Judging from the current situation, in the field of semiconductor chips, China and the United States seem to have reached an "agreement", that is, the United States continues to expand the scope of export controls on chips and semiconductor products, while China has begun not to buy American chips. This is not only reflected in the fact that the mainland requires relevant departments and telecom operators to gradually replace the American chips and equipment used, but also in the fact that the number of imported chips in the Chinese market has begun to decline rapidly.
Just recently, the General Administration of Customs of China released a detailed data, judging from the data, starting in 2021, the scale of the mainland's imported chips began to decrease rapidly, with the total import of chips in the mainland in 2021 being 439.7 billion US dollars, and in 2023, the total import of chips in the mainland will be 349.4 billion US dollars, which is converted into RMB, and the total chip imports of the mainland have decreased by 475 billion yuan.
At the same time, the mainland's chip domestic substitution rate is also rising, and in 2023, the mainland's chip domestic self-sufficiency rate will reach 23%, and it is gradually rising, and it is expected that by 2027, the chip self-sufficiency rate will exceed 27%. With the rapid increase of China's chip production capacity, the mainland has now begun to ship some chips in the international market.
In 2023, the mainland's total chip production capacity will be 351.44 billion, and many countries and regions, including the United States and the European Union, have seen many manufacturers use Chinese chips on a large scale, and the mainland's total chip exports will reach 211.7 billion in 2023, with an export value of up to 136 billion US dollars. According to the data released by the South China Morning Post, in the first quarter of 2024, the total number of chips in China will reach 98.1 billion, an increase of more than 40% year-on-year.
In fact, it can be intuitively seen from these data that the domestic production rate of Chinese chips is constantly improving, and chip production capacity has also begun to continue to grow, and some of the chips produced have begun to be shipped to the international market in addition to meeting the needs of the domestic market, and after entering 2024, the production capacity of Chinese chips will be further improved, and it will continue to grow.
Why is China's chip production capacity and self-sufficiency rate constantly improving? In addition to the fact that chips are very important for modern science and technology, they are indispensable in many industries such as artificial intelligence and new energy vehicles.
Another key reason is actually the United States' restriction on chip shipments. In fact, this point has been analyzed by many well-known industry insiders, such as Bill Gates and Wen Kening, the former president of ASML in the Netherlands. As the world's largest chip consumer market, a large number of chips pour into the Chinese market every year, and some of them begin to be shipped after being manufactured into other electronic devices.
This is equivalent to the United States restricting chip shipments, but it cannot change the demand for chips in the Chinese market, which leads to some Chinese companies starting to independently develop chips after they cannot buy chips, and some Chinese companies have also begun to invest in the chip industry after realizing the demand for chips in the market.
Judging from public data, since 2022, China has added nearly 20,000 chip semiconductor companies, of which about 4,000 are directly engaged in the chip industry. Not to mention that many universities and research institutes have also invested in the research and development of chip technology.
Under such a huge base scale, even if some companies cannot make any substantial breakthroughs, there will be a large number of manufacturers who have completed certain breakthroughs in production capacity and technology. In fact, this can also be seen from the rapid development of China's chips and the completion of breakthroughs in many core technologies.
Judging from the current situation, China Chip is gradually building a relatively complete industrial chain, from semiconductor equipment to chip design to chip manufacturing and chip packaging and testing, there are constantly outstanding Chinese enterprises pouring out, whether it is semiconductor equipment, chip manufacturing or chip packaging and testing, there are top ten Chinese enterprises in the world.
In the field of chip design, according to public data, Huawei HiSilicon's revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 also entered the top 10 in the world, ranking sixth. In terms of EDA software, Huawei has completed the design of 14nm process EDA software with its partners, and in terms of chip instruction set architecture, a large number of Chinese companies have continued to "add" the RISC-V open source architecture, which is developing rapidly.
This also means that now China Chip is not only growing rapidly in terms of production capacity and technology, but also gradually creating a complete chip industry chain. This is very difficult to know, and no country in the world can do this today.
For example, although TSMC has mastered advanced chip technology, the chip design is basically completed by American companies, and semiconductor equipment also comes from ASML, Tokyo Electron and other manufacturers.
There is no doubt that it is not so easy for China Core to achieve a comprehensive breakthrough and complete the localization of low, medium and high-end chips, but it is not difficult to see from the current situation that the low-end chip industry chain has basically completed a breakthrough.
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