdown of GPS, and as a result we had a more advanced Beidou.
So, in the final analysis, it's just one sentence:"Under such difficult conditions back then, our first-class workers were able to achieve high-precision self-development, not to mention the current chip position....”。
Therefore, the United States' restriction and suppression of China's chips will obviously backfire.
As Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, the world's largest semiconductor company by market capitalization, said:
"The repressive measures taken by the United States against China will have unintended consequences....”
If we try to limit China's access to high-end chips, it will spur Chinese companies to redeem themselves in other waysThere may now be 50 tech companies in China that have developed products that can compete with Nvidia....”
Of course, although China's chips are still facing the situation of being "stuck", the future US pressure on China's science and technology will obviously not be reduced, and will gradually extend to other fields.
Because China's rise and catch-up has made the United States restless, the United States will inevitably do everything in its power to restrain our development and create obstacles for us.
So,In addition to having the courage to accept challenges, our country must continue to inherit and carry forward the fine tradition of self-reliance of the Chinese nation and catch up