Opinion | China’s semiconductor quest is likely to fail, leaving rapprochement with US the only way out
- China does not have a good track record when it comes to developing its own chip industry, even with the help of foreign technology partners
- Country’s chip makers must invent new ways to design and make semiconductors of equal or better performance than products from TSMC, Samsung and Intel
One of the biggest battles in the ongoing US China tech war is over semiconductors – the enabling technology behind everything from smartphones to earth-orbiting satellites.
However, efforts by the US and China to satisfy their respective national security concerns will likely end in failure.
China must reduce its near-total dependency on American chip tech, but it does not have a good track record when it comes to developing its own chip industry – even with the help of foreign technology partners.
Its first attempts date back to the 1980s when European electronics companies were invited to set up joint venture wafer fabs in Shanghai. A second try in the 1990s also failed, partly because China’s top down bureaucracy was too rigid for the fast moving semiconductor industry.
And while SMIC is considered China’s national chip champion today, it is entirely dependent on foreign technology. What chance is there of achieving self-sufficiency when starting from scratch and with no foreign technical help?
Some have compared today’s push for semiconductor self-sufficiency to Mao Zedong’s “two bombs, one satellite” program that began in the mid 1950s. If it could be done then, why not now?
