Agencies
New York
According to Liberty Times, citing Chinese meida outlet TMTPost, as the US has imposed sanctions on China’s semiconductor industry since 2019, over 22,000 Chinese chip companies have shut down as of the end of 2023.
The report pointed out that a large number of Chinese chip companies have gone out of business, mainly because many small and medium-sized companies lack the necessary core technologies and face difficulties overcoming technicalbarriers.
Another issue is the lack of investment as the US restricts investment in China’s semiconductor industry, and under US sanctions, European investors are also hesitant to invest in Chinese chip companies.
The report mentioned that while large companies have invested billions of dollars to secure alternative suppliers, and Huawei is said to have established a network of foundries to sustain its business, smaller chip companies lack the resources to keep up without government financial support.
On the other hand, China recorded a trade deficit in chips totaling $122 billion in the first seven months of 2024, highlighting its continued reliance on imported high-end chips, as the report noted.
According to the report, citing data from China’s General Administration of Customs, in the first seven months of this year, China imported 308.1 billion chips with a total value of approximately $212 billion, marking year-on-year increases of 14.5 percent in quantity and 11.5 percent in value compared to the same period in 2023, which suggests that Chinese companies were actively stockpiling high-end chips, such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM), ahead of US export restrictions on these products.
