In modern scientific research, the importance of chips and photolithography machines is self-evident.
Our country has been at the mercy of others in this technology for a long time.
As China's technological development becomes more advanced, the United States has imposed indeterminate restrictions on the export of chips and photolithography machines to China, citing national security concerns.
The Netherlands, a major importer of photolithography machines to our country, has gradually tilted towards the United States.
The control of ASML's photolithography machines has been upgraded again, and China has spent 177.8 billion yuan in the first half of the year, importing in large quantities just to break the deadlock!
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It is important to note that the United States has the world's largest chip research company, NVIDIA, which has always been a leader in the industry.
It must be admitted that the United States is indeed leading the world in chip research and manufacturing.
Although our country has made significant progress in chip research in recent years, there are still certain technical defects.
It is precisely because of this that our country has been strangled by the United States many times.
Many people have always believed that South Korea has the best semiconductor industry development, but in fact, there is a country in the world whose photolithography machine technology is renowned globally.
That is the Netherlands.
ASML, located in the Netherlands, is one of the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers, mainly responsible for providing leading integrated equipment for global complex integrated circuit manufacturing companies.
As a European country, ASML's per capita scientific research funding can be the second highest in Europe, which has also established its position in the world.
ASML has always attached great importance to the Chinese market and has set up branches in various advanced cities in China, becoming an indispensable part of our country for a while.
However, not long ago, such a harmonious scene was broken.
At the beginning of this year, ASML announced that a large number of products could no longer be exported to China.
The United States also had new trends in export control to China a few days ago, and this time even the Dutch photolithography machine leader ASML was also included in the team.
On September 6th local time, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued an announcement stating that the export of quantum computers and semiconductor manufacturing technology to China will be controlled.
The photolithography machine leader ASML and the Dutch government have expressed compliance with the U.S. export control and stated that they will review together with the United States.
Once this review is successfully passed, ASML's advanced products and photolithography machine equipment are unlikely to be sold to China.
The semiconductor export control that was originally expected to be implemented in October this year was unexpectedly advanced by a month.
For such export control, it is not effective for Japan.
It is not difficult to see whether it is deliberately aimed at, after all, there are so many countries in the world, who does not know who Japan is following.
On September 6th, the Netherlands also issued the latest license requirements for the export of DUV photolithography equipment, and its main products are those of ASML.
And this ban will be officially implemented on September 7th, and for such a matter, the Dutch Trade Minister and the United States are consistent in their words, both stating that it is for national security, which is nonsense.
In fact, all things are not out of thin air.
Before this happened, ASML had already warned its Chinese customers, stating that from 2024 onwards, it will no longer plan to deliver products.
Let's look at this matter calmly, in fact, the export control products issued by the United States have not restricted China much, after all, the previous rounds of control have almost banned China.
The pressure of this control has been passed on to Japan and the Netherlands, these semiconductor material and equipment manufacturing countries, after all, they are the beneficiaries of these things.
So the boss of ASML expressed opposition to the U.S. export control, and said that the U.S. export control to China is like being motivated by the economy.
As a businessman, he is not good at proving whether this matter is related to national security, he only knows that China is a big customer of ASML.
Only in China, the undelivered orders have reached 20% of the total order volume.
If there is really an export restriction to China, then ASML will lose an important customer, and the economic loss will be irreparable.
So what role does China play in ASML?
We all know the mind of the United States, and we will not elaborate too much here.
Our country has also seen this point, and in recent years, it has continuously increased the research and development of domestic chips.
On the other hand, it is at the expense of a lot of money, a large number of imported related equipment, just to be able to study its own chip products as soon as possible.
According to relevant data, only in the first half of this year, our country has spent more than 25 billion US dollars on the import of chip manufacturing tools, which is about 177.8 billion yuan.
And such momentum has not declined in July and August, and it is important to know that such expenditure has exceeded the total expenditure of the United States, South Korea and other regions.
It was originally expected that the total expenditure for the year would break through the 50 billion US dollar mark, which would once again refresh the annual consumption record.
At a time when the global economy is slowing down, China can still throw money to vigorously promote the research and production of domestic chips.
According to the first half of the year data from our country's customs, our country has imported 36,000 semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and the amount has increased by 17.1% compared with last year.
And in the import of semiconductor devices such as diodes and integrated circuits, it has also broken through a new high, and the year-on-year growth has also reached 12.4% and 14.5%.
It has to be said that our country is in a state of frenzy in semiconductor and chip research.
The chairman of our country's semiconductor association, Yang Nanxiang, said with emotion.
The development road of our country's integrated circuits is very bumpy, because there is no good technology, so there has been a lot of detours on the road of development.
The reason why China is so desperate is not to want a cold industry, what we want is the commercial value brought by innovation, as well as the improvement of the level of science and technology.
Chen Nanxiang also said that we have been groping in this matter for a long time, we have not found a better and better development model, but we know that those models will fail, this is all a step by step.
As the saying goes, failure is the mother of success, with these experiences of failure, we will definitely give birth to a huge success model in the future development of integrated circuits.
We are currently limited by Moore's Law, and when this law is no longer effective, our country will have a great advantage in new packaging technology.
Although our country has not yet had an amazing growth trend in this field, there will be one day, and it will not be too long.
Our country's chip industry will achieve explosive growth in a short period of time, and at that time, all those who have strangled our necks will be subject to our technology.