Following the United States and the Netherlands, Japan has also shot at China's semiconductor industry.
As a chip manufacturing powerhouse, Japan has significant advantages in core raw materials and production equipment, photoresist is a typical example. Photoresist is an indispensable key raw material in the semiconductor field, but only a few countries in the world have mastered the photoresist production process. Until now, Japanese companies such as Tokyo Electronics, JSR, and Fujifilm still occupy more than 80% of the market share, and the mainland and South Korea need to import a large number of photoresists from Japan every year.
In 2019, Japan launched a "material ban" on South Korea, announcing a ban on the export of photoresist to South Korea, and for a time, the "neck" of the South Korean semiconductor industry was firmly stuck, with an average daily loss of about 5 trillion won. Lessons from the past, Chen Yan, executive director of the Japanese Enterprise Research Institute, once made it clear that Japan needs to be wary of Japan's restrictions on China in terms of raw materials.
As the United States and other Western countries intensify their containment of China, Japan, the "pawn" of the horse, also wants to repeat its old tricks. In February this year, Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported that Japan would amend the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law, implement export control of chip production equipment to China, and implement the relevant agreements reached between Japan, the United States and the Netherlands. In addition, not long ago, there was news that a large Japanese factory wanted to cut off the supply of China's KrF photoresist. Obviously, Japan wants to repeat South Korea's plight in China, but China is no longer the original South Korea.
In recent years, domestic science and technology enterprises such as Jingrui Electronics, Nanda Optoelectronics, and Shanghai Xinyang have continuously made new breakthroughs in the research and development and production of upstream photoresists. Therefore, even if there is still a gap between the mainland and Japan and the United States in the field of photoresist, it is unrealistic to completely jam the development of China's semiconductor industry by cutting off the supply of photoresist.
On the contrary, for Japan, which has long relied on the Chinese market, whether it is photoresist or chip manufacturing equipment, once it leaves the Chinese market, it is basically difficult to escape losses. China has long been one of Japan's major purchasers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The Japan Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Association has previously released data: in 2021, Japan's exports to China reached 992.4 billion yen, ranking first among all its exporting countries.
Japanese media Kyodo News Agency said that China's sales in semiconductor equipment manufacturing places in 2020 ranked first in the world for the first time, in this regard, ASML CEO Winningk said in an interview with the Dutch company Wildhoven: "China buys non-domestically manufactured equipment because their semiconductor companies want to join international competition, and if they strengthen controls on China, it will only accelerate the rise of China's semiconductor industry." ”
In fact, with the suppression of the external environment and the improvement of domestic scientific and technological innovation capabilities, more and more industries have woken up from the "build is better than buy" way of thinking like the semiconductor industry, accelerate the completion of domestic substitution, and regain the right to speak in many fields that were monopolized by overseas enterprises.
Taking the power supply industry as an example, before 2015, Panasonic, LG and other Japanese and Korean power supply companies ran rampant in the Chinese market, and local companies survived. With the continuous strengthening of the mainland's policy support and investment in the new energy industry, the domestic power supply industry has ushered in a period of rapid development, breaking the monopoly of Japan and South Korea. Nowadays, more domestic brands have begun to go international and widely deploy overseas markets, including industry giants such as CATL and BYD, as well as domestic rookies such as Pastoral Era.
Compared with many overseas first-line brands, Pastoral Times is not inferior in terms of quality and performance. Tianyuan Era, which is involved in the development and manufacturing of CATL, is at the leading level in the industry in terms of conventional parameters and safety, which is why since it landed on the JD platform 4 years ago, Pastoral Times has won the favor of consumers and achieved millions of revenue in the first year. Looking at the latest user portraits of the Jingdong platform, you can see that Pastoral Times is playing an important role in outdoor camping, medical emergency, government and enterprise office and other fields, which is inseparable from people's Nissan life and work.
The vigorous development of the power supply industry is the result of the mainland's adherence to independent research and development of science and technology, and it is also a typical case of foreign monopoly forcing the rise of local industries. Facts have proved that in the context of the turbulent global economic and trade environment and the destruction of the scientific and technological ecological environment, increasing scientific and technological innovation and adhering to scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement is our only and correct path.
Last year, the R&D expenditure of the whole society in the mainland exceeded 3 trillion yuan for the first time, and the global innovation index ranking rose from 34 ten years ago to 11. On March 7 this year, the mainland once again announced the reorganization of the Ministry of Science and Technology after five years. Li Jizhen, a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University, said: "In the future, the Ministry of Science and Technology will concentrate more resources, focus on overcoming the "stuck neck" technical difficulties, and strengthen the role of enterprises as the main body of innovation. ”
According to Science: Endless Frontiers, "A country that relies on others for basic scientific knowledge will develop slowly. ”
It can be seen that in the increasingly fierce international competition, the mainland is striving to change from following to running alongside, and even leading in various fields. We hope that high-precision technologies such as chips, lithography machines and photoresists can also be conquered by mainland scientific research talents as soon as possible, leading China's science and technology industry towards a broader future.