Tech war: China’s chip imports surge as firms stockpile ahead of fresh US restrictions

Semiconductor imports totalled 308.1 billion units, worth about US$212 billion, in the first seven months of 2024, according to customs data

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The surge in semiconductor imports reflects expectations that the US will impose fresh unilateral restrictions on mainland’s China’s access to high-bandwidth memory chips. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:00pm, 7 Aug 2024

China’s semiconductor imports continue to expand, according to the country’s latest customs data, amid reports mainland enterprises are rushing to stockpile integrated circuits (ICs) ahead of potential new restrictions on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips by the United States.

In the first seven months of 2024, chip imports totalled 308.1 billion units, worth about US$212 billion, according to data published on Wednesday by the General Administration of Customs. That marked a 14.5 per cent year-on-year jump in volume and 11.5 per cent increase in dollar value.

The surge in IC imports reflects expectations that the US will impose fresh unilateral restrictions on the mainland’s access to HBMs, which a Reuters report on Tuesday described as the impetus for mainland Big Tech firms – including Huawei Technologies and Baidu – to stockpile such chips made by Samsung Electronics.

A recent Bloomberg report said those US measures could be rolled out as soon as next month. HBM chips – typically bundled with artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators, such as graphics processing units from Nvidia – are indispensable components for building large language models, the technology underpinning generative AI services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

A 3D rendering of high-bandwidth memory chips bundled with a processor inside a server. Photo: Shutterstock

That scramble for chips has resulted in mainland China accounting for 30 per cent of Samsung’s HBM revenue in the first half of this year, according to the Reuters report.