Leading figures in China”s semiconductor business are urging the central authorities to launch a coordinated nationwide initiative to develop homegrown superior lithography techniques, intensifying Beijing’s push for technological self-sufficiency amid ongoing export restrictions.
In a signed article revealed on-line late Wednesday, prime executives from main Chinese chip tools and design firms, alongside distinguished analysis institutes, known as for the pooling of nationwide sources to beat essential bottlenecks in the course of the nation’s fifteenth Five-Year Plan interval (2026-30).
The authors of the piece – which was revealed in Science and Technology Review, a journal affiliated with the China Association for Science and Technology – embrace Zhao Jinrong, chairman of Naura Technology Group; Chen Nanxiang, chairman of Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp; and Liu Weiping, chairman of Empyrean Technology.
The executives urged the federal government to combine sources throughout related establishments to work in the direction of breakthroughs in three key areas: digital design automation (EDA software program), excessive ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, and superior silicon wafers in the course of the fifteenth Five-Year Plan interval (2026-30).
Drawing a parallel with business chief ASML Holding, the authors highlighted the complicated ecosystem required for the event of superior chip-making instruments.
“Taking lithography machines as an example, ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) equipment has 100,000 components supplied by 5,000 suppliers, with ASML merely serving as the integrator,” they wrote.
The Dutch agency is the world’s sole provider of EUV lithography machines, that are important for producing essentially the most superior semiconductor chips utilized in smartphones, AI and high-performance computing.
The article posed a essential query for Chinese policymakers: “How to establish China’s ASML, so that the ‘integrator’ can rise above institutional barriers and uniformly allocate funds and human resources is an urgent issue that relevant departments should immediately formulate implementation plans for.”
While acknowledging that Chinese establishments have made “breakthrough progress” in particular person parts equivalent to EUV laser mild sources, wafer levels and optical techniques, the authors famous that integrating these elements right into a practical, secure system stays a formidable problem for the 2026-2030 interval.
Beyond lithography, the article recognized bottlenecks in EDA software program — essential for chip design — and superior supplies like silicon wafers and digital gases as areas requiring national-level coordination to safe China’s semiconductor provide chain.