China needs to foster ‘cooperation’ to break US tech restrictions, says leading chip expert

China’s large domestic market has wooed legacy chip makers even though they are banned from exporting advanced chip technologies to China

The share of locally made chips in China’s total chip sales increased from 13 per cent to 41.4 per cent between 2012 and 2022

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Wei Shaojun gives a speech during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai in 2020. Photo: Handout

Published: 9:30pm, 19 Jun 2023

China needs to increase “openness” and “cooperation” in its chip industry to overcome US tech restrictions and sanctions, a leading Chinese semiconductor industry expert said.

Wei Shaojun, director of the Institute of Microelectronics of Tsinghua University and an official at the China Semiconductor Industry Association, said that China has a number of favourable factors to help grow its chip industry despite disrupted supply chains, including its “super large” domestic market for chips and the inconsistent goals between politicians and businesses in the west.

“Our goal is to shatter the blockade and containment to achieve self-sufficiency, but it has to be noted that self-sufficiency doesn’t mean to close ourselves off [to the rest of the world],” Wei told an industry forum in Guangzhou on the weekend, according to the transcript of his speech published by the organiser.

China’s large domestic market has wooed legacy chip makers even though they are banned by the US from exporting advanced chip technologies to China. STMicroelectronics, Europe’s second-largest chip maker by revenue, will form a US$3.2 billion semiconductor joint venture in Chongqing to tap China’s rising demand for silicon carbide (SiC) devices, while US chip maker Micron Technology, under a partial sales ban by Beijing, said it will make a fresh investment of US$600 million to upgrade its plant in Xian.

Nvidia, which is banned from selling its most advanced chips to China under the stricter US export rules, has tailor-made chips for Chinese clients. ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has reportedly ordered US$1 billion worth of Nvidia’s chips for use in artificial intelligence projects.