The US is actively blocking China from acquiring the latest technologies, with Washington stopping the export of advanced chips and chipmaking tools to the Asian power. Due to this technological blockade, DigiTimes Asia reported that Ye Tianchun, the President of the Integrated Circuit Branch of the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) and Secretary-General of the China Integrated Circuit Innovation Alliance (CICIA) is encouraging companies to focus on building innovations in mature nodes and back-end technologies. This focus should take precedence over trying to catch up with Western and Western-allied semiconductor companies like Intel, Nvidia, and TSMC.
Although China is working hard to develop homegrown chips, with Chinese CPU-maker Loongson releasing processors that match 10th-gen Intel chips in April, it is still at least five years behind the performance of current chips from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm. The US is also blocking ASML from servicing its lithography systems in China, negatively affecting China’s top foundry, SMIC.
