Chinese "core" pain

The chip industry, which has always been called the printing machine in the world, despite the Chinese government has introduced a series of policy support for more than a decade, but due to insufficient support, coupled with huge risks and long investment cycles, many powerful companies in the Mainland value the return on short-term investment. As a result, China’s chip industry has not developed significantly. The entire Chinese mainland market is basically monopolized by overseas giants such as TSMC, Samsung, Qualcomm and Intel. Originally, 80% of imported chips rely on imported chips, which are driven by rapid growth in demand, and are imported and produced. The “scissors difference” has been expanding and has increased to more than 90%. According to predictions by professional agencies, China's chip imports this year will exceed 200 billion U.S. dollars (approximately 1,218.5 billion U.S. dollars), far exceeding the amount of one year's oil imports. As the Pearl River Delta, which has the most powerful chip demand in the country and consumes nearly 70% of the country's total, it does not have an advanced chip factory. When China focuses on the development of strategic emerging industries, this has to arouse people's deep reflections on China's coreless pain.

As a strategic high-tech industry, the chip is a core component of a large number of important products. It is widely used in many important industries such as computers, communications, and transportation. It has always been highly valued by developed regions, and Europe and the United States and Taiwan have even controlled the introduction of advanced technologies into mainland China. As early as 2000, the State Council issued the No. 18 document that promoted the development of the integrated circuit industry. In 2011, the State Council issued the relevant No. 4 document. The Chinese integrated circuit industry has entered a period of rapid development.



China's chip industry is behind China. More than 50 chip manufacturing companies, such as SMIC, Grace Semiconductor, and Shanghai Hua Hong NEC Electronics, have advanced manufacturing technologies. Chinese chip production capacity has doubled in more than a decade. However, China's chip manufacturing technology is low-end, only SMIC has a 12-inch wafer production line.

Li Mingjun, deputy secretary-general of the Shenzhen Semiconductor Association, pointed out that compared with foreign advanced chip manufacturing technologies, the mainland chip industry is currently one to two generations behind. TSMC now uses 28-nanometer manufacturing technology, and as the mainland's advanced SMIC can only do 40-nanometer manufacturing technology. Shenzhen Founder Microelectronics is still a 6-inch production line.

Similar to the backwardness in the manufacturing sector, although China's chip design industry has been catching up with more than 500 companies such as Spreadtrum and Huawei Hass, most Chinese chip design companies have only low-end designs. In the past ten years, the total sales volume of the top ten integrated circuit design companies was only RMB 22.6 billion, and the number one ranking of the world’s Qualcomm’s company’s turnover has reached US$ 13.18 billion (approximately RMB 80.3 billion), making it China’s top ten chip company’s total sales. 3.55 times the amount.



Inadequate support policies, on the one hand, the gap between chip production and design and foreign counterparts is widening. On the other hand, the market demand for smart phones, tablet PCs, and smart TVs has grown explosively. As a result, Chinese chip production is far behind the market demand. . An anonymous person in charge of Founder Microelectronics stated that the current "scissors gap" in imported and self-produced chips has further expanded, with chip imports rising from over 80% over a decade ago to more than 90% currently. China's demand accounts for the global chip market. Three percent.

Some professional organizations expect that China's chip imports will exceed US$200 billion in 2013, an increase of 30%. Except for exports of US$60 billion of chips and related products, the trade deficit exceeds US$140 billion, exceeding the 120 billion yuan of oil imported last year. Dollars. Shenzhen One Microelectronics, which declined to give its name, believes that many companies are reluctant to get involved in this area due to inadequate national support policies and out of touch with the market, as well as long-term risks in the investment cycle of chips. Therefore, it is still necessary to develop chips for more than a decade. Such a huge amount of imports is not sad.

How important is the chip in the manufacturing value chain? Taking the iPhone as an example, Apple controls the product R&D and design (first link) and sales (the third link). An iPhone can create a value of 360 US dollars for Apple; the second link is the key parts and accessories, basically the United States, Japan, and Japan. South Korea and Taiwan control, these key spare parts can create a value of 187 US dollars, China's assembly, fell into the Foxconn bag, only 6.54 US dollars. The value created by Apple is 60 times that of China's assembly. The value of key spare parts from the United States, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan is 30 times that of China's.

Because of this, China's large amount of white money continues to flow into foreign countries, and many computer and mobile phone companies work hard for them to work. They only earn a meager profit from assembly.

A few years ago, South Korea and Taiwan, under the strong support of the government, had persistently invested in the chip industry for a long time, and South Korea had a one-stop chip industry chain. Samsung's chips meet the needs of its own televisions, mobile phones and other products, and are exported all over the world. In the first three quarters of this year, Samsung’s operating profit totaled RMB 162.7 billion, far exceeding the number of high-tech companies in China, where the contribution of chips was significant.