China’s imports of Dutch lithography machines have surged this year, with the first seven months already surpassing ASML Holding’s previous forecast for 2023 sales to China, according to a new report, as Chinese firms stock up on the equipment ahead of new export curbs.
From January to July, Chinese imports of Dutch-made lithography machines, nearly all from chip equipment giant ASML, grew 64.8 per cent year on year to US$2.58 billion, Chinese semiconductor industry consultancy JW Insights said in a report published on Friday, citing China customs data.
In January, ASML projected that its sales to China this year would remain steady at about 2.2 billion euros (US$2.36 billion), or 14 per cent of its total annual revenue.
In July, China imported US$626 million worth of lithography machines from the Netherlands, nearly eight times larger than the same month last year, according to the report.
ASML has a near monopoly on the world’s most advanced lithography machines, which are required for the production of cutting-edge chips. Under US pressure, the company has cut off exports of its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems to China.
With the kind of long-term thinking that China tends to do, I have little doubt that they know they need to develop their own tech. By limiting their access now, that would probably keep Chinaa decade or maybe even two behind the bleeding edge tech that ASML or TSMC are producing. And I tell you right now that if a war ever did break out between China and Taiwan, gaining access to TSMC would be one of the mainland China’s prime targets to take over.
They will never get them in an operational state. It is not just the fabs, which I doubt will survive the invasion but the hundreds of engineers needed to run them.
China does so little long term planning. It’s beholden to the short term emotional tantrums/wolf warrior diplomacy of its leadership.
I can’t agree with that at all.
Their planning when it comes to their car industry is a perfect example of them thinking long term. Right now they are the leaders in EVs. Their domestic car industry is shockingly advanced in terms of quality and design and tech. But that wasn’t the case some 25 years ago when they were a good 50+ years behind Western countries.
They implemented a plan which forced foreign carmakers to partner with Chinese companies if they wanted to sell within the country. They were using their massive scale to push these partnerships, and the short term thinking kf most Western companies made them fall for it. So with those partnerships technology and know-how was shared with Chinese companies. This is the kind of know-how that companies usually keep as secret as possible because of how important it is - IP is probably one of the most important things to modern manufacturing companies. These Western companies were essentially training their long term replacements all so they could sell a few thousand more cars per year in the short term.
And in many ways that is exactly what is happening right now - there is a big push in China recentky to support domestic brands. Sales for foreign makes is dropping and the Chinese are buying BYDs and Geelys. These Chinese brands have gotten so good, in fact, that they are now exporting their EVs to Europe and elsewhere.