Tech war: China calls for unity to save chip industry

As tensions rise, experts in Shanghai avoid controversy and bet on ‘global cooperation’ — what does this reveal about the chip war?

Delegates at a Chinese semiconductor conference in Shanghai called for “global cooperation”, sending a conciliatory message at a time when Washington and Beijing intensify their chip wars.

At Thursday’s Global Semiconductor Market Summit, one of the first major gatherings of China’s chip industry since the Biden administration imposed new export restrictions, speakers largely avoided commenting on the issue, preferring to highlight the value of “global cooperation”.

Yang Songqiang, deputy secretary-general of the World Integrated Circuit Association (WICA), a newly formed group that organized the event, said that under the current circumstances, “it is more important than ever” to continue global cooperation in the semiconductor industry. .

Ouyang Zhongcan, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the state’s top research agencies, said “trade frictions” have caused serious disruptions in the chip industry.

“These changes in the business environment not only increase operational costs for companies, but also make communication and collaboration difficult,” Ouyang said.

Another academic, Wu Hanming from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said it was still important to build “an inclusive, open and mutually beneficial ecosystem” for the global chip industry.

Wang Xiangdong, president of Hefei Kaiyue Semiconductor, which is developing domestic alternatives to lithography systems, said one of the main bottlenecks for China is the lack of access to advanced lithography machines, in particular the supplier’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Dutch ASML and Argon Fluoride (ArF) systems due to US export controls.

With information from the South China Morning Post*