Sooner or later, China's advanced semiconductor equipment will break down, and the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce is really unpredictable

Sooner or later, China's existing semiconductor equipment will break down, and this was said by the US deputy secretary of commerce, which is really unpredictable.

Recently, Allen Esterweis, the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce for industry and security, claimed in an interview with Nikkei Asia in Japan that the U.S.-led restrictions on China's imports of advanced chip manufacturing equipment will eventually prevent China from developing its own semiconductor industry.

The reason is that these control measures also include semiconductor components, and sooner or later our existing semiconductor equipment will fail or even break down, so if we can't get the parts we need, we can hinder the further progress of China's chip industry, which is really logical enough.

Alan Esteves is in charge of the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, the department that develops and revises export control lists at every turn. So will it really be like he says it is?

At the 2023 Shanghai Semiconductor Exhibition, Chen Nanxiang, CEO of YMTC, publicly stated that the problem of YMTC now is not that it can't buy advanced equipment, but that it can't buy parts. If the equipment is broken, it can't be repaired! So what Alan Esteves said also has a certain objective embodiment.

So this is a desperate situation in a sense, what should I do?

What it means to be in a desperate situation is that there is no way back. What will the Chinese do in the face of a desperate situation? Dayu controls the water, Yugong moves mountains, space stations, aircraft carriers, shield machines, etc., etc., which is not extremely difficult, we have done it by ourselves. So if someone blocks the way forward, then the Chinese will definitely open up a new road, for thousands of years, without exception.

When it comes to semiconductor equipment, it can be divided into wafer manufacturing equipment, packaging and testing equipment. Among them, the manufacturing equipment alone includes lithography machines, etching machines, thin film deposition equipment, ion implanters, CMP equipment, cleaning machines, front-end testing equipment and oxidation annealing equipment, etc.

According to the mainstream classification method in the industry, semiconductor equipment parts can be divided into mechanical, electrical, mechanical-electrical integration, gas/liquid/vacuum system, instrumentation, optics and other subdivisions. It can be seen that semiconductor parts are complex and diverse, which also shows the importance of these semiconductor equipment and components.

In October 2022, the United States began to restrict the export of advanced processes of 14nm and below, DRAM of 17nm and below, and NAND of 128 layers and above to China.

This year, Japan has also implemented export control measures on 23 types of semiconductor equipment, involving lithography, etching, thin film deposition, cleaning and other core aspects of semiconductor manufacturing.

These also respond to the remarks of the US Deputy Secretary of Commerce at the beginning.

But will we sit still? Of course not. For example, according to the statistics of the China Electronic Special Equipment Industry Association, the localization rate of semiconductor equipment in mainland China was about 20% in 2021, and it is expected that the localization rate will rise to 25% in 2022.

In the first period, the South Korean media "Mainichi Shimbun" reported that the localization rate of semiconductor equipment has risen sharply from 21% in previous years to more than 40%. In specific fields such as physical vapor deposition and oxidation equipment, it has even expanded to more than 50%.

In addition, according to media reports, from July to August this year, domestic manufacturers won 62% of the semiconductor equipment bidding of mainland wafer factories, while in the previous March and April, this figure was only 36.3%.

In other words, the localization of semiconductor equipment and parts is already underway, and the effect is remarkable. As the U.S. continues to tighten export measures, we're left with only one option, so don't worry about it, we're done.

In addition, Alan Esteves also claimed that he is considering restricting our access to and use of cloud services provided by American companies, which is to suppress mainland technology companies, but this way will only tell everyone that it is very dangerous to store data in the cloud of American companies. As long as the United States introduces restrictive policies, I believe that it will definitely be good news for domestic cloud service providers and a great opportunity to seize the market.

In short, the United States has used simple and crude methods to solve the so-called problems in their eyes, which has worked well in the past, but it is difficult to work in China. Because to this day, they still don't understand China, they don't understand China, so if they want to defeat China that is already on the road to rejuvenation, is this possible?

Okay, let's talk about it today, don't forget to like and follow friends who like it, and we'll see you tomorrow.