Key members of China’s most influential scientific body have outlined the nation’s plan to circumvent US chip sanctions for the first time, codifying Beijing’s view of how it could win a crucial technological conflict with Washington.
Two of the nation’s senior academics wrote that Beijing should amass a portfolio of patents that govern the next generation of chipmaking, from novel materials to new techniques.
That should propel its semiconductor ambitions, while giving China the clout to push back against US sanctions designed to hamstring its semiconductor sector, Luo Junwei (駱軍委) and Li Shushen (李樹深) wrote in the bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The article, published on a social media account affiliated with the academy, offers a rare glimpse into how Beijing thinks about and might react to the administration of US President Joe Biden’s escalating hostilities over semiconductors. The academy advises China’s top decisionmakers and the article echoes remarks by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) calling for victory in developing core technologies.
Washington has implemented a series of measures limiting exports of technology such as chipmaking equipment and artificial intelligence processors to China, part of a broader set of technology sanctions.
Intensive research of groundbreaking materials, components and manufacturing would help China’s chip firms build a portfolio of patents covering critical technology — the sort of essential equipment and techniques that the US is now wielding as a weapon against China, the scientists wrote.
“We should vigorously promote the spirit of scientists who pursue originality and resist low-level, repetitive followup research,” the scientists wrote.
Li is a semiconductor physics expert and a vice president of the academic institute, while Luo works at its chip research arm.
The two pointed to a number of practical challenges for the chip industry, including a talent shortage and a lack of funding in fundamental research.
The US has imposed a series of sanctions on China’s technology industry, including blocks on companies perceived as national champions such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (中芯國際) and Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
Additional rules imposed over the past year also barred the world’s biggest contract chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) from making cutting-edge silicon for Chinese designers.
Washington is also said to have secured an agreement with the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of some advanced chipmaking machinery to China, further limiting Chinese companies’ ability to advance technologically.
Chinese officials have refrained from discussing countermeasures, even in closed-door meetings.
China’s new technology overseer last week outlined his vision for moving past US sanctions, stressing the need to modernize and rectify weak links in its supply chain.
In a lengthy column published by the Chinese Communist Party’s main magazine, Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong (金壯龍) called attention to how China occupies the lower and middle tiers of the global value chain and thus lacks the ability to master its fate.
It urgently needs to modernize and quicken development of critical technologies, and safeguard its ability to build everything from plastic toothbrushes to jumbo jets, Jin wrote.
That entails also staying ahead in sectors including new-energy vehicles, solar and mobile communications, where local players already enjoy an edge, Jin added.
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