A lot of money for chips + Slovenia's EU presidency • China.Table

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Dear reader,

Nothing works without chips. The delivery problems of the Taiwanese suppliers are therefore hurting the entire industry, including in Germany. But the knot will be broken again. Because an arms race with semiconductor investments is currently brewing between the major economies. China is investing almost adventurous sums of billions in order to catch up with the world leaders in this field and to become independent of the Taiwanese and Americans. At the same time, however, they are also pumping subsidies into the industry, writes Frank Sieren. Sooner or later there will be plenty of chips for everyone. However, this year will not be that far yet.

Slovenia holds the EU Council presidency for six months – and is setting its own course. Refreshingly Zen-like, the government there ignores the whole complicated knot surrounding the trade war, CAI and sanctions. It generally finds China rather unimportant and has largely kicked the issue off the agenda. Instead, Slovenia is seeking a rapprochement with the US. That’s a pleasingly self-confident stance from a country that has fewer inhabitants than many a district in China’s metropolises.

Your
Finn Mayer-Kuckuk

Analysis

Attack on the chip giants

China, which has been sanctioned by the USA, wants to become more independent of foreign countries in the field of semiconductor technology and is already putting its money where its mouth is. In the past five months alone, it has raised a total of six billion US dollars for new investments in the sector. While China is quick to implement and create capacity, it is technically lagging behind South Korea, the island of Taiwan and the US. The auto industry is watching the semiconductor arms race closely.

By
Frank Sieren

In order to become less dependent on foreign manufacturers and to meet demand during the global supply bottleneck,China is now investingheavily in its own chip industry. In the process, the People’s Republic’s semiconductor producers have already been able to bring in large investments this year, with 164 Chinese companies raising a total of 40 billion yuan (six billion US dollars) in financing in the first five months of this year. That’s about the same as in all of 2019. In 2020, Chinese firms raised about 140 billion yuan.

According to a report by the US law firm Katten and the Chinese chip industry monitor Ijiwei.com, the companies obtained the funds mainly from state sources and venture capital firms that are close to the Chinese state. These include Shenzhen Capital Group and CAS Investment Management, for example. But also carmakers like Geely and BYD or tech giants like smartphone producer Xiaomi and e-commerce giant Alibaba invested hundreds of millions in the industry.

According to figures from the Chinese enterprise database Qichacha,17,500 new companies havealready registered in the “semiconductor” segment this year. In 2020 as a whole, there were 21,500, and only 9,400 the year before. The Shanghai Development and Reform Commission alone announced in the spring that it would investtwelve billion US dollars in new equipment from the manufacturer Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). The focus here is on elements with a structure width of 14 nanometers and below. This is very modern, but not yet the most advanced technology.

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