[6]: 101 During the 1970s, China's semiconductor industry operated with research conducted in state labs and manufacturing in separate state-owned factories, hindering technology transfer.
By the early 1980s, under the sixth Five-Year Plan (1981-1985), the State Council formed a "Computer and Large Scale IC Lead Group" to modernize the industry.
Efforts then narrowed to focus on five key firms, but cumulative setbacks left the industry lagging behind global leaders.
[5] In the 1990s, China adopted a strategy of concentrating resources on a few large firms to foster partnerships with foreign companies, aiming to accelerate technological advancement.
742) into a leading integrated device manufacturer (IDM),[9] supported by significant funding and a joint venture with Lucent Technologies.
The ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000) introduced Project 909, aiming for a domestic firm, Huahong, to produce internationally competitive chips using Chinese intellectual property and engineers.
[9][8] While Huahong successfully partnered with NEC to enter production promptly, reliance on Japanese expertise limited knowledge transfer.
Economic downturns in the global DRAM market by 2002 led to significant financial losses for Huahong, prompting changes in its partnership and operational strategies.
[8] In 2014, the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund was established in an effort to reduce dependence on foreign semiconductor companies.
[13] Between October 2022 and May 2023, China's government responded with a diverse set of measures, including filing a suit in the World Trade Organization.
[14][15] On 26 December 2023, China prohibited the use of CPUs made by US companies Intel and AMD for Chinese government PCs and servers.
[16] The ban was part of China's strategy to rely more on its domestically designed options in response to US sanctions and export controls.
On 15th September 2024, China announced significant advancements in its domestic semiconductor industry, promoting two new deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines.
[22] In 2021, YMTC was producing around 80,000 wafers per month, with plans to expand its first plant to reach 100,000 wpm capacity by 2022;[23] this would have given the company around 6-8% of global market share.
State-owned civilian and military telecommunications equipment provider Datang Telecom Group as well as the China National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund are major shareholders of SMIC.
[48] Hygon Information Technology is a partially state-owned publicly listed Chinese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Beijing.
The company mainly handles central processing units (CPUs) based on Intel's x86 technology as well as domestic Deep Learning Processors.
[49] Loongson Technology is a Chinese fabless company that develops a family of general-purpose, MIPS architecture-compatible microprocessors, mainly used in personal computers and supercomputers.
In 2021, it was the fourth largest mobile processor manufacturer in the world, after Mediatek, Qualcomm and Apple, with 9% of global market share.
[58] NAURA Technology Group is a partially state-owned publicly listed Chinese company that manufactures semiconductor chip production equipment.
[60] In December 2022, the United States Department of Commerce added SMEE to the Bureau of Industry and Security's Entity List.
[64] Huawei is reportedly planning to build its own fabs, in cooperation with SMIC, in an attempt to promote vertical integration and reduce impacts of US sanctions such as the one it was subjected to during the China–United States trade war.