The Chinese president had already stressed the importance of the technology industry for his country on several occasions.
(Photo: AP)
Beijing Experts warn of an increasing dependency of Europe on the Chinese chip industry. China already has a much stronger ecosystem for chip design than Europe and can scale faster through high investments, according to a joint analysis by the Berlin China think tank Merics and the New Responsibility Foundation. The report is available to the Handelsblatt. “Under these conditions, Europe will increasingly have to rely on chips from China,” warn the authors.
It is true that the expenditures of the Chinese chip design companies for research and development are significantly smaller compared to global competitors. According to the analysis, this picture is changing significantly with the entry of large, financially strong Chinese providers of Internet platforms that diversify into other areas, such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, into the market for chip design and with the increasing availability of government and private venture capital investments .
Chinese Internet platform providers are now developing their own chips just like their American competitors. As a result, there is already a growing list of innovative chip designs that have been announced by Chinese companies, according to the study.
Semiconductors are the backbone of the digital and green change and are of great importance for all branches of industry in Europe, emphasized the chairman of the board of directors of the Central Association of the Electrical Engineering and Electronics Industry, Wolfgang Weber. The demand for power semiconductors alone will triple by 2030.
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China currently imports more semiconductors than crude oil
China has a huge demand for semiconductors, but can only meet a fraction of this with companies in its own country. In 2020, the world’s second largest economy imported chips worth $ 350 billion – more than the value of crude oil imported that year, according to the country’s customs data.
In order to build up its semiconductor industry, the People’s Republic has been investing billions in the area for decades. Due to the massive subsidies in the semiconductor industry, there was a boom in start-ups this year.
According to experts, semiconductors are an important building block for the future of green technology.
(Photo: imago images / aal.photo)
The EU now wants to counter this with a “European Chips Act”, a legislative package to strengthen the European chip industry, which is to be launched in the coming year. A declared goal of the EU Commission: reduce strategic dependencies and improve security of supply.
The authors of the study from Merics and the New Responsibility Foundation recommend that the EU requires “considerable investment in the shrinking chip design ecosystem”, with a focus on improving the conditions for start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises and spin-offs from research institutions. In addition, Europe must strengthen its position in assembly, testing and packaging of the chips. China already has a strong position there in the international market.
More: From hopefuls to bankruptcy: Tsinghua Unigroup shows how difficult it is for China to catch up with chips