Text/Zhan Hai
Starting in 2022, the United States began to restrict China's imports of advanced semiconductor products and preparation equipment in order to stop the momentum of China's rapid technological development. Not only does the United States not sell itself, but even the slightest "Made in the United States" products are not allowed to be sold, and the United States has not only hurt many Chinese chip companies, but also hit the local chip companies in the United States. But the most wounded are the "lying gun" US allies, the most famous of which are the Netherlands and South Korea.
(Samsung, as the largest semiconductor manufacturer in South Korea, has been greatly affected)
Asmael of the Netherlands is a leading enterprise in the world's lithography machine, and as an indispensable part of the manufacture of high-process chips, Asmael failed to resist the pressure of the United States and stopped supplying to China, which dealt a direct blow to Asmail. However, according to a report by South Korea's "Dong-A Ilbo" quoted by the global network, in the "fairy battle" between China and the United States, it is not Asmail that suffers the most, but South Korea's semiconductor companies.
(ASML has a monopoly in the field of lithography machines)
South Korea's semiconductor industry is the world's leading, and the semiconductor industry is becoming more and more important in the proportion of South Korea's industry, and one of the important reasons for the rapid growth of Korean semiconductors is China. Due to the acceleration of informatization in China, the update and iteration of consumer electronic products such as mobile phones and computers are significantly faster than those of other countries. Products that can stand out in the Chinese mobile phone market that "rolls up the dead" are all "big kills" in foreign markets. It can be seen from the fact that Huawei mobile phones swept the European market before the sanctions.
(Before the sanctions, Huawei's consumer electronics products in the European market can be described as a "big kill")
Many of these Chinese-made consumer electronics products use South Korea's mature semiconductor chips, and before being "blocked", because South Korea has a relatively mature supply chain in this regard, Chinese companies did not consider domestic products. However, after the blockade began, domestic mobile phone manufacturers immediately turned to domestic chip suppliers, with the rise of a series of domestic chip manufacturers such as SMIC and Yangtze River Storage, the products of Korean manufacturers are no longer sought after by China, and the reason is very simple, as long as it is the industry that Chinese companies enter, it is only a matter of time before "cabbage" is "cabbage".
(SMIC is currently a leading chip R&D enterprise in China)
Taking memory chips as an example, the memory chips on the market were dominated by giants such as South Korea's Samsung, Japan's Toshiba, and the United States' Micron. However, after the United States began to sanction China, China's local YMTC rose rapidly, and with the support of a large number of domestic orders, YMTC was able to invest more scientific research funds, quickly catch up with the first echelon in the process technology in the field of memory chips, and "knock down" the price of memory chips. Nowadays, I can no longer hear the news of the "fire in the memory chip production plant". YMTC is also nicknamed the "fire brigade" by the industry.
(YMTC has become the "fire brigade" of the chip industry)
And that's just for memory chips. Previously, Asmail's executives were all worried that if the U.S. sanctions continued, when China's lithography machine gradually matured in the future, Asmail's monopoly position would not be guaranteed, and the U.S. "sanctions" were actually "appropriate pressure" to help China quickly promote the localization of the whole process of chip production. South Korean media said that while the semiconductor trade between China and South Korea declined, the semiconductor exports of Japan and the Netherlands to China have risen a lot. In fact, it is also because the lithography machine products of Japan and the Netherlands accelerated their exports to China before the US blockade, and took the opportunity to make a lot of money. Because they all know that if they don't sell it again, the next time they can sell it, China may not need it anymore.
(South Korea, the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands, semiconductor export trend chart to China, 2023 vs. 2022)
At present, China has technical reserves for the entire industrial chain from semiconductor design software, lithography machines to products, and the future will only be better.