Semiconductors · controls, chokepoints and military power

Chip War

Every weapon system that uses SI runs on chips. This site explains who makes them, who controls the steps in making them, how the United States and China have fought over that control since 2018, and what the contest does to military power.

Analysis current to 13 November 2026 · news, strategy and library refreshed every day

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Next date27 November 2026

China’s suspension of its ban on selling gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States runs out.

Case studyVietnam’s chip sovereignty

What a mid-sized state holds at each stage, who can switch it off, and a nine-point policy.

Read the case →

$795.6bnWorld chip sales in 2025, up 26%

72.5%TSMC’s share of contract chipmaking, mid-2026

0EUV machines ever shipped to China

under 5%Share of China’s lithography machines made at home

25%Charge on each Nvidia H200 licensed for China

27 Nov 2026China’s suspension of its metals ban runs out

Seven chokepoints

Where one place can deny a stage to everyone else

Design softwareUnited StatesSynopsys, Cadence SI chip designUnited StatesNvidia, AMD EUV lithographyNetherlandsASML Wafers and chemicalsJapanShin-Etsu, Sumco, JSR Leading-edge fabsTaiwanTSMC MemorySouth KoreaSamsung, SK Hynix Critical metalsChinaRefining

Seven of the eleven stages of the chain have a chokepoint, spread over six places. See it on the world heatmap or in the full grid of ten places and eleven stages.

The argument in brief

A contest over time, fought at the narrow points of a supply chain

The name comes from Chris Miller’s 2022 history. [28] His point was that making advanced chips had become the most concentrated industrial activity in the world, and that states had noticed. This site makes four claims about what has happened since.

The fight is over chokepoints, not chips. No country makes an advanced chip alone. The chain has about seven stages, and at several of them one country or one company holds nearly all the capacity. Whoever holds a chokepoint can deny it. Washington’s power rests on design software, chip designs and machines. Beijing’s rests on refined metals.
What controls buy is time. No one seriously expects China to be shut out of advanced chips for ever. The question is how many years behind it stays, what that lead is used for, and what it costs. The cost is real: every sale refused is revenue lost to the firms that fund the next generation, and a reason for the buyer to build its own.
In 2025 the controls became currency. Until then they were described as national security measures that were not for trade. Since the rare-earth crisis of 2025 they have been loosened and tightened in exchange for other things, and the United States government now takes a share of the sales it permits. [7] [5] A control that can be bought is a different instrument from one that cannot.
The military effect is uneven. Controls bear hardest on the largest computing clusters, which train frontier models. They bear least on the cheap, older chips inside missiles, drones and radios, which are made everywhere and move through ordinary trade. The war in Ukraine has shown that the second kind is almost impossible to stop. [27] [26]

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Where to go

StrategyThe logic of the contest in four drawn figures, then a daily reading of the news.Supply chainThe chain, a world heatmap, a grid of who holds each stage, and the players.Companies119 firms by stage, each with a profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.GovernanceWho writes the rules for chips, how they are enforced and evaded, and what the weapons in Ukraine show about their reach.Cash FlowWhat governments have put in, what companies spend themselves, and who invests most.ChinaHome-made chips and machines, and the metals answer.TaiwanThe chokepoint itself: what it holds, what it depends on, and the N-2 rule.JapanMaterials and machines, two bets on the leading edge, and China’s metals ban.South KoreaThe memory chokepoint, the plants in China, and the yearly US licence.VietnamChip sovereignty for a mid-sized state.LibraryThe daily briefing on news and research, every headline and paper collected, books and references.

Strategy · a standing analysis, then a daily reading of the news

Strategy

First, the logic of the contest: which levers are fast and which are lasting, what each side has used and held back, the dates that matter, and what each player should do. Then what today’s news means for Southeast Asia and for a state that wants sovereign SI and chip making.

Standing analysis · written 13 November 2026

The strategic logic: leverage that is spent when it is used

Most accounts of the chip war list who controls what. That is the starting position, not the strategy. The strategy follows from one property that all of these chokepoints share: using one starts a clock. The day a supplier cuts a customer off, the customer begins to build a replacement, and the lever is worth a little less every month after. A chokepoint is therefore worth most as a threat and least as a habit.

The record since 2018 fits this. The American controls on chips and machines worked, and they also produced the thing they were meant to prevent: a Chinese accelerator industry, Chinese machine makers, and a state willing to pay any price for both. China’s metals controls worked faster still, and within months every importing country had a programme to refine its own. Each side has now watched the other’s lever lose value in use. The truce of late 2025, in which both suspended their newest measures, was two sides choosing to keep their threats intact.

Five consequences follow, and the figures below set them out.

Chokepoints differ in tempo, and tempo decides who wins a short contest and who wins a long one. China’s metals bite within weeks but can be replaced within years. The allied hold on lithography bites slowly but may last a decade. In a short crisis Beijing has the stronger hand; over a long contest Washington and its allies do. Each side should therefore want the kind of contest that suits its levers, which is why Beijing escalates in bursts and Washington by accumulation.
Both ladders have unused rungs, and the unused rungs are doing the work. Older lithography machines and their servicing on one side, and a full metals embargo on allies on the other, are what each fears most. Neither has been used, because using them would end the bargaining and start the clocks.
Controls have become currency. Once a control can be suspended for a price, it is a bargaining chip, and the question changes from “what is dangerous to sell?” to “what is this worth?” That makes outcomes less predictable for everyone who is not at the table, including the allies whose firms carry the cost.
Enforcement has moved to the periphery because the centre is deadlocked. With the main levers held in reserve, pressure falls where it is cheap to apply: on trans-shipment hubs, data-centre operators and intermediaries in Southeast Asia. For those states the contest is now mainly about compliance.
Third parties have more room than they think, and less time. While the two principals hold each other in check, both court the states in between. That room lasts only as long as the truce does, and it is worth most to those who use it to own something.

Figure 1 · leverage map

Fast levers and lasting levers are held by different sides

Held by the United States and its alliesHeld by ChinaShared

Positions are this site’s judgment, placed from the evidence in the other tabs, not measurements. Up means denial would hurt within weeks; right means the target would need many years to replace the supplier.

Read the map by quadrant. The upper right holds the only lever that is both immediate and lasting: Taiwan’s fabrication, which is why its safety outweighs every other question. China’s two strongest levers sit in the upper left: they hurt at once, as carmakers and defence suppliers found in 2025, but mines and refineries can be built elsewhere in a few years. The allied levers run down the right-hand side: lasting, and slower. Denying EUV machines does not stop a single chip being made today. It stops the next generation.

The practical rule is that a fast lever should be used briefly or not at all, and a slow lever only works if it is held for years. Beijing’s pattern of sharp measures followed by suspension, and Washington’s pattern of steady tightening, are each the right way to use what they hold.

Figure 2 · escalation ladders

Where each side stands, and what it has kept in reserve

In forceUsed, then suspended or tradedIn preparationNot used

Rungs are ordered by this site’s judgment of how large a step each is. Dates are those given on the Controls, China and Japan tabs.

Three things stand out. First, both sides have stepped back down: the United States from capping chips and from a software cut-off, China from its ban on metals sales and from its rule on foreign products. A ladder that can be descended for a price is a market. Second, the next American rung is aimed at third countries, not at China directly, because the direct rungs that remain are the ones that would end the truce. Third, China’s newest rung, bans on named foreign firms, was first used on an ally and not on the United States. Pressure is being applied where retaliation is least likely.

The rung to watch on the American side is the sixth. Older lithography machines, and the engineers who service them, are what China’s advanced lines run on. Withholding them would do more than any measure so far and would almost certainly be answered with the seventh rung on the other side.

Figure 3 · calendar

The dates on which positions change

Dates are companies’ and governments’ own targets as reported on the country tabs, and several have slipped before. Japanese fiscal years end in March.

Strategy in this contest is mostly about timing against these dates. The suspension that expires on 27 November 2026 decides whether the truce is a pause or a settlement. Around the turn of 2027 to 2028 four things arrive together: 3-nanometre production in Arizona, Rapidus’s first volume, Huawei’s next accelerator, and Vietnam’s first fab. If they arrive on time, 2028 is the year the map above starts to redraw itself: Taiwan’s lever is a little less exclusive, China’s dependence a little smaller, and the allied lead in lithography the main thing still standing. Whoever needs to settle something should want to settle it before then.

Choices for states in between

Four postures, three futures

Posture of a mid-sized state	Truce holds	Controls tighten	Crisis over Taiwan
Align fully with Washington	Machines, chips and investment arrive; some China trade is lost.	Protected: already inside the rules.	Supply lines to China cut; factories idle, but allies prioritise you.
Hedge, with real export-control enforcement	Both camps invest. The best outcome in calm conditions.	More licensing and audits, but access is kept because enforcement is credible.	Painful; each side still has reasons to keep you supplied.
Hedge, with loose enforcement	Works while nobody looks closely.	Named as a diversion route; licences slow, data centres lose chips.	Treated as part of the other side’s supply chain by both.
Align with Beijing	Cheap inputs and a large market; advanced tools are withheld.	Inside the controls: no leading-edge machines or accelerators.	Cut off from allied chips and from allied markets.

Comes out wellCostly but workableComes out badly

A reasoning aid, not a forecast. Each cell is this site’s judgment of how a mid-sized state with packaging plants and data centres, such as Vietnam or Malaysia, would fare.

No posture is best in every future, but one is never the worst: hedging with enforcement that outsiders can verify. It gives up a little in calm conditions compared with choosing a side, and it is the only posture with no losing cell. The row beneath it shows why the enforcement matters more than the hedge. The same neutrality with loose enforcement is the worst choice in two futures out of three, because a state seen as a route around the controls is punished by one side without being protected by the other.

By player

What each should do, and what each should avoid

Player	Aim	Strongest card	Weakest point	Best move	Move to avoid
United States	Keep a lead in the largest computing clusters	Design software, accelerators, machines	Depends on Taiwan for fabrication and on China for metals	Trade access for verifiable limits; spend controls sparingly	Using every lever at once, which starts every substitution clock together
China	Remove foreign vetoes over its computing	Refined metals; scale in mature chips; a huge home market	No EUV; low yields at the leading edge	Keep the metals lever as a threat, and buy time for home-made machines	Embargoes that push every customer to build refining elsewhere
Taiwan	Stay irreplaceable	Nearly all leading-edge fabrication	Imported energy; no formal security guarantee	Trade fabs abroad for commitments, keep the newest process at home	Letting the lead abroad close faster than the lead at home advances
South Korea	Keep the memory lead through the cycle	Memory, above all stacked memory	Plants in China on a yearly US licence	Set its own timetable for the China plants; fix chip terms in the trade deal	Waiting for a refused licence or a memory tariff to decide for it
Japan	Stay the supplier nobody can replace, and regain logic	Wafers, resists, machines	Metals from China; Rapidus unproven	Stay ahead in materials; stockpile and recycle gallium	Using the materials lever, which teaches customers to replace it
Netherlands and Europe	Keep ASML’s monopoly and its market	EUV machines, their optics and lasers	A fifth of sales in China; rules set largely in Washington	Ask for a say in the rules in return for enforcing them	Being the place where the next tightening lands without having shaped it
Southeast Asia	Be where both camps finish and ship chips	Packaging, test, location, neutrality	No chokepoint of its own; exposed to enforcement	Make export-control enforcement credible and visible	Becoming known as a route around the controls
Vietnam	A place in the chain it can keep	Wanted by both camps; engineers; rare-earth ore	Electricity; almost nothing owned at home	Own some packaging; design a few products outright; fix power	Asking a first fab to pay its way

The last column has a pattern. For every holder of a chokepoint, the move to avoid is some form of overuse; for every state without one, it is waiting for others to decide. The detailed cases are on the China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Vietnam tabs.

What would show this analysis to be wrong. If either side uses one of its reserved rungs and the other does not answer in kind, the deterrence described here was weaker than it looks. If China ships a working EUV machine, the right-hand side of the map collapses and the long contest is no longer the allies’ to win. If refining outside China does not appear by 2028 despite the money committed, China’s fast levers are also lasting ones, and the map is wrong in the other direction.

This section is a standing analysis and is not rewritten daily. It rests on the facts cited on the other tabs and adds no new sources. The positions on the leverage map, the order of rungs, and the ratings in the tables are this site’s judgment. The section below is the daily reading of the news, which is written each morning together with the briefing in the Library.

Outlook · this site’s view, with a simulation you can rerun

What matters most, and what to expect to 2032

The most important outcome is not who makes the smallest transistor. It is that the single world chain is ending, and the most advanced computing is becoming a rationed good whose allocation is decided by governments. For forty years a chip was a commodity: anyone with money could buy the best. From 2022 that stopped being true for one country, and since 2025 access has been priced, licensed and traded for all. Who gets leading-edge computing, on what terms, now decides who can build the most capable SI systems and field them in weapons. Everything else on this site is a detail of that change.

From the evidence on the other tabs, this is what I expect between now and 2032. Each expectation is a judgment, and the simulation below shows how much the picture changes if I am wrong about any of them.

The truce more likely holds than breaks, and erodes at the edges. I put the chance of an outright break by 2032 at a little over one in three, and of a crisis over Taiwan that interrupts supply at about one in ten. Both sides keep their largest levers in reserve. New controls fall on third countries, data centres and remote use, where they are cheap to apply.
China reaches sufficiency, not parity. It will make enough 7- and 5-nanometre-class chips for its own accelerators, increasingly on home-made lithography machines and at high cost, but later than planned: I expect the 100,000-wafer target to be met around 2030, not 2028. It stays five to six years behind the leading edge unless it gets a working EUV machine into production, which I think unlikely before 2030.
The dangerous window is 2026 to 2028. China’s metals lever is at its strongest now and weakens as refining is built elsewhere. The allied lever on older lithography weakens as China’s own machines arrive. A lever that is about to lose value is the one most likely to be used. After about 2029 both sides have less to gain from escalation.
Taiwan stays the centre. Fabs abroad grow, but the newest process stays at home, so no more than a fifth to a quarter of leading-edge capacity is outside Taiwan by 2032. The risk to it is pressure short of war, above all on energy.
The next trade fight is about ordinary chips. China’s share of mature capacity passes two-fifths, and tariffs and inquiries replace export controls as the main instrument.
The largest buyers become makers. When supply is rationed, those who need the most try to own it. Terafab is the first case, and will not be the last.

Simulation: two thousand possible paths, 2027 to 2032

Each run plays the six years forward with chance events: the truce breaking, a crisis over Taiwan, a Chinese EUV breakthrough, and year-to-year luck in how fast capacity grows. The sliders start at my own estimates. Move them to see which assumptions the outcome depends on.

How the six years end

China’s capacity for advanced chips thousand wafers a month; the band covers eight runs in ten

When the truce breaks, in the runs where it does

This is a thinking aid, not a forecast. The starting values (20,000 advanced wafers a month in China, a lag of about five and a half years, about 6% of leading-edge capacity outside Taiwan) are taken or estimated from the other tabs. The yearly chances and growth rates are my own judgment; nobody can measure them. The model is simple: it treats each year’s events as independent draws, raises the chance of a break in 2027 and 2028 to reflect the argument above, and slows China’s growth by two-fifths after a break. It leaves out demand, prices and everything nobody has thought of.

Today’s reading of the news rewritten every morning · earlier days are in the archive

Rewritten every day

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These boxes belong to the daily briefing in the Library. Choosing an earlier day in the archive there changes them too.

Supply chain · who makes what, and who pays

The supply chain

No country makes an advanced chip alone. These sections follow one chip through the chain, explain why the chain concentrated, set out each stage and how long an alternative would take, show where it is tightest and where it has broken, and map who holds what.

The journey of one chip · written 13 November 2026

Nine stops, four continents, about three years

A simplified route for one SI accelerator. Times are typical orders of magnitude, from general knowledge of the industry.

Follow one accelerator. It is designed in California over two or three years, in software sold by three firms. The design goes to Taiwan as a set of patterns. The silicon it is printed on comes from Japan; the machines that print it come from the Netherlands, with mirrors and lasers from Germany; the chemicals are largely Japanese. Printing takes about three months and more than a thousand steps. Meanwhile its memory is being made in Korea. The two meet in a packaging plant in Taiwan, on a substrate from Japan or Taiwan, are tested, and are built into a server in Taiwan, Mexico or Southeast Asia before being shipped to a data centre.

Every stop is a border, and several are a monopoly. An industry study found more than fifty points in the chain where a single region holds over 65% of the world market, and a later briefing counted more than fifty countries involved. [121, 122] This is the most efficient way ever found to make something complicated, and the least robust. The two are the same fact.

The supply chain

Seven stages, and who holds each

How an advanced chip is made. Each box is a stage; the coloured band and country show who leads it. The share under each is the leading country’s or firm’s rough share. Scroll sideways on a small screen.

United StatesNetherlands and partnersJapanTaiwanSouth KoreaChinaSpread across several

The narrowest points. Share of world supply held by the leader at each chokepoint. [3] [19]

EUV lithography machinesASML, the Netherlands. None has been shipped to China.100%

Primary galliumChina. From memory of geological survey figures.about 98%

Most advanced logic chipsTaiwan. The often-quoted figure; definitions vary.about 90%

Rare earth refiningChina. From memory of energy agency figures.about 90%

Accelerators for trainingNvidia, United States. Analyst estimates vary.80 to 90%

Chip design softwareThree firms, two of them American.about 75%

Contract chip manufacturingTSMC, Taiwan. April to June 2026, by revenue.72.5%

High-bandwidth memorySK hynix, South Korea. Analyst estimates.over half

Only the 72.5% and the EUV figure come from sources read for this page. The others are widely quoted round numbers written from memory, and they depend on definitions; treat them as orders of magnitude.

Contract chipmaking, April to June 2026. Share of revenue. [3]

TSMCTaiwan72.5%

SamsungSouth Korea5.9%

SMICChina5.4%

All othersUMC, GlobalFoundries, Hua Hong and the rest16.2%

TSMC took 69.9% across 2025 and 64.4% in 2024. [4] SMIC, in third place, is closing on Samsung.

World chip sales. Billions of dollars. [1] [2]

2024Derived from the 2025 growth rateabout $630 billion

2025Reported by the industry’s statistics body$795.6 billion

2026, forecast of autumn 2025Made before the memory price surge$975 billion

2026, forecast of spring 2026Found only in secondary reports; memory alone $804 billionabout $1.51 trillion

The jump in the 2026 forecast is almost all memory, where prices rose sharply as data-centre builders bought ahead.

Two things follow from the chart. First, concentration at the frontier has grown during the chip war, not shrunk. TSMC’s share rose from 64.4% across 2024 to 72.5% in mid-2026, because only it can make the newest accelerators in volume. Subsidies have moved some plants; they have not moved the centre. Second, the chain is long enough that almost every large economy holds some stage that the others need. That is why the conflict has spread from chips to machines, then to memory, then to metals, and why each side has found something to withhold.

Why it concentrated

Three kinds of economics, all pushing the same way

Scale

A leading-edge fab costs something like $14 to 27 billion, and the newest type of lithography machine about $380 million each. Only a firm that fills its fabs can pay that back, so the largest maker gets the next generation’s customers too. Each step forward has left fewer firms able to follow: about twenty-five made leading-edge logic in 2000, three do now.

Learning

The share of good chips on a wafer rises with every wafer made. The firm that has made the most has the best yield, the lowest cost, and the knowledge of how to run the next process. That knowledge is in people and procedures, which is why a fab built abroad starts behind the one at home.

Specialisation

When designing and manufacturing separated in the 1980s and 1990s, each stage could be done by whoever did it best, anywhere. Design gathered in the United States, fabrication in Taiwan and Korea, materials in Japan, packaging in Southeast Asia and China. Nobody chose the resulting map. It is what cost-minimising produced.

Stage by stage

What happens, who holds it, and how long an alternative would take

Stage	What happens	Who holds it	Time to build an alternative	Controls in force
Design software	The chip is described, simulated and checked. Millions of lines of code and decades of manufacturing data.	Three firms, two American and one American-run.	10 years or more	American licence rule tried in 2025 and withdrawn.
Chip design	Engineers turn a need into a layout. Depends on the software above and on licensed building blocks.	United States for accelerators; Taiwan and China for much else.	3 to 5 years	Caps on what may be sold to China, now partly licensed for a fee.
Machines	Hundreds of machine types deposit, pattern, etch and inspect. A fab holds several billion dollars of them.	United States, Japan, Netherlands.	10 years or more for EUV	Allied controls on advanced machines since 2022–23.
Wafers, gases, chemicals	Ultra-pure silicon, light-sensitive resists, hundreds of gases and chemicals.	Japan above all; Germany, Korea, Taiwan, United States.	3 to 7 years	None at present; Japan restricted three chemicals to Korea in 2019.
Leading-edge fabrication	Patterns are printed layer on layer, over about three months.	Taiwan, with Korea and the United States far behind.	5 to 10 years	Taiwan’s own rule keeps the newest process at home.
Mature fabrication	The same, on older and cheaper processes, for most of the world’s chips.	Taiwan, China, Europe, United States, Japan; China adding fastest.	2 to 3 years	Tariffs and inquiries, no export controls.
Memory	Made in its own fabs; the stacked kind is assembled layer by layer.	Korea, then the United States; China rising.	4 to 6 years	Stacked memory barred from China since December 2024.
Packaging and test	Chips are cut, joined to memory and mounted. For accelerators this is now as demanding as fabrication.	Taiwan for the advanced kind; China and Southeast Asia for the rest.	1 to 3 years	Few; trans-shipment rules in Southeast Asia.
Metals	Gallium, germanium and rare earths are refined and made into compounds and magnets.	China.	3 to 5 years	Chinese licences and bans, partly suspended to 27 November 2026.

The fourth column is this site’s estimate of how long a determined, well-funded state would need to build a usable alternative. It is a judgment, not a measurement.

Time

The chain is slow to build and quick to stop

How long things take. Typical figures from general knowledge of the industry; the gas stock is from the Taiwan page.

Design a new accelerator2 to 3 years

Build and equip a leading-edge fab3 to 5 years

Delivery of an EUV machine12 to 18 months

Qualify a second supplier for a part6 to 24 months

One wafer through the fababout 3 months

Packaging and testweeks

Stock of gas held in Taiwanabout 11 days

The asymmetry in this chart explains most of the politics. Capacity takes years to add: a fab is three to five years from decision to output, and the machines for it must be ordered more than a year ahead. Supply can stop in days: a fab cannot run without power, gases or a single missing chemical, and stocks of some inputs are counted in weeks.

So a restriction always works faster than the response to it. Whoever cuts a link sees the effect within a quarter. Whoever is cut off needs years to rebuild. That gap is what makes chokepoints usable as weapons, and it is why both sides have ended up preferring to threaten than to act.

Bottlenecks in 2026

Where the chain is tightest now

Advanced packaging

The step that joins an accelerator to its memory has been the limit on how many can be shipped. TSMC’s capacity for it roughly doubled to about 75,000 wafers a month by the end of 2025, and analysts expect 120,000 to 150,000 by the end of 2026. One customer, Nvidia, is estimated to take about 60%. [123] Chips made in Arizona are still flown to Taiwan to be packaged.

Stacked memory

Three firms make it, one leads, and output is sold a year ahead. In 2025 the four largest accelerator designers are estimated to have taken over 90% of both advanced packaging and stacked memory by value. [123] Everyone else, including every state building sovereign computing, queues behind them.

Power

A leading-edge fab uses as much electricity as a small city, and the data centres its chips go to use far more. In Taiwan, Vietnam and parts of the United States the grid, not the factory, now sets the pace. See the Taiwan and Vietnam pages.

Where it has broken

Fifteen years of interruptions

When	What happened	What it showed
March 2011	Earthquake and tsunami in Japan stop the main plant for car microcontrollers.	One fab can halt an industry on another continent.
July 2019	Japan restricts three chip chemicals to South Korea in a political dispute.	Materials can be used as leverage between allies; the buyer starts making its own.
2020–2021	Pandemic demand, a fire, a freeze in Texas and a drought in Taiwan combine into a worldwide shortage of ordinary chips.	The cheapest chips caused the largest losses. Carmakers lost millions of vehicles.
2022	Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raises fears for neon, a gas used in lithography.	Inputs nobody had mapped come from unexpected places.
April 2024	A magnitude 7.4 earthquake strikes Taiwan. Fabs are evacuated and restart within days. [126]	The centre of the chain sits on a fault line, and is well prepared for it.
September 2024	A hurricane floods the mines in North Carolina that supply over 80% of the world’s high-purity quartz. [127]	A chokepoint can be a single town.
2025	China’s rare-earth licences cause shortages at carmakers and defence suppliers within weeks.	The fastest-acting lever in the chain is held by China.
October 2025	The Dutch state takes control of a Chinese-owned chipmaker; China blocks exports from its Chinese plants.	Ownership and location can be turned against each other.

Events before 2024 are from general knowledge and were not checked against sources for this table.

Two patterns run through the list. Nature and accident have interrupted the chain as often as policy has, and the chain has recovered from them quickly, because every firm wanted it to. The interruptions that lasted were the deliberate ones.

Reshoring

Can the chain be moved?

Since 2022 governments have committed well over a hundred billion dollars to moving parts of it (see Cash Flow). The results so far show what moves and what does not. A fab can be moved. TSMC is making advanced chips in Arizona. It is expensive to build there: the company’s finance chief has put construction at four to five times the cost in Taiwan. [124] Running it is less of a problem than expected: one cost model finds a wafer costs under 10% more to process in Arizona, and a large customer has said 5 to 20%. [125]

The ecosystem moves slowly. The Arizona fab’s chemicals, spare parts and many engineers still come from Asia, and its chips go back to Taiwan for packaging. A fab without its suppliers nearby is an outpost. The lead does not move at all. The newest process stays in Taiwan by law and by practice, so a plant abroad is always a generation or two behind.

Reshoring therefore buys insurance against the loss of one place. It does not buy independence, and no state that has studied the question claims it does.

World heatmap · where the chain sits

The chip chain on the map

The same ratings as the grid below, drawn on a world map. Choose a view: how broadly each place is present across the chain, who holds a chokepoint, or one stage at a time. Select a country to read what sits behind its colour.

Select a country. Thirteen places are rated; the rest of the world is shown in grey. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and the Netherlands also have a round marker because they are small on a world map.

The map uses the ratings in the grid below, which are this site’s judgment and not measured market shares. “Rest of Europe” in the grid is split here between Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy according to where the named firms are. The breadth view adds up a place’s ratings across all eleven stages, so it rewards being present in many stages; a place can hold a decisive chokepoint and still score low on breadth, as the Netherlands does. Borders are from Natural Earth and imply no position on any territorial question.

Heatmap · who holds which stage

The chip chain as a heatmap: ten places, eleven stages

Each row is a country or group of countries and each column a stage of the chain, from design software on the left to refined metals on the right. The darker the cell, the more of that stage the place holds. The darkest cells are chokepoints: stages where one place holds so much that it can deny the stage to others. Select any cell to read what sits behind it.

NoneMinorSignificantLeadingChokepoint

Country	Design software	Licensed chip designs	SI chip design	Chipmaking machines	EUV lithography	Wafers and chemicals	Leading-edge fabs	Mature fabs	Memory	Packaging and test	Critical metals
United States
Taiwan
South Korea
Japan
Netherlands
Rest of Europe
China
Singapore
Malaysia
Vietnam

Select a cell. The note for that country and stage appears here.

Read it by column

Seven of the eleven stages have a chokepoint cell, and those seven are spread over six places: software and accelerators in the United States, the finest lithography in the Netherlands, wafers and resists in Japan, the most advanced fabrication in Taiwan, memory in Korea, metals in China. That is why no state can be self-sufficient, and why every control needs allies to work.

Read it by row

The United States is strong at the start of the chain and weak at the end. China is the reverse: dark at the right, where chips are packaged and metals refined, and pale at the left, where they are designed and the machines are made. The contest described in this site is each side pressing on the other’s pale cells.

Southeast Asia

Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam are coloured in the same few columns: older fabs, memory, and above all packaging and test. They hold no chokepoint. Their weight comes from being where both camps’ chips are finished and shipped, which is also why enforcement now falls on them.

How to read this. The five levels are this site’s judgment, not measured market shares, and were set from the shares cited elsewhere in this site and from general knowledge of the industry that was not checked against a source for this chart. A place can be rated on firms headquartered there or on plants standing there; where the two differ (Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam), the rating is for plants. Company names in the cells are examples, not complete lists.

The players

Eight positions in the chain

United States

Designs most of the world’s advanced chips, writes the design software, and makes a large share of the machines. It makes few advanced chips at home. Its policy has two halves: deny China the frontier, and pay to bring manufacturing back. TSMC’s Arizona plants now make advanced chips, though a generation or more behind its plants in Taiwan. Since 2025 the denial half has been used as a bargaining counter as well as a barrier.

United States on si-warfare.com

Taiwan

One company on one island makes most of the world’s advanced chips. This is called the silicon shield: the idea that no one can afford a war there. The shield argument cuts both ways, since it also makes the island the most valuable target on earth. Taiwan keeps its newest process at home and allows plants abroad to run older ones.

South Korea

Makes most of the world’s memory, including the high-bandwidth memory that every training accelerator needs. Its two large firms also run plants in China, which Washington has allowed to keep operating under licence. That leaves Seoul exposed to both capitals.

South Korea on si-warfare.com

Japan

Lost its lead in making chips in the 1990s but kept it in the things chips are made from and with: wafers, photoresists, speciality gases, and several classes of machine. It has paid TSMC to build in Kumamoto and is funding Rapidus, a new firm trying to make 2nm chips in Hokkaido.

Japan on si-warfare.com

The Netherlands

Home of ASML, the only maker of EUV lithography machines. Each depends on thousands of suppliers, including German optics and an American light source. Dutch export licences, not American ones, are what keep EUV out of China. The Nexperia affair of 2025 showed that Europe can also be hurt through plain, cheap chips.

Netherlands on si-warfare.com

China

The largest buyer of chips and the largest builder of new plants for older ones. It is cut off from the frontier and is rebuilding each stage of the chain at home, at great cost and with uneven results. It holds its own chokepoint in the refining of gallium, germanium and rare earths, and since 2023 it has been willing to use it.

China on si-warfare.com

European Union

Strong in machines, chemicals, and chips for cars and industry; weak at the frontier. Its Chips Act set a goal of a fifth of world production by 2030 that auditors have said will be missed. Intel’s planned plant in Germany was cancelled in 2025. A second act is in preparation.

Germany on si-warfare.com

India

A late entrant with design talent and no advanced plants. Its mission pays up to half the cost of new plants, and the first, for older chips and for assembly, are being built in Gujarat and Assam.

India on si-warfare.com

What follows

Four conclusions about the chain

Concentration is the product, not a defect. The same economics that made chips cheap made them fragile. Every plan to spread the chain out is a plan to pay more for chips, and should be judged as an insurance premium.
The weak points are small and unglamorous. A quartz mine, a film made by a food company, a gas, a packaging step. The famous chokepoints are watched; the next interruption is more likely to come from one that is not.
Time is the real constraint. Money can be found in a year. Fabs, engineers and qualified suppliers cannot. Any policy that needs the chain to change in under five years is asking for something it cannot deliver.
Stock is the only fast protection. Against a cut-off that bites in weeks, the only response that works in weeks is inventory. Most firms and most states hold very little, because holding it costs money every year that nothing goes wrong.

Limits. The journey, the lead times, the history before 2024 and the three kinds of economics are written from general knowledge of the industry and were not checked against sources for this page. Packaging capacity and allocation are analysts’ estimates relayed by a secondary source. Cost comparisons between Arizona and Taiwan differ between sources; the range is given. The estimates of how long an alternative would take, and the four conclusions, are this site’s judgment.

Countries · choose one

China · response and counter-pressure

China’s answer

Who runs China’s chip effort, what its companies can make at each stage, what it has built since the controls began, and the chokepoint it holds in return: the refined metals every chip and weapon needs.

Who runs it · from Chinese-language sources · written 13 November 2026

Who is running China’s chip effort

A simplified picture drawn from the reports cited in this section. It leaves out hundreds of smaller firms.

From outside, China’s chip effort is often described as a state programme. Read in the Chinese press, it looks more like three layers working together, with one company at the centre.

The centre sets direction and supplies patient money. The third phase of the national chip fund has ¥344 billion of capital. In December 2024 it put ¥160 billion into two sub-funds, and Chinese reports describe its priority as the weakest links: lithography machines and design software, with computing and memory chips added. Its recent investments are small and specific, such as synthetic quartz for masks and a 12-inch analog line. [136]

Cities own the new champions. SiCarrier, the fastest-growing machine maker, belongs entirely to the Shenzhen government’s investment arm. [140] CXMT, the memory maker, grew up with the city of Hefei. The firm now producing China’s first immersion lithography machines is a Shanghai state company founded in 2023. [131] Local governments compete to host these firms, which is why there are several attempts at each stage and why some fail.

Huawei organises the demand. It designs the processors and accelerators, tells suppliers what it needs, has invested in more than sixty domestic chip firms, and takes much of the output of SMIC’s advanced lines. [141] No ministry could set specifications at that level of detail. In practice the state pays and Huawei decides what gets built.

Chinese executives are frank about the weakness of this arrangement. In March 2026 a group of industry leaders publicly called the equipment sector “small, scattered and weak” and asked for national resources to be pooled into a single effort to replace ASML. [132]

Technical capabilities

What China can make now, stage by stage

Stage	Who leads	What they can do in 2026	The limit
SI accelerators	Huawei; Cambricon	More than 1,000 clusters of Huawei’s current accelerator deployed, and clusters of the next one, the Ascend 950, in commercial use by September 2026. The 950 is the first with Huawei’s own stacked memory. The following generation is reported ahead of schedule for 2027. [129, 130]	Quantity Limited by SMIC’s output and by stacked memory.
Leading-edge fabrication	SMIC	Chips of a 7-nanometre class, and work towards a 5-nanometre class, made with older lithography by exposing each layer several times. Capacity for these is reported at under 20,000 wafers a month. [128]	No EUV Low yield, high cost. Target: 100,000 a month within two years.
Mature fabrication	SMIC, Hua Hong, Nexchip	Three Chinese firms among the world’s ten largest contract chipmakers in early 2026, at third, sixth and eighth. About 22% of world capacity on 8-inch wafers, and a forecast 42% of output at 22 to 40 nanometres within two years. [137]	None This is where China leads.
Lithography	A Shanghai state firm; SMEE	The first home-made immersion machines entered small-batch production in 2026: about five to be delivered this year to SMIC, Hua Hong and CXMT, about twenty planned for 2027. They are built for 28-nanometre chips and can be pushed to a 7-nanometre class. [131]	Furthest behind Roughly where ASML was in 2008; some key parts are Japanese; ASML shipped about 131 such machines in 2025. An EUV prototype is reported in a laboratory, far from production. [132]
Other machines	Naura; AMEC; SiCarrier	Naura’s 2025 revenue was ¥39.4 billion, up 31%; AMEC’s ¥12.4 billion, up 37%, four-fifths of it etching machines, with 30% of revenue spent on research. SiCarrier showed deposition, etching and epitaxy machines in 2025. [134, 135, 140]	Uneven Strong in etching and deposition, weak in inspection and lithography.
Memory	CXMT (DRAM); YMTC (flash)	CXMT listed in Shanghai on 16 July 2026, raising ¥57.9 billion for its next process and for stacked memory. It holds about 8 to 9% of the world DRAM market, makes current-generation DRAM at a reported 80% yield, and has sent samples of stacked memory to Huawei. [133]	A generation behind Stacked memory two generations behind Korea; reports of its capacity conflict.
Design software	Empyrean; SiCarrier’s arm	Complete tools for analog chips and displays, partial for advanced digital. Three foreign firms held nearly 80% of the Chinese market in 2023. [136]	Dependent Now a priority of the national fund.
Packaging	JCET, Tongfu, Huatian	The largest share of the world’s conventional packaging, and growing capacity for the advanced kind used with accelerators.	Small Behind Taiwan only at the most advanced.

How much China supplies for itself, and what it is aiming at. Different measures from different sources. [138, 139]

Chipmaking machines bought by Chinese fabs35% in 2025, from about 10%

Lithography machinesabout 18%, mostly older types

Chips China usesabout 33% in 2024

Target for chips China uses80% by 2030

Target for silicon wafers70% by end of 2026

Two cautions from the Chinese sources themselves. The figures use different yardsticks: one analysis points out that China’s chip industry had revenue of about $240 billion in 2025 by the domestic association’s count, but only about 6% of the world market when counted by where companies are headquartered. [138] And targets are reported as if they were results: the fivefold rise in advanced output and the 80% self-supply by 2030 are aims that the reports say may not be met. [128, 139]

Reading

What the Chinese-language record adds up to

The capability is real and the constraint is quantity. China can design accelerators and make them at a 7-nanometre class. It cannot yet make enough: under 20,000 advanced wafers a month against a target of 100,000, and little stacked memory. The controls have not stopped the technology. They have rationed it.
The home-made immersion machine is the most important development of 2026. Five machines is very few. But it is the first time the one stage with no domestic supplier has had one, and it is being delivered to the three firms that matter. If the 2027 plan of about twenty is met, the lever described on the Strategy tab as the sixth rung, cutting off older machines and their servicing, starts to lose force.
Huawei, not a ministry, is the system integrator. That makes the effort faster and more focused than a state programme would be, and it concentrates risk in one company and its unlisted partners, about which little is published.
In mature chips China is no longer catching up. It holds a fifth to two-fifths of world capacity depending on the measure, and foreign firms are giving up older lines to it. The next trade dispute is more likely to be about these chips than about accelerators.
The effort is wide, duplicated and wasteful by design. Several cities back rival firms at each stage. Chinese executives themselves call the equipment sector scattered and weak. That costs money, and it also means no single failure stops the programme.

Limits. Chinese- and English-language sources were read through search summaries on 13 November 2026, not in full; several titles are paraphrased. Figures on advanced capacity, yields and stacked memory come from press reports of unnamed sources and differ between outlets. The name of the Shanghai lithography firm is as reported by one news agency and has not been confirmed by the company. The description of the central commission, of local governments’ roles, and of packaging is from general knowledge. The five readings are this site’s judgment.

China’s answer

Rebuilding the chain at home, stage by stage

China’s response has been to treat every controlled stage as a project. The results differ sharply by stage, and the differences say where the controls still hold.

Making the chips. SMIC makes 7nm-class chips with immersion DUV machines, the generation before EUV, by exposing each layer several times. This works, but each extra pass costs time and lowers the share of good chips, most of all for large accelerators. Analysts expect SMIC’s advanced capacity to reach about 60,000 wafers a month in 2026 and 80,000 in 2027. [11] A reported national goal is a fivefold rise in 7nm and 5nm-class output. [12] What is called 5nm in these reports is an improved 7nm process, not the equal of TSMC’s. A think-tank study in 2026 argued that the several hundred DUV machines China bought before the controls tightened are enough to print millions of accelerator chips a year, and called this the lithography loophole. [19]

Designing them. Huawei’s Ascend line is the main replacement for Nvidia inside China. Reports give a 2026 target of about 600,000 of its leading chip and up to 1.6 million in all, and the company is said to expect $12 billion in accelerator revenue, up from $7.5 billion. [14] [13] Chip for chip they are slower. Huawei’s answer is to link more of them together and accept a much higher electricity bill, which China’s power supply can bear. Analysts forecast that home-made chips will hold about half of China’s accelerator market by the end of 2026.

The machines. This is where China is weakest. Estimates of the home-made share of all chipmaking machines in 2025 run from 23% to 35%, depending on what is counted, and for lithography it is under 5%. [17] [15] A state-backed firm is reported to have begun making immersion DUV machines for 28nm work, with about five planned for 2026 and twenty for 2027. [18] A prototype EUV light source exists in Shenzhen but has not printed a chip, and one assessment in September 2026 put volume production of home-made DUV two to five years away and EUV more than ten. [16]

Memory. Every accelerator needs high-bandwidth memory, which three firms outside China make. This, and not lithography, is now described as the tightest limit on Huawei’s output. [11] Chinese memory makers are working on it and are about two generations behind.

Old chips. Here China is not catching up but leading. It is adding more capacity for mature chips than the rest of the world together, with state support, and its share of that market is rising. This is the part of the chain that the West did not control and now worries about, because these are the chips inside cars, appliances, and weapons.

Advanced capacity at SMIC. Analyst projections. [11]

SMIC advanced lines, 2026Wafers a month at 7nm class; analyst projection60,000 a month

SMIC advanced lines, 2027Analyst projection80,000 a month

Huawei accelerator revenue, 2025As reported by the trade press$7.5 billion

Huawei accelerator revenue, 2026Company expectation$12 billion

For scale: TSMC’s advanced lines are several times larger, and their share of good chips is higher.

How much of China’s chipmaking machinery is made in China. [17] [15]

All chipmaking machines, high estimateConsultancy white paper, 202535%

All chipmaking machines, low estimateMarket research firm, 2025; up from 8% in 202123.2%

Lithography machinesMarket research firm, 2025under 5%

Target for mature-process machines, 2027Reported government goal70%

The two overall estimates differ because they count different things. One analysis argues that claims of 50% refer to a few segments only.

The counter-chokepoint

Metals: how China learned to answer in kind

For five years the pressure ran one way. China had no stage of the chip chain that the United States could not do without. It did have the stages before the chain begins. It refines nearly all the world’s gallium, most of its germanium, and about nine-tenths of its rare earths. Gallium goes into radar and power chips, germanium into infrared optics and fibre, and rare-earth magnets into every motor in a missile fin, a drone, or a fighter.

Beijing used this in steps: licences for gallium and germanium in 2023, a ban on sales to the United States in December 2024, licences for seven rare earths in April 2025, and in October 2025 a rule that would have reached any product made anywhere with Chinese rare earths. That last rule was a deliberate copy of the American rule that reaches any chip made anywhere with American machines.

It worked faster than the chip controls had. Carmakers and defence suppliers reported shortages within weeks, and by the end of October the two presidents had agreed to suspend their newest measures for a year. China’s ban on sales of the three metals to the United States is suspended until 27 November 2026. Its ban on sales to military users was kept. [20]

The Nexperia affair in the same month made a related point. When the Dutch government took control of a Chinese-owned chipmaker, Beijing stopped exports from its plants in China, where about 70% of its chips are finished. They are simple parts worth cents each, and European car plants came close to stopping for want of them. [21] A chokepoint does not have to be advanced. It has to be hard to replace quickly.

Companies

China’s chip companies on this site

21 companies based in China are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Design software and licensed designsEmpyreanChina’s largest design-software firm Chip designers without fabsHuawei (HiSilicon)Phone, network and accelerator chips Chip designers without fabsCambriconSI accelerators Chip designers without fabsHygonServer processors and accelerators Chip designers without fabsLoongsonHome-designed processors Chip designers without fabsMoore ThreadsGraphics processors Chip designers without fabsBirenSI accelerators Chip designers without fabsUnisocPhone processors Contract chipmakersSMICChina’s largest; makes Huawei’s advanced chips Contract chipmakersHua HongMature and power chips Contract chipmakersNexchipDisplay driver and mature chips MemoryCXMTChina’s main DRAM maker MemoryYMTCChina’s main flash maker; on the American entity list Chipmaking machinesNauraEtching and deposition Chipmaking machinesSiCarrierState-owned Shenzhen toolmaker linked to Huawei’s supply chain Chipmaking machinesAMECEtching Chipmaking machinesSMEEChina’s lithography maker; far behind ASML Chipmaking machinesPiotechDeposition Packaging and testJCETChina’s largest packaging firm Packaging and testTongfu MicroelectronicsPackaging, including for AMD Packaging and testHuatianPackaging

Taiwan · the chokepoint itself · written 13 November 2026

Taiwan: holding the chokepoint, depending on everything around it

about 90%Share of the world’s most advanced logic chips made in Taiwan

over 20%Chips as a share of Taiwan’s economy

about 40%Chips as a share of Taiwan’s exports

2 nmIn production at home since late 2025; abroad not before 2028

$265bnTSMC’s reported commitment in Arizona after July 2026

11 daysStock of the gas that makes over 40% of Taiwan’s electricity

Taiwan is the mirror image of Vietnam. Vietnam holds no chokepoint and wants a place in the chain. Taiwan holds the most concentrated point in the whole chain, the fabrication of the most advanced chips, and its problem is the opposite one: everything that keeps that point working comes from somewhere else. The machines are Dutch, American and Japanese. Most of the customers are American. Nearly all the energy arrives by ship. The security guarantee is not written down. Taiwan’s chip policy is therefore not about gaining sovereignty but about not losing the one thing that makes others care what happens to it.

That thing is often called the silicon shield: the idea that an attack on Taiwan would stop the world’s supply of advanced chips, so the world has a reason to prevent one. The shield is real, but it works in two directions. It gives Washington a reason to defend Taiwan and also a reason to move the fabs to Arizona, and every fab that moves makes the shield thinner. [51]

Analysis note · 13 November 2026

Xi’s “complete reunification” speech: old words, new timing, and what it means for chips

What was said. On 12 November 2026, at a meeting in the Great Hall of the People marking 160 years since the birth of Sun Yat-sen, Xi Jinping called resolving the Taiwan question an “unwavering historical mission” of the Communist Party. “The tide of history cannot be stopped,” he said. “The complete reunification of the motherland must be realised, and it will certainly be realised.” He restated the offer of “peaceful reunification” under “one country, two systems” and did not mention force, though China has never renounced it. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council replied that neither the government nor the people could accept that formula, and its spokesperson said the wording “isn’t much different from the past”. The same day Taiwan’s defence ministry reported 29 Chinese military aircraft and accompanying warships on a “joint combat readiness patrol” around the island. [107]

What is and is not new. The words are not new, as Taipei says. The timing is. The speech came a week before Xi meets President Trump at the APEC summit in Shenzhen, a little over two weeks before local elections in Taiwan, and fifteen days before China’s suspension of its metals ban runs out. It also follows two American signals that the article records: in May Washington paused a $14 billion arms purchase by Taiwan, which the president called a “very good negotiating chip”, and in September Xi asked him in Washington to show “prudence” over Taiwan and to oppose its independence. [107]

Taiwan is now on the same table as chips and metals

This site’s strategy analysis argues that controls have become currency. The arms pause shows that the same has happened to Taiwan’s security. Chip licences, the metals suspension and Taiwan now sit in one negotiation between two leaders, a week from now. The risk listed below as “a deal over Taiwan’s head” has moved from a possibility to something with evidence behind it.

Absorbing Taiwan would not hand Beijing the chokepoint

“One country, two systems” would put the world’s leading-edge fabs under Chinese jurisdiction. But those fabs run on Dutch, American and Japanese machines that need constant servicing, and on allied design software and materials. Under Beijing’s rule they would fall inside the export controls at once. The fabs would age from the day the engineers left. The lever in the upper right of the leverage map cannot be captured; it can only be broken, and that would hurt China’s own industry as much as anyone’s.

The pressure that matters is short of war

The patrol reported on the day of the speech is the instrument to watch, more than the speech. Taiwan imports about 97% of its energy and holds about eleven days of the gas that makes over two-fifths of its electricity. A fab cannot be switched off and on. Readiness patrols that turn into inspections of shipping would test the chip supply long before any landing would.

What to watch. First, the wording after the Shenzhen meeting: whether Washington moves from not supporting Taiwan’s independence to opposing it, and whether the arms purchase is released or kept back. Second, 27 November, when the metals suspension expires; an extension agreed in Shenzhen would confirm that Taiwan, chips and metals are being settled together. Third, Taiwan’s local elections at the end of the month, which Beijing will read as a measure of how its pressure is landing. Fourth, whether TSMC’s customers ask for more capacity outside Taiwan, which is how a speech in Beijing turns into fabs in Arizona.

Reading. For the chip contest the speech changes little by itself and confirms a good deal. Beijing is not announcing a timetable. It is reminding Washington, before a negotiation, that Taiwan is the thing it wants most, at a moment when Washington has shown it will bargain. Taiwan’s best protection remains what the rest of this page describes: staying indispensable, keeping the newest process at home, and lengthening the eleven days.

This note rests on one news report, read in full, and on facts cited elsewhere on this page. The interpretation is this site’s judgment.

Who runs it · from Taiwanese sources · written 13 November 2026

Who runs Taiwan’s chip industry

A simplified picture drawn from the reports cited in this section.

In China the question “who runs it” has a complicated answer. In Taiwan it has a short one: TSMC, and everything else arranges itself around it. Of the NT$8.44 trillion of output that Taiwan’s research institute forecasts for 2026, contract chipmaking is NT$5.44 trillion, and nearly all of that is one company. [142] The firms that package chips, make substrates and wafers, and supply the fabs exist largely to serve it.

The state does not own or plan the industry. It guards it and supplies it. As guard, the science council keeps a list of national core technologies, on which chipmaking at 14 nanometres and below has stood since 2023, and applies the two-generation rule to what may go abroad; the economics ministry reviews investment overseas under a law tightened in April 2025; and prosecutors bring cases under the National Security Act. [145, 146] As supplier, the state provides the power, water and land the fabs need, and under the trade agreement with Washington a national fund helps guarantee the credit for Taiwanese investment in the United States. [148]

The one firm growing a second centre of gravity is MediaTek. Long a designer of phone chips, it shipped its first custom accelerator for a data-centre customer in September 2026 and has raised its targets for that business several times during the year. [151]

Technical capabilities

What Taiwan can make now

Stage	Who leads	What they can do in 2026	The limit
Leading-edge logic	TSMC	Five 2-nanometre fabs ramping at once, at Baoshan near Hsinchu and at Kaohsiung, for the first time in the company’s history. Supply-chain estimates put 2-nanometre capacity as high as 140,000 wafers a month by the end of the year, above the 100,000 expected; the company has not confirmed a figure. The next process, with power delivered through the back of the chip, is due to be ready in the second half of 2026, and the one after is planned at both sites. [53, 144]	Time The chief executive says capacity paid for in 2026 and 2027 arrives in 2028.
Advanced packaging	TSMC, ASE	Packages five and a half times the size of a lithography field in production at a yield above 98%; direct stacking of 2-nanometre chips on each other planned for 2028. [144]	Capacity Still the bottleneck for accelerators; it stays in Taiwan.
Capital	TSMC	$56 billion of capital spending in 2026, a record, with 70 to 80% going to 3- and 2-nanometre capacity and advanced packaging. [143]	None at present
Chip design	MediaTek	Record revenue of nearly NT$600 billion in 2025. First data-centre accelerator shipped in September 2026; a second customer signed for 2028. Design output forecast at NT$1.70 trillion in 2026, up 20%. [151, 142]	Customers Depends on a few large buyers and on Chinese phone makers.
Mature fabs and memory	UMC, PSMC, Vanguard; Nanya, Winbond	A large base on older processes. Memory and other manufacturing is forecast to more than double in value in 2026 as prices rise. [142]	China The segment most exposed to Chinese capacity.
Packaging and test	ASE, Powertech	NT$570 billion of packaging and NT$268 billion of testing forecast for 2026, both up about 18%. [142]	Small

Forecast output of Taiwan’s chip industry in 2026, by segment: NT$8.44 trillion in all, up 29.5%. The forecast was NT$7.1 trillion a year earlier. [142]

Contract chipmakingNT$5.44 trillion

Chip designNT$1.70 trillion

PackagingNT$0.57 trillion

Memory and other manufacturingNT$0.46 trillion

TestingNT$0.27 trillion

Electricity. Taiwan used about 283 billion kWh in 2025. [149, 150]

Chips and servers, 202652bn kWh

Chips and servers, 2035forecast; about 30% of all use110bn kWh

TSMC alone, 2025about 10% of all use28.8bn kWh

How it is guarded

Law, not ownership

The two-generation rule, now stated openly

In December 2025 the science council’s deputy minister said the list of core technologies is reviewed every year and that the rule is two generations: only a process two behind the newest in Taiwan may go abroad. His example was that if Taiwan makes 1.2- or 1.4-nanometre chips, 1.6 is what may be made overseas. [145] The economics ministry says the most advanced process will stay in Taiwan under any version of the law. [146]

A trade-secret case against an ally’s company

In August 2025 TSMC’s own monitoring found engineers passing 2-nanometre data to a former colleague who had joined a Japanese machine maker. Prosecutors charged them under the National Security Act, and then charged the company’s Taiwan unit: the first such case against a firm. On 27 April 2026 the court gave the former engineer ten years, two others three and two years, and fined the firm NT$150 million with NT$100 million to be paid to TSMC. [147]

The agreement with Washington

Announced in January 2026: a 15% tariff that does not stack on existing duties; the best available treatment on chip tariffs, with a duty-free quota and 15% or less beyond it; $250 billion of investment by Taiwanese firms and up to $250 billion of state-backed credit. Taiwanese commentary notes that, unlike Japan’s deal, it sets no yearly amounts or deadlines. It still has to be signed and reviewed by the legislature. [148]

Reading

What the Taiwanese record adds up to

Taiwan’s industry is one company and its orbit, and that is both the strength and the exposure. Decisions that would be national policy elsewhere are made in one boardroom. The state’s influence over them is the law on what may leave.
The lead is being reinforced at home faster than it is being moved abroad. Five 2-nanometre fabs ramping in one year, with the next two processes planned for the same sites, is a larger build than anything overseas. For now the two-generation rule is being kept by events, not only by regulation.
The guard is serious, and it applies to friends. A ten-year sentence and a fine on an allied supplier’s unit tell every partner that process knowledge is treated as a state secret.
By Taiwan’s own figures, electricity is the binding constraint. Chips and servers are forecast to double their use to about 30% of the island’s electricity by 2035. Nuclear output fell to zero in May 2025, about half of generation is gas, the gas stock is eleven days, and a restart of any reactor is years away. [149] When a conflict in the Middle East shut Qatar’s output, a third of Taiwan’s normal gas supply disappeared.
The American agreement buys time and keeps options. Half a trillion dollars is a large promise with no schedule attached, which suits Taipei: it can be paced to how quickly the lead at home advances.

Limits. Taiwanese sources were read through search summaries on 13 November 2026, not in full; several titles are paraphrased. The 2-nanometre capacity figure is a supply-chain estimate, not a company statement. MediaTek’s custom-chip targets are reported differently by different outlets. Shares of electricity generation differ between the ministry’s and the utility’s counts. Whether the verdict in the trade-secret case has been appealed was not checked. The five readings are this site’s judgment.

What Taiwan holds

TSMC makes about nine-tenths of the world’s most advanced logic chips, including nearly all the accelerators that train large models. [51] It began 2-nanometre production in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung in the last quarter of 2025, with five fabs ramping up during 2026 and the next versions due in the second half of the year. [53] Chips are more than a fifth of the economy and about two-fifths of exports, which reached a record $640 billion in 2025 and grew by nearly half again in the first six months of 2026. Growth forecasts for 2026 stand above 9%. [52, 51] No other economy of this size depends so much on one industry, and no other industry depends so much on one island.

What Taiwan holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Leading-edge fabrication	About 90% of the world’s most advanced logic; 2 nanometres in production at home. [51, 53]	Taiwan, through TSMC.	Chokepoint held
Advanced packaging	The packaging that joins accelerators to their memory is done mostly in Taiwan and has itself been a bottleneck.	Taiwan.	Held
Machines and materials	EUV machines from the Netherlands, other tools from the United States and Japan, wafers and resists from Japan.	Three allied states.	Dependent
Customers	American firms (Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and others) account for most of TSMC’s sales.	The United States, by tariff and by purchasing.	Mutual dependence
Energy	About 97% imported. Gas makes over 40% of electricity and the stock is about 11 days, against 42 days of coal and 146 of oil. [59]	Whoever controls the sea lanes.	Most exposed point
Technology control	Taiwan’s own export list has covered Huawei and SMIC since June 2025, and processes moved abroad must trail the newest by two generations. [58, 55]	Taiwan.	Sovereign in law
Security	No treaty. American support rests on law, practice and interest.	The United States, and China’s choices.	Not in Taiwan’s hands

Three pressures

Washington: move the fabs

In autumn 2025 the American commerce secretary said the aim was for 40 to 50% of the chips America uses to be made in America, and proposed an even split of production. Taiwan’s chief negotiator said Taipei had never agreed to that and would not. [56] The agreement signed on 15 January 2026 capped the general tariff on Taiwanese goods at 15% and tied relief from chip tariffs to building capacity in the United States: a firm may import, duty-free, up to 2.5 times the capacity it is building there, and 1.5 times once it is running. [57] In July TSMC was reported to have added $100 billion to its Arizona plans, for a total of $265 billion, ten fabs and two packaging plants. [54] Other reports give other totals.

Beijing: wait, squeeze, recruit

China does not need to seize the fabs to use them as leverage; it needs only to show that it could stop the ships. Analysts who model a blockade point first at gas, which cannot be stockpiled for long. [60] Meanwhile Chinese firms recruit Taiwanese engineers, which is why Taipei put Huawei and SMIC on its control list and treats advanced process know-how as a national core technology. [58]

Physics: power, water, people

Advanced fabs are among the largest electricity users on the island, and each new generation uses more. Taiwan shut its last nuclear reactor in 2025 and now relies on imported gas for the largest share of its power; the war around Iran in 2026 showed how quickly that supply can tighten, since over a third of the gas comes from the Middle East. The government is raising the required gas stock from 11 to 14 days and has restarted coal units as a buffer. [59]

The N-2 rule, and why it matters

Taiwan’s main instrument for keeping the shield is a rule of thumb known as N-2: a process may be taken abroad only when it is two generations behind the newest one running in Taiwan. With 2 nanometres now in production at home, that permits 4-nanometre work abroad and, strictly read, not yet 3. TSMC’s second Arizona fab is due to make 3-nanometre chips in 2027 and later ones 2-nanometre, so the rule and the American commitments are on course to collide unless Taiwan’s newest process moves on fast enough to keep the gap. [55, 54] The practical meaning of the rule is that Taiwan’s lead abroad is a clock that TSMC has to keep winding at home.

What a realistic policy looks like

Trade capacity for commitments, not only for tariff relief. Every fab built in Arizona spends some of the shield. The January agreement bought a lower tariff. [57] The thing worth buying with fabs is harder: supply of machines guaranteed in a crisis, arms delivered on time, and a say in the export rules that decide who TSMC may sell to.
Keep the newest process, the research and the packaging at home, and say so in law. A rule of thumb can be bargained away one fab at a time. A statute with a published test is harder to bend and gives TSMC an answer when customers ask for more abroad. [55]
Treat energy as chip policy. Eleven days of gas is the shortest fuse in the whole chain. Storage, more receiving terminals, a firm decision on nuclear power, and priority rules for fabs under rationing matter more to the shield than any fab announcement. [59, 60]
Enforce the controls Taiwan already has. The entity list and the trade-secret law protect the only asset that cannot be rebuilt abroad quickly, which is the people who know how to run the process. Enforcement against recruitment and diversion is also what keeps American and Dutch suppliers willing to ship. [58]
Widen the circle of states with a stake. Plants in Japan and Germany give two more governments a direct interest in Taiwan’s engineers and supply lines. Partnerships with Southeast Asian packaging hubs do the same at lower cost.
Do not let chips be the whole economy. An economy growing at 9% on one product is exposed to that product’s cycle, and the gains are unevenly shared. [51] The political support that chip policy needs at home depends on the rest of the economy seeing some of the benefit.

How it could go wrong

The shield moves abroad faster than the lead moves on. If 2-nanometre production in Arizona arrives while Taiwan’s next process slips, the gap closes and with it the reason to treat Taiwan as irreplaceable.

A blockade short of war. A quarantine of gas carriers would test the grid within two weeks. Fabs cannot be idled and restarted like an assembly line. [60]

A deal over Taiwan’s head. Since 2025 chip controls have been traded for other things. A bargain between Washington and Beijing that set terms for chips made in Taiwan is the outcome Taipei can least influence.

The cycle turns. If spending on SI computing slows, the island’s growth, tax revenue and bargaining weight fall together. [52]

Limits. Sources were read through search summaries in English and Chinese on 13 November 2026, not in full. Figures for Taiwan’s share of advanced chips, for chips’ share of the economy and for 2-nanometre capacity are estimates quoted by the press, and reports of TSMC’s American commitment give totals from $165 billion to $500 billion. The status of the January 2026 trade agreement after later court rulings on tariffs was not checked. The statements about TSMC’s customers, the date of the last reactor’s closure, the trade-secret law and the plants in Japan and Germany are from general knowledge, not from a cited source. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

Taiwan’s chip companies on this site

13 companies based in Taiwan are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Chip designers without fabsMediaTekPhone and consumer processors Chip designers without fabsRealtekNetworking and audio chips Chip designers without fabsNovatekDisplay driver chips Contract chipmakersTSMCAbout nine-tenths of the most advanced logic Contract chipmakersUMCMature chips Contract chipmakersPSMCMature chips and memory Contract chipmakersVanguard (VIS)Mature and power chips MemoryNanyaDRAM MemoryWinbondSpecialised memory MaterialsGlobalWafersSilicon wafers MaterialsUnimicronPackage substrates Packaging and testASELargest packaging and test firm Packaging and testPowertechMemory packaging

Japan · materials, machines, and a second attempt at the leading edge · written 13 November 2026

Japan: the supplier nobody can do without, trying to make chips again

44%Share of the world’s silicon wafers made by two Japanese firms

60%Share of photoresist held by the three largest makers, all Japanese

2 nmWhat Rapidus is trying to make in Hokkaido

FY2027–28Rapidus: first volume, then full production

3 nmNew plan for TSMC’s second Kumamoto fab

6 Jan 2026China bars dual-use exports to Japan

Japan’s place in the chain is easy to miss because it makes few of the chips anyone has heard of. It makes what the chips are made from and much of what they are made with. Two Japanese firms supply about 44% of the world’s silicon wafers, the three largest makers of photoresist are Japanese with about 60% between them, and Tokyo Electron is the fourth-largest maker of chipmaking machines. Other estimates put Japan’s share of the most advanced resists far higher. [66] A fab in Taiwan, Korea, America or China that lost its Japanese suppliers would stop within weeks.

What Japan lost, between the 1990s and the 2010s, was the making of advanced logic chips themselves. Its present policy is an attempt to buy that back in two ways at once: by paying TSMC to build in Kumamoto, and by backing a new company, Rapidus, to make 2-nanometre chips in Hokkaido. At the same time Japan is being squeezed from both sides. It has joined the American controls on machines, which cost its toolmakers sales in China, and since January 2026 it has been the target of China’s own export ban.

What Japan holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Wafers and resists	Shin-Etsu 26.3% and Sumco 17.8% of silicon wafers; the top three photoresist makers, about 60% together. [66]	Japan.	Chokepoint held
Chipmaking machines	Tokyo Electron about 10% of the world market, with strong positions in coating, etching and cleaning; Nikon and Canon in older lithography.	Japan, within rules agreed with Washington.	Leading
Leading-edge logic	None in volume. Rapidus has run a 2-nanometre pilot line since April 2025 and aims at volume in late fiscal 2027. [61, 63]	Japan, with IBM’s process and ASML’s machines.	Not yet
TSMC in Kumamoto	First fab making 12 to 28-nanometre chips since late 2024; second fab switched to 3 nanometres in 2026. [64]	TSMC, and Taiwan’s rule on what may leave the island.	Present, not owned
Memory, sensors, power chips	Kioxia in flash memory, Sony in image sensors, Renesas and others in automotive and power chips.	Japan.	Held
Critical metals	Japan bought 58% of China’s gallium exports in 2025; over 99% of heavy rare earths are refined in China. [68, 67]	China.	Most exposed point
The China market	China was still about a third of Tokyo Electron’s sales in 2026, down from over 40%.	China as buyer, Washington and Tokyo as licensors.	Shrinking

Two bets on the leading edge

Rapidus. Founded in 2022 with eight Japanese firms behind it and IBM’s 2-nanometre process, Rapidus started its pilot line at Chitose in April 2025 and showed working transistors that year. It plans test chips for customers by late 2026, volume in the second half of fiscal 2027, and by Japanese press accounts full production in fiscal 2028. [61, 63] In 2026 it raised ¥267.6 billion: ¥100 billion from the state, which became the largest shareholder with 11.5% of the votes and a golden share, and ¥167.6 billion from 32 companies including Toyota, Sony and NEC. [62] The state research agency approved a further ¥631.5 billion for fiscal 2026, and cumulative public support is reported at about ¥2.4 trillion. [61] Counts differ between sources. The open questions are yield and paying customers: about 60 firms were reported to be in talks, and Fujitsu is reported to have committed.

Kumamoto. TSMC’s first Japanese fab has made mature chips for Sony and carmakers since late 2024. The second was planned for 6 and 7 nanometres. In February 2026 TSMC’s chairman told the prime minister it would make 3-nanometre chips instead, and Taiwan’s economics ministry approved the change on 31 March. [64] That gives Japan advanced production years before Rapidus can supply it, but in a fab that Japan does not own, with a start that earlier reports put as late as 2029. [65] The two bets pull against each other: every customer Kumamoto serves is one Rapidus has to win away.

Three pressures

Washington: hold the line on machines

Japan restricted 23 kinds of chipmaking equipment in July 2023 after talks with the United States, and added 21 advanced chip and quantum items in May 2025 under rules that require a licence for every destination. [70] The price is paid by the toolmakers: the five largest sold about ¥1.47 trillion in China in fiscal 2025, 12% less than the year before.

Beijing: the metals answer, aimed at Japan

On 6 January 2026 China barred exports to Japan of dual-use goods that could strengthen its military, naming seven rare earths and products containing them, and tied the step to the prime minister’s remarks on Taiwan. Twenty Japanese firms and bodies were listed on 24 February and twenty more in late June. [67, 69] Customs data showed no gallium shipped to Japan in February. [68] Gallium goes into the power and radio chips in which Japan is strong.

Time: an ageing lead

China has set itself a target of 40% self-sufficiency in photoresist by 2026 and is the world’s largest buyer of the mature-chip machines Japan sells. [66] A chokepoint in materials lasts only as long as the customers cannot make their own, and Japan’s own 2019 limits on sales to Korea showed how fast a threatened buyer starts trying.

What a realistic policy looks like

Guard the materials lead by staying ahead, not by threatening to cut off supply. Each use of the lever teaches customers to replace it. The lead is kept by being first with the resists and wafers the next process needs, which means working inside TSMC’s, Samsung’s and Rapidus’s development lines. [66]
Treat gallium and heavy rare earths as the urgent problem. Japan answered the 2010 rare-earth cut-off with stockpiles, recycling and mines outside China, and still depends on Chinese refining. The 2026 ban shows the work is unfinished: stocks measured in months, recycling of gallium from scrap, and refining with Australia, Malaysia and Vietnam. [67, 68]
Judge Rapidus by yield and paying customers, with dates. About ¥2.4 trillion of public money rests on a company that has not yet shipped a product. [61] The state now holds a golden share. [62] It should publish the milestones it expects, and say what happens if they are missed.
Use Kumamoto for demand, Rapidus for capability. Carmakers and Sony need assured supply now, which Kumamoto gives. Rapidus should be pointed at what TSMC will not do in Japan: small runs, fast turnaround, and chips for defence and state use where a domestic owner matters. [64]
Ask for something in return for the controls. Japanese toolmakers lose Chinese sales that American rules permit their rivals in some categories to keep. Tokyo’s leverage is that the controls do not work without it. [70]
Rebuild the workforce. The engineers who ran Japan’s last leading-edge lines are near retirement. Training with TSMC in Kumamoto and IBM in Albany is the quickest route, and it only works if those engineers stay.

How it could go wrong

Rapidus makes the chip but not the yield. A 2-nanometre line that works in the laboratory and loses money in production would absorb subsidies for years without giving Japan supply it can rely on.

The metals ban widens. So far it is aimed at military end users and listed firms. Applied to chip materials makers, it would reach the wafer and resist plants the whole chain depends on, and China would be damaging its own supply too.

Customers replace Japan. If China reaches its resist target and Korea continues to localise, the chokepoint narrows from the outside while Japan’s attention is on logic chips.

Taiwan says no. Kumamoto’s 3-nanometre plan exists by permission of Taipei’s rules on what may be made abroad, which can change with the politics described on the Taiwan tab.

Limits. Sources were read through search summaries in English and Japanese on 13 November 2026, not in full; two titles are paraphrased because only a summary was seen. Market shares are from a Nikkei survey for 2025 as relayed by secondary reports; the figures for toolmakers’ sales in China and for Tokyo Electron’s China share come from news summaries of company results and were not checked against the filings. Totals for public support of Rapidus differ between sources. The 2023 controls, the 2019 dispute with Korea, the 2010 rare-earth cut-off, Rapidus’s founding, and the positions of Kioxia, Sony, Renesas, Nikon and Canon are from general knowledge, not from a cited source. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

Japan’s chip companies on this site

23 companies based in Japan are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Makers that both design and manufactureRenesasAutomotive microcontrollers Makers that both design and manufactureSonyImage sensors Makers that both design and manufactureRohmPower chips Makers that both design and manufactureMitsubishi ElectricPower modules Contract chipmakersRapidusDeveloping 2-nanometre production MemoryKioxiaFlash memory Chipmaking machinesTokyo ElectronCoating, etching, cleaning Chipmaking machinesScreenWafer cleaning Chipmaking machinesKokusai ElectricDeposition furnaces Chipmaking machinesNikonOlder lithography machines Chipmaking machinesCanonOlder lithography; nano-imprint machines Chipmaking machinesLasertecInspection of EUV masks Chipmaking machinesDiscoWafer cutting and grinding Chipmaking machinesAdvantestChip testers MaterialsShin-Etsu ChemicalLargest maker of silicon wafers; photoresist MaterialsSumcoSilicon wafers MaterialsJSRPhotoresist MaterialsTokyo Ohka KogyoPhotoresist, including for stacked memory MaterialsFujifilmPhotoresist and chemicals MaterialsResonacPackaging materials MaterialsAjinomotoThe insulating film in nearly every advanced chip package MaterialsHoyaMask blanks for EUV MaterialsIbidenPackage substrates

South Korea · memory, and the fabs in China · written 13 November 2026

South Korea: the memory power, working on two governments’ permission

41%Chips as a share of Korea’s exports, January to August 2026

$37.2bnChip exports in May 2026, a monthly record

over halfSK hynix’s share of the stacked memory beside accelerators

3 fabsLarge Korean memory plants inside China

1 yearLength of the US licence that lets those plants receive machines

30s %Share of materials, parts and machines supplied at home

South Korea holds one of the seven chokepoints: memory. Samsung and SK hynix make most of the world’s memory chips, and SK hynix makes more than half of the stacked memory without which an accelerator cannot be finished. [76, 77] In 2026 that position produced the largest export boom in the country’s history. Chip exports rose about 170% in the first eight months to $281 billion, 41% of everything Korea sold abroad, and total exports passed the whole of 2025 by early September. [83, 84]

The position is also unusually conditional. A large part of Korea’s memory is made in three plants inside China, which run on American machines by a licence renewed one year at a time. The materials come largely from Japan. The largest customers are American, and the tariff terms for chips entering the United States are still being negotiated. Korea holds a chokepoint and needs permission from Washington to keep operating it, and tolerance from Beijing to keep the plants.

What South Korea holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Memory	Samsung and SK hynix make most of the world’s DRAM and a large share of its flash memory.	South Korea.	Chokepoint held
Stacked memory for accelerators	SK hynix 58% in early 2026 by one tracker, falling as Samsung and Micron catch up; about two-thirds of Nvidia’s next generation. [76, 77]	South Korea, with Nvidia as the buyer that sets the terms.	Held, share falling
Leading-edge logic	Samsung is the second source after TSMC, with 5.9% of contract chipmaking in mid-2026 and a $16.5 billion order from Tesla. [78]	South Korea, a long way behind Taiwan.	Present, small
Plants in China	Samsung’s flash plant in Xi’an; SK hynix’s DRAM plant in Wuxi and flash plant in Dalian. Their standing exemption from US controls ended on 31 December 2025 and was replaced by annual licences that allow upkeep, not expansion. [86]	The United States each December, and China every day.	Most exposed point
Materials and machines	Home supply is reported in the 30% range. The resist and underfill used for stacked memory come almost entirely from Japanese firms. [90]	Japan, the United States and the Netherlands.	Dependent
The American market	The November 2025 deal capped several tariffs at 15% and promised chip terms no worse than other countries get; the chip terms themselves were still under negotiation in September 2026. [89]	The United States.	Unsettled
The economy	Chips were 41% of exports over eight months and 48% in early September. [84]	The memory price cycle.	Concentrated

Three pressures

Washington: licences, tariffs, investment

The annual licence gives the United States a decision each year over whether Korea’s Chinese plants can be maintained. [86] Since December 2024 American rules have also barred sales of stacked memory to China. In trade, Korea pledged $350 billion of investment in the United States and received a promise on chip tariffs whose content is not yet fixed, while Washington imposed a 25% tariff on certain advanced computing chips in January 2026 and has said broader chip tariffs may follow. [89]

Beijing: a market, a landlord and a rival

China is a large buyer of Korean memory and the host of three of its biggest plants, which cannot be moved. It is also building competitors: analysts warn that two Chinese memory makers are expanding with state support and that cheap Chinese memory could end the boom as quickly as it began. [85] Korea has kept out of the sharpest measures against China for that reason.

Home: power, land and working hours

The Semiconductor Special Act passed on 29 January 2026 and took effect in August. It sets up a presidential commission and a special fund and gives regions outside the capital priority for new clusters. The clause the industry most wanted, an exemption from the 52-hour working week for research staff, was dropped after opposition from labour and left for later. [87, 88] Power and water for the planned cluster south of Seoul remain the practical limit.

What a realistic policy looks like

Keep the memory lead by pace. The chokepoint is the newest stacked memory, not memory in general, and the lead is measured in quarters. Share is already falling as rivals qualify their products. [76] What protects Korea is being first to each generation with the buyer that matters.
Decide the future of the Chinese plants before someone else does. A licence that permits upkeep but not upgrades means the plants age in place. [86] Korea’s firms need their own timetable for what those plants will make in five years, so that neither a refused renewal nor a Chinese reprisal sets it for them.
Close the few single-supplier gaps in materials. Korea localised much after Japan’s 2019 restrictions, but the materials for stacked memory still come from one or two Japanese firms. [90] Second sources for those few items matter more than a higher overall percentage.
Get chips written into the trade terms. A promise of treatment no worse than others is only as good as the others’ deals. With memory now nearly half of exports, a tariff on memory is the largest single trade risk Korea faces. [89, 84]
Build the second leg in logic. The Tesla order gives Samsung’s contract business a reference customer at 2 nanometres. [78] A credible second source to TSMC is worth more to Korea’s standing with Washington than any amount of mature capacity.
Save some of the boom. An economy with 41% of its exports in one product should expect the cycle to turn. [84, 85] Using this year’s tax revenue for power lines, engineers and a reserve is cheaper than rescuing the industry in the next downturn.

How it could go wrong

The licence is not renewed, or is renewed with conditions. Each December the plants in China depend on a decision in Washington that is now tied to wider bargaining with Beijing.

Chinese memory arrives in volume. If the two Chinese makers reach full production in 2027 as analysts expect, prices fall and the plants in China compete with their own neighbours. [85]

A tariff on memory. Washington has signalled broader chip tariffs. Memory is the product Korea cannot easily make in America at scale in time.

The cycle turns. Memory prices have risen on data-centre buying. If that buying pauses, exports, tax revenue and the currency move together.

Limits. Sources were read through search summaries in English and Korean on 13 November 2026, not in full; for two of them only the headline and summary were seen. Export figures are those reported for the periods stated and later months were not found. Market shares for memory differ between research firms. The statement that Samsung and SK hynix make most of the world’s memory, the December 2024 rule on stacked memory, the 2019 dispute with Japan and the cluster south of Seoul are from general knowledge, not from a cited source. No figures for the companies’ profits were found. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

South Korea’s chip companies on this site

6 companies based in South Korea are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Contract chipmakersSamsung FoundrySecond source for leading-edge logic MemorySamsung ElectronicsLargest memory maker MemorySK hynixLeader in stacked memory for accelerators Chipmaking machinesHanmi SemiconductorBonding machines for stacked memory MaterialsSK SiltronSilicon wafers Packaging and testHana MicronMemory packaging, much of it in Vietnam

Vietnam · chip sovereignty · written 13 November 2026

Vietnam: sovereignty by position, not by self-sufficiency

16 Jan 2026Ground broken on Vietnam’s first chip fab, at Hoa Lac

32 nmIts starting process, about fifteen years behind the leading edge

End of 2027Planned start of trial production

50,000Chip engineers the state wants trained by 2030

about 6,000Chip design engineers working in Vietnam now

61bn kWhProjected electricity shortfall in 2030

Vietnam cannot make itself independent in chips, and its own strategy does not claim it can. No state can: the United States depends on Taiwan for fabrication, Taiwan on the Netherlands for machines, and everyone on China for metals. The useful question for a country of Vietnam’s size is a narrower one. For each thing it depends on, can a single foreign government or company switch it off, look inside it, or raise its price at will? Where the answer is yes, Vietnam is not sovereign at that point, whatever is built on its soil.

Measured that way, Vietnam’s position is better than its factory count suggests in some places and worse in others. It has one asset that most states lack, which is that both camps want it. American, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese firms have all put chip plants there, and Washington and Beijing both court Hanoi. It also has three hard weaknesses: almost everything valuable on its soil belongs to someone else, its engineers are concentrated in the least valuable part of design, and its electricity supply is not yet good enough for the industry it wants. The section sets out what Vietnam has at each stage, who can switch it off, and what a realistic sovereignty policy would look like.

The plan on paper

The governing document is the Prime Minister’s Decision 1018 of 21 September 2024, a strategy to 2030 with a vision to 2050. Its formula is C = SET + 1: chips, plus specialised chips, electronics and talent, plus Vietnam as the “+1” destination for firms spreading production beyond their main base. [29] It runs in three phases. By 2030 the reported targets are at least 100 design firms, one small fab and ten packaging and testing plants; by 2050, 300 design firms, three fabs and twenty packaging plants, with industry revenue above $100 billion a year. Outlets report these targets differently, so the figures here should be read as the commonly cited ones. [30] A companion decision, 1017, sets the talent target: 50,000 engineers by 2030, of whom about 15,000 are to work in design and 35,000 in manufacturing, packaging and testing. [38]

The strategy is honest about sequence. It puts people first, design second, packaging third and fabrication last and smallest. That order matches what a mid-sized state can actually reach, and it is the opposite of the order in which chip sovereignty is usually discussed.

Where Vietnam stands, stage by stage

Each stage of the chain, what Vietnam holds, and who could switch it off. The last column is this site’s reading, not a measured score.

Stage	What Vietnam has	Who holds the switch	Reading
Design tools and chip designs	None of its own. Every design house in the country works on licensed American design software and licensed processor designs.	The United States, through export licences.	Dependent
Chip design	About 50 to 60 design firms, most of them foreign, and roughly 5,000 to 7,000 engineers. Viettel has designed a 5G radio chip and a 28-nanometre security chip; FPT and Viettel are working on small SI chips at 28 to 32 nanometres. [38, 33, 34]	Mostly foreign employers. The engineers are Vietnamese; the products are not.	Partial
Fabrication	None operating. Viettel’s fab at Hoa Lac, on 27 hectares, is to start trial production at 32 nanometres by the end of 2027 and to be tuned until 2030. Approved cost about $500 million. [31, 32]	Whoever transfers the process and sells the machines. Neither has been named in the reports found.	Not yet
Assembly, testing and packaging	The country’s real weight. Intel’s plant in Ho Chi Minh City is its largest assembly and test site and handles more than half of its output of that kind. Amkor has a $1.6 billion campus in Bac Ninh, Hana Micron about $1 billion in Bac Giang. FPT opened the first Vietnamese-owned plant in January 2026. [35, 36, 34]	Foreign owners, who can move lines as they moved them in.	Present, not owned
Minerals	Rare-earth reserves put at about 3.5 million tonnes in 2025, sixth in the world. Since 1 January 2026 raw rare earths may not be exported, and only state-designated firms may mine and process them. [40, 41]	Vietnam, in law. In practice little is refined at home yet.	Held, not used
Computing for SI	Viettel and FPT run clusters built on Nvidia hardware; FPT committed $200 million to its own. Nvidia agreed in December 2024 to set up a research centre and a data centre. [45]	One American supplier, under American export rules that are tightening.	Dependent
Data	A Data Law in force since 1 July 2025 and a Personal Data Protection Law since 1 January 2026, with a National Data Center and a duty to assess transfers abroad. [48, 49]	Vietnam.	Sovereign in law
Electricity and water	A grid with a projected shortfall of about 21 billion kilowatt-hours in 2028 rising to about 61 billion in 2030, worst in the north, where the chip plants are. [39]	Vietnam, and the weather.	Binding limit

Distance to the 2030 targets. Present figures are approximate and reported differently by different outlets.

Design engineersAbout 6,000 of the 15,000 wantedabout 40%

Design firmsAbout 60 of 100, most of them foreignabout 60%

FabsNone of one; one under construction0 of 1

Training capacityShare of demand that schools can now meet, by one estimateabout 25%

What the first fab is, and is not. Cost in US dollars. [32]

Viettel fab, Hoa Lac32 nm, approved costabout $0.5bn

Amkor campus, Bac NinhPackaging and testing$1.6bn

A leading-edge fabUpper figure quoted by the trade pressup to $50bn

Three switches in other hands

Washington

Vietnam sits in the American export-control groups reserved for states of concern, which limits what machines and chips it may buy. In February 2026, after To Lam’s visit, Hanoi said President Trump had promised to remove it. [42] No implementing rule was found, and in July the US Trade Representative set conditions: fewer non-tariff barriers, better protection of intellectual property, and closer alignment with American export controls. [43] The same month’s reporting on diverted Nvidia chips makes the condition concrete. One study counted 50 shipments of restricted processors, worth about $13.4 million, routed through networks touching Vietnam, India and Malaysia between 2023 and 2025. [44] Washington is also drafting a rule on remote use of chips in third countries. [46]

Beijing

China supplied about 41% of everything Vietnam imported in 2025, including most of the components that its electronics plants assemble. [47] Chinese firms are investors too: one circuit-board maker registered $520 million for a plant in Bac Ninh. [36] China also refines the metals Vietnam would need to turn its own rare earths into anything useful. A Vietnam that aligned fully with American controls would be exposed here, and a Vietnam seen in Washington as a back door for China would lose the machines and the chips.

Foreign owners

The plants that give Vietnam its place in the chain came because customers asked suppliers to move capacity out of China, and some of the equipment was carried over from Chinese factories. [36] What moved in for that reason can move on for the same reason. The owners decide what is made, for whom, and with which process. Vietnam supplies land, labour, tax terms and power, and at present has trouble guaranteeing the last. [39]

What a realistic sovereignty policy looks like

Treat the first fab as a school and a secure source, not a business. At 32 nanometres and half a billion dollars it will not compete with Taiwan or with China’s subsidised mature-chip lines. Its value is that Vietnamese engineers will run a process end to end, and that chips for state networks, identity documents and military radios can be made where no foreign party sees the design. Viettel’s security chip is the right first product. [33] Judge the fab by those two results, and do not ask it to earn its keep.
Make packaging the anchor, and own some of it. Advanced packaging is where chip performance is now being won, it needs less capital than fabrication, and Vietnam already has the workforce. A Vietnamese-owned plant matters more than another foreign one, because it is the only kind that cannot be relocated by a board in another country. [34]
Move design up from layout to architecture. Vietnam has many engineers who lay out other firms’ designs and few who decide what a chip should be. [37] Sovereignty in design means owning a handful of products outright, in fields where the state is the first customer: telecom, security, power, and small SI chips for cameras and drones.
Turn export-control compliance into an asset. Access to American machines, design software and accelerators now depends on being trusted not to pass them on. A licensing office that can trace a chip from port to rack, check who the end user is, and refuse a shipment is not a concession to Washington. It is the price of the tools, and it protects Vietnam from being treated as Malaysia and Singapore are being treated this month. [43, 44]
Keep computing under Vietnamese control even when the chips are foreign. Clusters should sit in the country, run by Vietnamese operators under Vietnamese law, with contracts that do not allow service to be withdrawn without notice. Models should be ones that can be run and retrained locally. If chips come with location tracking or remote-use rules attached, the state should know exactly what the supplier can see and stop. More than one supplier is worth a price premium. [45, 46]
Use the data laws for what they are good at. The Data Law already sorts data into ordinary, important and core, and sends core data for review by the security or defence ministry before it leaves. [48] The same sorting should decide which workloads may run on foreign-administered hardware and which may not, with encryption keys held in Vietnam. Fines of up to 5% of revenue under the personal data law give it teeth. [49]
Fix electricity before promising fabs. A fab stops when the grid flickers, and a wafer line that stops loses the batch. With only ten of 43 planned transmission projects under construction and the north short of power from 2027, electricity is the constraint that decides whether the rest is real. [39]
Refine the rare earths or accept that they are only a bargaining card. The export ban keeps ore at home, but ore is not leverage; separated oxides and magnets are. Until Vietnam processes its own, the law mainly decides who gets to build the processing plant, which is worth negotiating hard over. [40, 41]
Spread the partners on purpose. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Netherlands and the United States each hold a different piece. The first Vietnam–South Korea meeting on SI and semiconductors, held in Hanoi on 12 November 2026 with more than 50 chip firms, is the pattern to repeat: many medium-sized partners, none able to dictate. [50]

How it could go wrong

Caught in the enforcement net. The fastest route to losing sovereignty is to be named as a diversion route. If Washington extends its Southeast Asian controls to Vietnam, licences slow, data-centre buyers are vetted abroad, and the promised easing of export-control status does not arrive. Reports this week of new American rules for the region’s data centres did not make clear whether Vietnam is covered.

A fab without customers. A 32-nanometre line opening in 2028 enters a market that China is flooding with mature chips. If it is asked to pay its way, it will fail, and the failure will be used against the whole programme.

Engineers trained for export. Fifty thousand engineers trained for foreign design centres raise wages and skills, which is worth having, but they do not by themselves give Vietnam a single product it controls. The programme’s own critics say the schools meet about a quarter of demand and teach the back end of design. [37, 38]

The grid. Blackouts in the north in 2023 stopped factories. A repeat during a fab’s first years would end the argument that Vietnam can host one. [39]

Limits. Everything here was read through search summaries in English and Vietnamese on 13 November 2026, not in the original documents. Targets under Decision 1018 are reported with different numbers by different outlets. Counts of firms and engineers are approximate. No report on the fab’s construction progress after March 2026 was found, nor a US rule implementing the February pledge on export-control status. The statement that Vietnamese design houses rely on American design software is general industry knowledge, not from a cited source. The ratings in the table and the nine recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

Vietnam’s chip companies on this site

3 companies based in Vietnam are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Contract chipmakersViettelBuilding Vietnam’s first fab, at 32 nanometres Packaging and testFPTFirst Vietnamese-owned packaging and test plant; chip design Packaging and testCT SemiconductorPackaging and test

United States · design, machines and the rule book · written 13 November 2026

United States: it writes the rules and designs the chips, and still has most of them made and packaged in Asia

53.4%Share of world chip sales booked by US-headquartered companies in 2025, the highest since 1984 [158]

10%US share of world wafer fabrication, against 51% of chip design, in a December 2025 industry briefing [159]

9.9%Stake in Intel the US government agreed to buy on 22 August 2025, for $8.9 billion [161]

42%Share of the $31.5 billion in direct CHIPS Act awards that had been paid out, as reported by the Government Accountability Office on 6 August 2026 [160]

25%Section 232 tariff on a narrow band of advanced computing chips, in force since 15 January 2026 [162]

$265bnTSMC’s planned investment in the United States after it added $100 billion in July 2026 [165]

The United States holds the top of the chip chain. Its companies booked $425 billion of semiconductor sales in 2025, which is 53.4% of the world total [158]. A December 2025 industry briefing put the US share at 51% of chip design, 68% of design software and licensed design blocks, and 47% of chipmaking machines [159]. The same briefing put the US at 10% of wafer fabrication and 3% of assembly, testing and packaging [159]. The country designs the chips and sells the tools. Most of the physical work still happens in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China.

Washington is using three instruments to close that gap, and in 2026 all three changed shape. The CHIPS Act grant programme now takes equity, beginning with a 9.9% stake in Intel [160, 161]. A Section 232 tariff of 25% has applied to a narrow band of advanced chips since January, with wider tariffs held in reserve [162]. Export controls on China were loosened for one class of Nvidia chip and kept for the rest [163, 164]. Leading-edge production is returning to US soil, but the newest nodes and the packaging step arrive between 2027 and 2029 [165, 167, 168].

What the United States holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Chip design	US-headquartered companies took 53.4% of world chip sales in 2025 and spent a record $76.8 billion on research and development [158]. A December 2025 briefing put the US share of design at 51% [159].	US companies such as Nvidia, with Washington setting where they may sell	Clear lead
Design software and licensed design blocks	Electronic design automation (EDA) is the software used to lay out a chip. The US share of EDA and licensed design blocks was put at 68%, with the European Union at 25% and China at 3% [159].	US software vendors, under Commerce Department licensing	Near monopoly with Europe
Chipmaking machines	The US share of equipment and tools was put at 47%, ahead of Japan at 26% and the European Union at 18% [159]. No advanced fab can be equipped without all three.	US toolmakers and the Commerce Department, with Japan and the Netherlands	Shared chokepoint
Leading-edge logic made on US soil	TSMC’s first Arizona fab has made 4-nanometre chips in volume since late 2024 [165]. Intel says its most advanced process, 18A, is ramping in Oregon and Arizona [166]. TSMC’s 3-nanometre fab and Samsung’s 2-nanometre volume output in Texas are both slated for 2027 [165, 167].	TSMC in Taiwan, Intel, and Samsung in South Korea	Returning, not yet there
Wafer fabrication overall	The US share of world wafer fabrication was put at 10%, behind China at 24%, Taiwan at 18%, and South Korea and Japan at 17% each [159]. TSMC’s finance chief says building a fab in the US costs four to five times what it costs in Taiwan [165].	Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese manufacturers	Heavy reliance on Asia
Advanced packaging	The US share of assembly, testing and packaging was put at 3%, against 30% for China and 28% for Taiwan [159]. Many chips made in Arizona still go to Asia for advanced packaging. Amkor’s Arizona plant is due to start in 2028 and TSMC’s own in 2029 [168].	TSMC and Asian packaging houses	Weakest link
Chip metals from China	China banned exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials to the US in December 2024. It suspended the ban on 9 November 2025, with the suspension set to run to 27 November 2026. The bar on military users was not lifted [169].	China’s Ministry of Commerce	On Beijing’s timetable
The rule book	The Commerce Department decides who may buy US chips, tools and software. In January 2026 it moved one class of chip for China from presumed denial to case-by-case review, with a cap at 50% of the volume shipped to US customers [163]. It also runs the CHIPS awards and the tariff investigation [160, 162].	The President and the Commerce Department	Strong, but changeable

Who runs the show

Company or agency	What it does and decides	Technical capability
Department of Commerce and its Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS)	Commerce runs the CHIPS awards and the Section 232 tariff investigation. BIS, its export-control arm, writes the chip rules for China and decides each licence [160, 162, 163].	$31.5 billion in direct awards across 49 projects at 24 companies, with $13.1 billion paid out as of the August 2026 audit [160]. It reviews H200-class licences case by case and does deny some [164].
The White House	The President sets tariffs by proclamation and has made chip sales to China part of trade deals. In December 2025 he said the US would approve H200 sales in exchange for a 25% cut [164].	A 25% tariff on a narrow band of advanced chips since 15 January 2026, with exemptions for US data centres, research and startups, and wider tariffs under consideration [162].
Nvidia	The leading designer of chips for SI (the site’s term for machine intelligence). It designs in the US and relies on others to make and package the chips. Its China sales depend on US licences and on Beijing’s approval [164].	The H200 is its older Hopper generation. US customers use the faster Blackwell chips. Its chief executive told investors in May 2026 to expect nothing from China [164].
Intel	The only US-owned company making leading-edge logic. The government agreed to buy 433.3 million shares at $20.47, a passive 9.9% stake with no board seat [161].	Intel says yields on 18A, its most advanced process, have reached industry standard levels and that 18A costs fell about 40% since the first quarter of 2026 [166]. Its foundry unit had revenue of $6.7 billion and an operating loss of $1.9 billion in the third quarter of 2026. Only $411 million came from outside customers [166].
TSMC Arizona	The Taiwanese foundry that makes most leading-edge chips for US designers. It decides which nodes come to Arizona and when [165].	4-nanometre in volume since late 2024, with yields matching Taiwan. 3-nanometre is slated for 2027 and a third fab is under construction. Arizona is planned to host about 30% of its 2-nanometre and more advanced capacity [165].
Samsung (Taylor, Texas)	The South Korean group building a second foreign-owned leading-edge site in the US. Its first named product there is Tesla’s AI5 chip [167].	2-nanometre process. Equipment installation began in April 2026 and the chip design was finalised by July. Volume production is expected in the second half of 2027 [167].
Government Accountability Office (GAO)	The audit arm of Congress. It checks how Commerce spends CHIPS money and reports the gaps [160].	Its 6 August 2026 report found that Commerce had cancelled awards worth $7.8 billion of the $11 billion set aside for advanced chip research, and made three recommendations that Commerce accepted [160].

Three pressures

The factories are late for the demand

Demand has outrun the building programme. World chip sales reached a record $795.6 billion in 2025 [158]. On US soil, the most advanced node in volume at TSMC is 4-nanometre, with 3-nanometre due in 2027 [165]. Samsung’s Texas fab expects volume in the second half of 2027 [167]. Advanced packaging arrives in 2028 and 2029 [168]. Until then, a chip made in Arizona often still travels to Asia before it can be used [168]. Building a US fab costs four to five times the Taiwan figure [165].

The state is now a shareholder

The CHIPS Act began as grants with conditions. It is turning into ownership. The government converted $5.7 billion of unpaid Intel grants and $3.2 billion of Secure Enclave money into shares [161]. The GAO reports that Commerce now weighs whether a company will give equity when it sets an award, and that it amended awards for 14 companies [160]. Intel’s factories still lose money, with a $1.9 billion foundry loss in one quarter [166]. The research side of the Act has been cut back sharply [160].

Export policy runs on two tracks

Washington is selling to China and restricting China at once. The January 2026 rule opened case-by-case licences for H200-class chips, with a volume cap, outside testing and customer checks [163]. A 25% tariff applies to chips in the same performance band [162]. Six months later the official in charge told Congress that very few shipments had taken place [164]. Faster Blackwell chips stay out of the licensed channel [164]. Meanwhile China holds the switch on gallium and germanium, with its suspension dated to end on 27 November 2026 [169].

What a realistic policy looks like

Finish the packaging step at home. The US share of assembly, testing and packaging is 3% [159]. A fab without packaging nearby still depends on Asia. The Amkor and TSMC plants due in 2028 and 2029 are the pieces to protect from delay [168]. Commerce should also settle the two remaining packaging research awards the GAO flagged [160].
Publish the terms of every equity deal. The Intel stake is passive and comes with a five-year warrant for a further 5% if Intel sells control of its foundry [161]. Commerce now weighs equity when sizing awards [160]. Clear, public terms for each deal would let companies and taxpayers judge what the state is buying and when it will sell.
Keep tariffs narrow until supply exists. The January 2026 tariff covers a narrow performance band and exempts chips for US data centres, research and startups [162]. Wider tariffs are under consideration [162]. With US fabrication at 10% of the world total, a broad tariff would land mainly on US buyers [159]. Rates should follow domestic capacity, with a published schedule.
Set one export rule and enforce it. The H200 rule has detailed conditions: a 50% volume cap, tests by a US lab and customer checks [163]. Few shipments have followed [164]. A stable line on which chip generations may be sold, held for several years, would serve US firms and allies better than case-by-case trading.
Build a second source for chip metals. China’s 2024 ban on gallium, germanium and antimony exports to the US was suspended, not repealed, and the military-user bar remains [169]. Stockpiles, recycling and supply contracts with allied refiners reduce the value of that lever. The work needs to be done while the suspension holds.
Restore the research programme. Commerce cancelled awards worth $7.8 billion of the $11 billion appropriated for advanced chip research, including the National Semiconductor Technology Center award [160]. US companies spent $76.8 billion on research in 2025 [158]. Public research pays for the long-range work that firms skip, and the GAO has asked for a plan within a year [160].

How it could go wrong

Intel does not win outside customers. Intel’s foundry earned $411 million from external customers in the third quarter of 2026 against a $1.9 billion operating loss [166]. If the next node finds no large buyer, the government holds 9.9% of a company that cannot fund its own factories [161].

A Taiwan disruption arrives before 2028. US wafer fabrication is 10% of the world total and packaging 3% [159]. The 3-nanometre, 2-nanometre and packaging plants in Arizona and Texas are dated 2027 to 2029, so a crisis before then would find the gap still open [165, 167, 168].

Wider tariffs raise the cost of building. The proclamation leaves room for broader tariffs on chips and products that contain them [162]. Building a US fab already costs four to five times the Taiwan figure, and tariffs on inputs would add to it [165].

The metals lever is pulled again. The suspension of China’s gallium, germanium and antimony ban is dated to end on 27 November 2026 [169]. A tightening of US chip rules could bring the ban back, as the original ban followed US controls.

Limits. Opened and read: the SIA page, the Evertiq article, the GAO product page, Intel’s press release, the EY alert, the ArentFox Schiff alert, the CNBC report, both TrendForce articles, the Intel call transcript, the Electrek article and the Fastmarkets article. The value-chain shares (51%, 68%, 47%, 10%, 3%) come from a trade-press summary of a GSIS briefing that cites IISS, SIA and BCG data. The original report was not seen, and older SIA figures give the US 12% of manufacturing capacity in 2021. Seen only as search summaries and kept out of the cited claims: Micron’s Idaho fab timing (first DRAM wafers in mid-2027 according to a summary of its 10-K, which could not be read to that section), Nvidia’s filing language that licensed H200 sales were under 1% of data centre revenue and were restricted by the Chinese government, a reported August 2026 shipment of about 20,000 H200 chips, the BIS notice of 31 May 2026 that the chip rules cover overseas subsidiaries of Chinese firms (reported by Al Jazeera), a 12 November 2026 probe by two Democratic lawmakers into the 25% arrangement, and a 9 November 2026 report that China extended its rare earth pause to 10 January 2027. That last report did not name gallium or germanium, so the status of the 27 November 2026 date is not confirmed. No source was found on the outcome of the 1 July 2026 Section 232 review or on any wider chip tariff taking effect. One search summary said no change had been made to the proclamation by 11 November 2026. Figures conflict on the CHIPS direct-award total ($31.5 billion in the GAO report, $31.2 billion elsewhere) and on the 2026 sales forecast ($1.5 trillion on the SIA page, $975 billion in one other source), so the forecast is not used. The Intel transcript refers to an Arizona fab by a number that differs from earlier reports, so the text says only Oregon and Arizona. The claim that the original Chinese metals ban followed US controls rests on a search summary. Intel’s description of 18A as a 2-nanometre class node was seen in a trade article that is not among the references, so the node class is not stated. From general knowledge: the full name of the CHIPS Act, the description of Section 232 as a national-security trade law, and the names of US toolmakers and software vendors, which are therefore not listed. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

United States’s chip companies on this site

34 companies based in United States are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Netherlands · one machine the world cannot replace · written 13 November 2026

The Netherlands: holder of the lithography chokepoint, pressed by Washington to close it and by Beijing to keep it open

23%China’s share of ASML’s machine sales in the third quarter of 2026, up from 14% in the second quarter [171]

€11.7bnASML net sales in the third quarter of 2026, at a 57.5% gross margin [170]

10High-NA EUV machines running at 4 customer sites, as reported on 1 September 2026 [180]

24.9%ASML’s stake in Carl Zeiss SMT, its single supplier of optics, held since June 2017 [179]

150 daysTime the proposed US MATCH Act would give the Netherlands to match American export rules, as reported in October 2026 [172]

€2.5bnDutch state pledge made in 2024 for housing, roads, education and power grid in the Eindhoven region [178]

The Netherlands holds the narrowest chokepoint in chipmaking. ASML, based in Veldhoven near Eindhoven, builds the lithography machines that print circuit patterns on silicon. Its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines have never been licensed for China. The Hague blocked the first such sale in 2019. [172] The contest in 2026 is about the older deep ultraviolet (DUV) machines and about servicing the ones already installed. China took 23% of ASML’s machine sales in the third quarter of 2026, as Chinese memory makers stockpiled equipment. [171] The Dutch government licenses these exports. Washington wants it to refuse more of them.

The country’s strength is concentrated and so are its weak points. ASML depends on one German company, Carl Zeiss SMT, for every optical column, and says it could not run its business without that supply. [179] The Nexperia affair showed the other side. When the Dutch state took powers over a Chinese-owned chipmaker in September 2025, China halted chip deliveries to European customers, including carmakers. [175] A small state that controls one machine has leverage. It also has two large powers that can each punish it for using that leverage the wrong way.

What the Netherlands holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
EUV lithography	ASML’s capacity for standard EUV machines is about 65 systems in 2026, with 30% more planned for 2027. [179] No EUV sale to China has gone ahead since The Hague blocked the first one in 2019. [172]	ASML builds, the Dutch trade minister licenses	Sole chokepoint held
High-NA EUV	High numerical aperture (high-NA) EUV is the next generation. Ten machines were running at 4 customer sites by September 2026, with 3 more being shipped or installed. Fleet availability was 84%. [180]	ASML and its optics supplier Zeiss	Lead still widening
DUV immersion sales to China	Chinese buyers took more than $13 billion of DUV machines between 2024 and early 2026, and more than 300 are thought to be running in Chinese plants. [172] Dutch rules restrict this class of export only partly. [173]	The Hague today, Washington if the MATCH Act passes	Open but contested
Servicing the installed base	ASML’s service and upgrade business brought in €3.3 billion in the third quarter of 2026. [170] Service revenue from China is usually put at $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year. The MATCH Act would end it. [172]	Dutch licences, under threat of US jurisdiction	Next target
Optics from Germany	Carl Zeiss SMT is ASML’s single supplier of optical columns, made only in Oberkochen and Wetzlar. ASML bought €4.41 billion from the Zeiss SMT group in 2025. [179]	Carl Zeiss SMT, with ASML holding 24.9%	Single point of failure
Nexperia and basic chips	Nexperia’s European plants make only semi-finished chips that are finished mainly in China. [175] By November 2026 the company was still split between its Dutch and Chinese operations. [177]	Beijing over packaging exports, a Dutch court over governance	Exposed to retaliation
Deposition tools (ASM International)	ASM reported record revenue of €1,159.4 million in the third quarter of 2026, with first solid sales at the 1.4 nanometre node. Its sales for older logic chips were driven mainly by China. [181]	ASM in Almere, subject to Dutch and US licensing	Strong, China-exposed
Room to grow in Eindhoven	ASML says its planned supply for 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet demand. [170] Its new campus is planned for up to 350,000 square metres and 20,000 workplaces, with the first buildings due in 2029. [178]	Dutch cabinet, Eindhoven council, grid operators	Capacity lags demand

Who runs the show

Company or agency	What it does and decides	Technical capability
ASML (Veldhoven)	Builds the EUV, high-NA EUV and DUV lithography machines. Decides how fast to add capacity and applies for every export licence.	Net sales of €11.7 billion and net income of €5.0 billion in the third quarter of 2026. Full-year 2026 sales are guided at €44 billion to €45 billion. [170]
Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation	Sets and applies the national export licence rule for chipmaking equipment. Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma negotiated in Washington over the MATCH Act in June 2026 and signed the Netherlands up to the US-led Pax Silica initiative. [173]	Lithography equipment has needed a national licence since 1 September 2023. The rule was widened on 1 April 2025 to cover certain measurement and inspection tools. [174]
Ministry of Economic Affairs	Used the Goods Availability Act against Nexperia in September 2025 under minister Vincent Karremans, then suspended the order on 19 November 2025 while keeping the power to reinstate it. [175, 176]	The law dates from 1952 and had not been used before. It let the government overturn company decisions that could move production or know-how abroad. [175]
Enterprise Chamber, Amsterdam Court of Appeal	Suspended Nexperia’s chief executive Zhang Xuezheng, put the shares held by Wingtech under administration, and on 11 February 2026 ordered an investigation into the company. [175]	Two court-appointed investigators are to report. Wingtech still owns Nexperia but does not control it. [175, 177]
ASM International (Almere)	Supplies deposition tools, which lay down thin films on wafers. Its strongest growth is in leading-edge logic chips.	Third-quarter 2026 revenue of €1,159.4 million at a 52.0% gross margin. It expects revenue above €5.7 billion in 2027. [181]
Carl Zeiss SMT and Trumpf (Germany)	Zeiss makes the optical columns for every ASML machine and is ASML’s single supplier. [179] Trumpf supplies the drive laser for the EUV light source.	High-NA projection optics have over 40,000 parts and weigh about 12 tons. Zeiss added about 25,000 square metres of space in Oberkochen, with staff moving in during July 2026. [179]
NXP, BESI and Nexperia	NXP in Eindhoven designs chips for cars and industry. BESI builds chip packaging equipment, including hybrid bonding tools. Nexperia in Nijmegen makes basic transistors used in cars and phones. [175]	Nexperia sued Wingtech and Zhang in a Dutch court in November 2026. Wingtech puts the claim at $2 billion. [177]

Three pressures

Washington wants the Dutch rules to match its own

A US bill called the MATCH Act, introduced on 2 April 2026, would give the Netherlands and Japan 150 days to match American restrictions on Chinese chipmakers. If they do not, the US could claim jurisdiction over foreign machines that contain American technology. [172] The bill would ban all immersion DUV exports to China and restrict servicing further. [173] The Dutch minister’s answer was that cooperation by force is undesirable. [173] The Dutch government wants the bill dropped. [172]

Beijing has shown it can retaliate

The Nexperia case is the example. After the Dutch state took powers over the company in September 2025, China temporarily halted deliveries of its chips to European customers, including the car industry. [175] The government suspended its order on 19 November 2025 after talks with China. [176] The dispute did not end. Wingtech sued in a Chinese court in May 2026 for $1.2 billion, and Nexperia sued Wingtech in November 2026. [177] The former chief executive is demanding €8 billion from the Dutch state. [175]

Demand is running ahead of what Eindhoven can build

ASML’s chief executive says supply planned for 2027 and 2028 will not fully meet customer demand, and the company is studying capacity increases for 2028 beyond the 30% already announced. [170] Building that capacity in the Netherlands needs housing, roads and grid connections, which is why the state pledged €2.5 billion in 2024. [178] The first buildings on the new campus open only in 2029. [178] The optics must also come from two Zeiss sites in Germany. [179]

What a realistic policy looks like

Keep the licence decision in The Hague. The Netherlands already runs its own licence rule for lithography, in force since 1 September 2023. [174] It should keep deciding case by case and publish clear criteria. A rule written in Washington with a 150-day deadline would remove the Dutch government’s say over its largest company. [172]
Settle the servicing question before it is settled for you. Servicing is where the next restriction will fall. The MATCH Act would end maintenance, software updates and spare parts for machines already in China. [172] A Dutch position that separates safety and upkeep from upgrades that raise capability would give allies something concrete to accept.
Treat Zeiss as part of the Dutch chokepoint. ASML has one optics supplier, and that supplier has one customer. [179] The Netherlands and Germany should plan export policy, security and expansion for the two companies together. ASML already finances Zeiss capacity, with loans receivable of €1.91 billion at the end of 2025. [179]
Write rules for intervention before the next Nexperia. The state used a 1952 law that had never been used before. [175] The result was a supply shock for carmakers and a company still split a year later. [175, 177] A standing procedure with known triggers and a supply plan for customers would lower the cost of acting.
Deliver the Eindhoven build-out on time. The €2.5 billion pledge covers housing, roads, education and the power grid. [178] These are the items that decide whether ASML expands at home. The campus is built in phases, and later phases depend on demand, so delays in public works translate directly into machines not built. [178]
Work through Europe and allied groups. The Netherlands delayed joining the US-led Pax Silica initiative until the European Union was on board, then signed in June 2026. [173] Acting with the EU, Japan and South Korea gives a small state more weight than bilateral talks with either Washington or Beijing.

How it could go wrong

The US legislates over Dutch heads. If the MATCH Act passes and the Netherlands does not follow within 150 days, the US could extend its jurisdiction to ASML machines that contain American technology. [172] Up to $9 billion of Chinese sales are described as at risk. [172]

China retaliates through ordinary chips. China has already halted Nexperia deliveries once, and Nexperia’s European output still needs finishing in China. [175] A new export restriction on ASML could trigger the same response against European carmakers.

Stockpiling makes the controls arrive late. ASML executives linked the third-quarter jump in Chinese orders to memory makers stockpiling machines. [171] Critics of a servicing ban also argue that Chinese chipmakers could take apart and copy the scanners they already own. [172]

A single supplier fails or falls behind. ASML states that it could be unable to fulfil orders if Zeiss could not maintain and raise output over a prolonged period. [179] Zeiss has not disclosed how much output its Oberkochen expansion adds. [179]

Limits. Pages opened and read: all twelve references. The ASML investor page for the third-quarter 2026 release returned an error, so ASML’s figures come from a trade reprint (StorageNewsletter) and the China share comes from a news alert that summarises a South China Morning Post article, which was not opened. Order intake, EUV bookings and unit counts for the third quarter of 2026 were not found. Seen only as search summaries and kept out of the cited claims: ASML’s 2025 net sales of €32.7 billion with 48 EUV systems, China at 33% of 2025 system sales against 41% in 2024, a reported visit by the trade minister to Beijing in July 2026, a headline about a Chinese court freezing Nexperia assets in September 2026, the nitrogen permit for the ASML campus, and the name Project Beethoven for the €2.5 billion package (the DutchNews article gives the sum but not the name). Read in a source but not listed, because the reference list is capped at twelve: the Dutch decision of 6 September 2024 to license the NXT:1970i and NXT:1980i scanners itself (Bits&Chips), BESI’s third-quarter 2026 orders of €342.6 million and 23 hybrid bonding customers (CXO Digital Pulse), NXP’s third-quarter 2026 revenue of about $3.79 billion (its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission), Trumpf’s plan to triple EUV laser capacity within two years (CRN Asia), and ASML’s statement that it has never shipped an EUV machine to China (IO+). The descriptions of BESI, NXP and Trumpf in the text therefore carry no citation. No source confirmed whether ASML’s China servicing licences were renewed or changed in 2026. Reports from 2024 said they would not be renewed for the most advanced immersion machines, and that could not be checked against a 2026 source. Whether Trumpf is ASML’s only laser supplier was asserted by secondary sites and not confirmed in a primary document. The Zeiss figures are the Implicator article’s reading of ASML’s 2025 annual report, which was not opened. General knowledge, not sourced here: ASML’s headquarters in Veldhoven, Nexperia’s base in Nijmegen, and the plain descriptions of what lithography and deposition do. Conflicting figures: the China share is 23% of machine sales for the quarter but about 20% is expected for the full year, and these are different measures. The state package appears as €2.5 billion and €2.51 billion. High-NA throughput is given as 135 wafers per hour in acceptance tests in one report and about 175 in others. The titles given for the Implicator and TechNews references are descriptive, taken from the page address, and the TechNews page is in Chinese. The MATCH Act is a bill and had not become law in any source read. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

Netherlands’s chip companies on this site

5 companies based in Netherlands are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Makers that both design and manufactureNXPAutomotive and secure chips Makers that both design and manufactureNexperiaBasic chips for cars; taken under Dutch control in 2025 Chipmaking machinesASMLLithography; the only maker of EUV machines Chipmaking machinesASM InternationalAtomic-layer deposition Chipmaking machinesBESIAdvanced packaging machines

Germany · power chips, EUV optics and a missing leading edge · written 13 November 2026

Germany: Europe’s chip workshop, strong in power chips and EUV parts, with no leading-edge fab of its own

€5bnInfineon’s investment in its Smart Power Fab in Dresden, opened in early July 2026 [182]

12 nmFinest chip structure planned at the TSMC joint venture ESMC in Dresden, with production due in the second half of 2027 [183]

€6.8bnPublic incentives lined up for Intel’s Magdeburg fab, which Intel cancelled in July 2025 [185]

11.7%European Court of Auditors forecast of the EU’s share of the chip value chain in 2030, against a 20% target [184]

€5.06bnRevenue of Zeiss’s chip equipment optics segment in fiscal year 2024/25, up 23% [190]

96%China’s share, by weight, of Germany’s 2024 imports of semiconductor components from outside the EU [187]

Germany makes the chips that switch power and run cars, and it makes parts that no advanced chip factory can do without. Infineon opened a €5 billion power chip fab in Dresden in early July 2026, several months ahead of schedule [182]. Zeiss and Trumpf supply the optics and the high-power lasers for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, the method used for the most advanced chips [189]. What Germany does not have is a factory for those advanced chips. Intel cancelled its Magdeburg project in July 2025, although €6.8 billion in incentives had been lined up [185].

The European Union’s Chips Act is the frame for all of this. The 2023 law set a target of 20% of the global chip value chain by 2030, and the European Court of Auditors now expects 11.7% [184]. The Commission proposed a replacement, the Chips Act 2.0, on 3 June 2026, without a new headline budget [184]. Germany pays for most of its own projects from the federal budget, including €5 billion for the Dresden joint venture led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) [183]. The Nexperia dispute in October 2025 showed how exposed German carmakers are to cheap chips finished in China [186, 187].

What Germany holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Power and automotive chips	Infineon’s new Dresden fab cost €5 billion, created 1,000 direct jobs and doubles the company’s capacity at the site [182]. Bosch has put about €3 billion into its Dresden and Reutlingen chip plants in recent years [192].	Infineon and Bosch	Core strength, held
EUV optics and lasers	Trumpf supplies the high-power lasers for EUV lithography and sits in one value chain with Zeiss and the Dutch machine builder ASML [189]. Zeiss’s chip optics segment earned €5.055 billion in fiscal year 2024/25 [190].	Zeiss and Trumpf, inside a chain led by ASML	Chokepoint, shared
The Dresden cluster	The Silicon Saxony cluster counts about 3,600 companies and more than 80,000 employees, and expects about 100,000 by 2040 [183]. Infineon, Bosch, GlobalFoundries and the TSMC joint venture all build or produce there [182, 183, 188, 192].	Saxony, Berlin and four chipmakers	Europe’s densest cluster
Contract manufacturing on German soil	GlobalFoundries makes 22 nanometre class chips in Dresden and is raising output from about 950,000 to 1.1 million wafers a year by the end of 2028 [188]. The TSMC joint venture plans chips down to 12 nanometres from the second half of 2027 [183].	TSMC, which owns 70% of the joint venture, and US-based GlobalFoundries	Mature nodes, foreign-led
Leading-edge logic	No fab in Germany is planned below 12 nanometres [183]. Intel cancelled its leading-edge Magdeburg fab in July 2025 [185]. The Chips Act 2.0 only envisages an EU open foundry at 3 nanometres and below, with pilot production in 2030 to 2033 [184].	Foundries outside Germany	Absent, imported
Simple chips finished in China	In 2024 China supplied about 96% by weight and about 39% by value of Germany’s imports of semiconductor components from outside the EU [187]. When China stopped Nexperia exports in October 2025, Bosch applied for short-time work for more than 1,000 staff in Salzgitter [186].	China’s export authorities and Nexperia’s owners	Exposed, proven
Wafers and process chemicals	Siltronic makes silicon wafers and Merck makes process materials for chip factories. Both are German-based suppliers to fabs worldwide. This row carries no sourced figures, as the limits note explains.	Siltronic and Merck	Present, not quantified
Energy cost	The European Commission approved Germany’s industrial power price on 16 April 2026. It covers half of a plant’s consumption for 2026 to 2028, with a floor of 5 cents per kilowatt hour, and chip production is an eligible sector [191].	Berlin, under EU state aid rules	Relief, time-limited

Who runs the show

Company or agency	What it does and decides	Technical capability
Infineon Technologies	Germany’s largest chipmaker in this story. It decides where power and analogue chip capacity goes and holds 10% of the TSMC joint venture in Dresden [183].	The Smart Power Fab in Dresden cost €5 billion and doubles the site’s capacity. Its chips go into electric vehicles, wind and solar systems and the power supply of SI data centres [182].
Robert Bosch	The largest car parts supplier and a chipmaker for its own needs. It will form a separate Semiconductors division on 1 January 2028 and open its plants to outside customers [192].	About €3 billion invested in Dresden and Reutlingen in recent years, a target of €5 billion in yearly chip revenue by 2030, and strengths in silicon carbide chips and sensors [192].
ESMC (European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company)	The Dresden joint venture that brings TSMC to Europe. TSMC holds 70%, and Bosch, Infineon and NXP hold 10% each [183].	A €10 billion fab with €5 billion of federal money, chips down to 12 nanometres, about 2,000 staff, and production due in the second half of 2027 [183]. Planned full capacity in 2029 is 480,000 wafers a year [184].
GlobalFoundries Dresden	A US-owned contract manufacturer and the most advanced chip production running in Germany today [188].	A 22 nanometre class process. A €1.1 billion expansion, with €495 million in approved state aid, lifts output to 1.1 million wafers a year by the end of 2028 [188].
Zeiss and Trumpf	Zeiss builds the optics and Trumpf the high-power lasers for EUV lithography machines. Both work in one value chain with ASML [189].	Zeiss’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology segment reached €5.055 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2024/25, up 23% [190].
Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, and Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space	The economics ministry under Katherina Reiche pays the fab subsidies and handled the Nexperia crisis [183, 186]. The research ministry under Dorothee Bär runs the Hightech Agenda, which names microelectronics as one of six key technologies [189].	€5 billion for the TSMC joint venture alone [183]. The cabinet approved a microelectronics strategy in October 2025 that stresses supply chain resilience [186].
European Commission	It approves every national subsidy under state aid rules and wrote both Chips Acts [184, 188].	Little money of its own. The European Court of Auditors found that the Commission directly managed only about €4.5 billion of the €86 billion the first Chips Act was meant to mobilise [184].

Three pressures

The leading edge left before it arrived

Germany planned for an advanced logic fab and lost it. Intel cancelled Magdeburg in July 2025, and its chief executive said the company had invested too much, too soon, without adequate demand [185]. Wolfspeed suspended its silicon carbide plant in the Saarland in October 2024, although €515 million in state funding had been promised [193]. The projects that survived are the ones tied to German customers in cars and industry. The Dresden joint venture stops at 12 nanometres [183].

A five-cent part can stop a car plant

The Nexperia dispute showed where the weak point sits. The Dutch government took control measures at Nexperia in late September 2025, and China then stopped exports of chips that are finished there [186, 187]. Bosch applied for short-time work for more than 1,000 employees in Salzgitter, and Volkswagen could only confirm production a week ahead [186]. By November 2025 there were signs of easing [187]. The parts involved are diodes and transistors, which are cheap and hard to replace quickly [186].

Subsidy without a common budget

The European frame is weaker than its name suggests. The first Chips Act aimed for 20% of the global value chain by 2030, and the auditors forecast 11.7% [184]. The Chips Act 2.0 proposal of 3 June 2026 adds faster permits and demand tools but no new headline fund, and negotiations are meant to finish in the second quarter of 2027 [184]. Germany therefore pays from its own budget, which smaller member states cannot match. The power price relief ends after 2028 [191].

What a realistic policy looks like

Build on power, sensors and optics. Germany’s position rests on chips for cars, industry and energy, and on parts for EUV machines [182, 189]. Public money should deepen these fields first. Infineon’s new fab already targets the power supply of SI data centres, a market that grows with every new computing cluster [182].
Treat the TSMC joint venture as the test case. The Dresden fab is on schedule and due to produce in the second half of 2027 [183]. Its planned full capacity in 2029 is 480,000 wafers a year [184]. If German carmakers fill it, a case for a further step below 12 nanometres exists. If they do not, no subsidy will create one.
Map the cheap parts, not only the advanced ones. The 2025 shock came from diodes and transistors, not from processors [186]. China supplies about 96% by weight of Germany’s non-EU imports of semiconductor components [187]. Carmakers and suppliers need second sources and buffer stock for these parts, and the government needs a current picture of where final assembly takes place.
Tie aid to supply in a crisis. The aid for GlobalFoundries and X-Fab came with a duty to give EU orders priority in a crisis and to train young engineers [188]. The same condition belongs in every future grant. It turns a subsidy into a supply guarantee that the state can call on when exports stop.
Fix the power price beyond 2028. The industrial power price covers half of consumption, has a floor of 5 cents per kilowatt hour and runs only for 2026 to 2028 [191]. A fab is planned for decades. Investors need to know what follows, and half of the aid must already go into decarbonisation within 48 months [191].
Push Brussels for a real common fund. The Chips Act 2.0 arrives without a headline budget, and money after 2027 depends on the EU’s next long-term budget for 2028 to 2034 [184]. Germany gains from a shared fund because its suppliers sell to fabs across Europe. National budgets alone will leave investment levels to each government.

How it could go wrong

The car market shrinks under the fabs. Wolfspeed pulled back because electric vehicle uptake in Europe was slower than expected [193]. The Dresden plants serve the same customers, so a weak car industry means underused capacity [183].

A second Nexperia. The dependence on components from China is unchanged in the trade data [187]. Another dispute over ownership or export licences could again bring short-time work within weeks, as it did at Bosch in October 2025 [186].

The Chips Act 2.0 stalls. The proposal is not yet law, and talks are meant to run until the second quarter of 2027 [184]. A delay or a thin budget would leave the 11.7% forecast standing [184].

The foreign partner changes its mind. TSMC holds 70% of the Dresden joint venture and GlobalFoundries is US-owned [183, 188]. Intel showed in July 2025 that a head office can cancel a German project even with €6.8 billion in incentives on offer [185].

Limits. Read in full and cited: the twelve references below. Seen only as search summaries and therefore kept out of the cited claims: Trumpf’s EUV revenue of €791 million in fiscal year 2025/26, Infineon’s roughly one third of revenue from China and its 13.5% share of the automotive chip market, Siltronic’s third-quarter 2026 sales of €355.4 million, Merck’s semiconductor materials growth in 2026, the final cancellation of the Wolfspeed project in October 2025 (the cited report from October 2024 says only suspended), the date of 15 October 2025 and the joint ministry lead for the microelectronics strategy, and a trade association figure of 8.1% for Europe’s share of global chip production. A January 2026 trade report, read but not cited, said the Nexperia ownership dispute and a halt of wafer shipments from Hamburg to China were continuing. No source was found for the status after mid 2026. From general knowledge and not sourced here: that Zeiss is the only maker of EUV optics, that ASML holds a stake in Zeiss’s chip optics unit, that Siltronic has plants in Burghausen and Freiberg, and that the most advanced chips come mainly from Taiwan and South Korea. Germany’s exposure to China as a sales market is therefore not quantified on this page. Conflicting figures: Infineon gives €5 billion for its Dresden fab, while earlier reports on the EU approval cited €3.5 billion of company investment and €920 million of aid. One September 2026 report puts the first equipment installation at the TSMC joint venture in the second half of 2027, while the cited agency report gives that date for the production start, and a November 2025 report expected equipment in the second half of 2026. Reports of the planned GlobalFoundries capacity range from 1.1 million to 1.5 million wafers a year. The Wolfspeed project value appears as €2.7 billion, €2.75 billion and €3 billion. The import shares measure trade by weight and by value and describe components and finished chips separately, so they are not a share of German chip demand. Chip structure sizes in nanometres are process names, not measured dimensions. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

Germany’s chip companies on this site

8 companies based in Germany are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Design software and licensed designsSiemens EDADesign software, especially for checking layouts Makers that both design and manufactureInfineonPower and automotive chips Makers that both design and manufactureBoschAutomotive chips and sensors Chipmaking machinesZeissThe mirrors inside every EUV machine Chipmaking machinesTrumpfThe laser inside every EUV machine MaterialsSiltronicSilicon wafers MaterialsMerckSpecialty chemicals and gases MaterialsLindeIndustrial gases

India · designers at scale, fabs at the start · written 13 November 2026

India: a fifth of the world’s chip designers, and a first fab that is still two years away

20%Share of the world’s chip design engineers who are in India, as stated by the Indian government in December 2025. [202]

₹1.275 lakh croreBudget of Semicon 2.0, the second phase of India’s chip programme, approved by the Cabinet on 15 July 2026. That is ₹1.275 trillion, about $13.2 billion. [194, 195]

12Chip manufacturing projects approved by July 2026. One is a silicon fab, one a silicon carbide fab, one a gallium nitride display fab and nine are packaging units. [194]

3Units in commercial production by July 2026: Micron, Kaynes and CG Semi. All three do packaging and test, not wafer fabrication. [194]

mid-2028Expected start of commercial operations at Tata Electronics’ Dholera fab, as stated by the technology minister in July 2026. The earlier target was the end of 2026. [196]

95%Share of India’s chip demand met by imports, in an analysis last updated in August 2026. [204]

India’s position in the chip contest is lopsided. It holds people and it lacks plants. The government says India has 20% of the world’s chip design engineers. [202] A 2025 research report describes how the work is split: engineers in the United States define the chip architecture, and engineers in India implement it for firms such as Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia. [203] An Indian startup has taped out a design at 12 nanometres (nm). [201] The first commercial silicon fab, Tata Electronics’ plant at Dholera, is now expected in mid-2028 and will start at 55nm and 90nm. [196] About 95% of India’s chip demand is still imported. [204]

What changed in 2026 is that packaging started. Micron began commercial memory assembly and test at Sanand in February. CG Semi shipped its first qualified chips in July. Tata’s Assam plant made pilot chips in October. [198, 199, 200] In July the Cabinet approved a second phase, Semicon 2.0, with ₹1.275 lakh crore and six aims: design, machines and materials, more fabs, packaging, research and talent. [194] The switches stay abroad. The process technology for Dholera comes from Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC), and the lithography tools come from the Dutch firm ASML. [196, 197]

What India holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Chip design workforce	India has 20% of the world’s chip design engineers, by the government’s count. [202] A 2025 research report says Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia, Broadcom and MediaTek run design centres in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Noida, with architecture and product strategy set in the United States. [203]	Foreign chip companies that employ the engineers and own the designs	Real strength, rented out
Home-grown designs and processors	The Design Linked Incentive (DLI) scheme had funded 24 design projects by January 2026, with 16 tape-outs and 6 chips fabricated. [201] The state-designed DHRUV64, launched in December 2025, is a 1.0 GHz, 64-bit dual-core processor on the open RISC-V architecture. [202]	The electronics ministry and C-DAC, which control the money and the design tools	Early but moving
Silicon wafer fab (Dholera)	Tata Electronics has committed $11 billion to a 300mm fab in Gujarat. [197] Commercial operations are now expected in mid-2028, against an earlier target of end-2026, starting at 55nm and 90nm with 28nm to follow. [196]	Tata Electronics, with PSMC of Taiwan as the process technology partner	Late, mature nodes
Packaging and test	Nine of the 12 approved projects are packaging units, and Micron, Kaynes and CG Semi are in commercial production. [194] CG Semi’s first Sanand plant has a peak capacity of 300 million units a year, and Tata’s Assam plant is designed for up to 48 million units a day. [199, 200]	Foreign customers and partners such as Micron, Renesas, Qualcomm and Nexperia, who bring the chips and the orders	Working, foreign-fed
Chipmaking machines	ASML agreed in May 2026 to supply lithography tools for the Dholera fab. [197] Semicon 2.0 lists incentives for equipment makers as one of its six pillars, which shows the gap the government sees. [194]	ASML and other foreign toolmakers	Bought abroad
Materials, chemicals and gases	Semicon 2.0 plans incentives for makers of semiconductor materials, chemicals and gases. [194] India is 100% import-dependent for 10 of 30 critical minerals. [204]	Foreign suppliers today, with the electronics ministry deciding how fast local supply is funded	Supply chain missing
Power and water	Plans for Dholera include a 5 gigawatt solar park and a water treatment plant of 50 million litres a day. Gujarat also offers a power tariff subsidy of ₹2 per unit. [204]	The Gujarat state government and its utilities	Planned, not proven
Chips for India’s own market	About 95% of demand is imported, mainly from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore, and demand is expected to reach about $90 billion by 2030. [204] The government’s goal is to design and produce chips for 70% to 75% of domestic applications by 2029. [195]	Exporters in China, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore	Heavily exposed

Who runs the show

Company or agency	What it does and decides	Technical capability
Union Cabinet	Approves the programme and its budget. It signed off on Semicon 2.0 on 15 July 2026. [194]	Semicon 2.0 has ₹1.275 lakh crore, against ₹76,000 crore for the first phase. [194, 201]
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and its India Semiconductor Mission	MeitY leads chip policy and anchors the schemes. The mission, launched in December 2021, deals with global companies to bring in investment. [201, 202] The minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, announces project timelines. [196]	12 manufacturing projects approved, with cumulative investment above ₹1.64 lakh crore. [194] The subsidy is now 40% for silicon fabs and 35% for other fabs, down from 50% in the first phase. [195]
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)	State research body under MeitY. It runs the DLI scheme as nodal agency, operates the shared design-tool centre and designs the national RISC-V processors. [201, 202]	Its ChipIN Centre gives design tools to about 100,000 engineers and students in 400 organisations. [201] A ministry chart places DHRUV64 at 28nm and the planned Dhanush+ at 16/14nm. [202]
Tata Electronics	Builds and will run India’s first commercial 300mm fab at Dholera, and the packaging plant at Jagiroad in Assam. [197, 200]	$11 billion committed at Dholera, covering 28nm to 110nm. [196, 197] The Assam plant cost ₹27,000 crore and began pilot chips in October 2026. [200]
Micron Technology	United States memory maker. It runs the assembly and test plant at Sanand and decides what volume goes through it. [198]	About $2.75 billion invested with government partners. Commercial DRAM and NAND output began in February 2026, with tens of millions of chips expected in 2026 and hundreds of millions in 2027. [198]
CG Semi and Kaynes Semicon	Indian-owned packaging firms at Sanand. CG Semi shipped its first qualified chips to Renesas Electronics of Japan. [199] Kaynes is one of the three units in commercial production. [194]	CG Semi began commercial production on 4 July 2026, with ₹7,600 crore planned over five years and 50% central support. [199]
PSMC (Taiwan) and ASML (Netherlands)	The foreign technology holders for Dholera. PSMC is the process technology partner. ASML supplies lithography tools under a May 2026 agreement. [196, 197]	PSMC’s partnership covers several nodes, with 28nm the most advanced. Its spokesperson said transfers usually start with more mature nodes. [196]

Three pressures

The fab slipped and started lower

Tata had aimed for commercial production at Dholera by the end of 2026. The technology minister now says mid-2028. [196] Bloomberg sources say output will rely mainly on 90nm, where the company’s annual report had named 28nm as the target. Tata says it always planned to begin with 55nm and 90nm. [196] A two-year delay also means two more years of importing nearly every chip. [204] New fabs will get a 40% subsidy, down from 50%. [195]

Inside Washington’s club, still tied to Chinese supply

India signed Pax Silica, the United States-led declaration on SI and chip supply chains, in early 2026. It was not among the original signatories in December 2025. [205] A January 2025 United States rule had placed India in a second tier that needed licences for advanced chips, and it was rescinded in May 2025. [205] Carnegie India expects New Delhi to keep hedging, and notes that Chinese technology already sits deep in India’s electronics supply chains. [205]

Design talent that works on other firms’ chips

The 20% share is mostly employment, not ownership. Global firms set architecture and product strategy abroad and use India for implementation at scale. [202, 203] The home-grown side is small by comparison. The DLI scheme had 24 funded projects and 6 fabricated chips by January 2026, and it caps design support at ₹15 crore per application. [201] Semicon 2.0 says it will build on 105 startups that now have access to design tools. [194]

What a realistic policy looks like

Finish Dholera at nodes that sell. Hold the mid-2028 date before adding new fab announcements. Starting at 55nm and 90nm is how PSMC says transfers normally begin. [196] The test is whether 28nm follows on a published schedule, and whether Indian buyers of automotive and power chips commit orders before the tools arrive.
Use packaging as the training ground. Packaging is the part that works. Three units ship commercially and Assam is in pilot. [194, 200] Policy should tie support to moving from wire bond toward flip chip and integrated systems packaging, which Tata’s Assam plant already lists, and to training engineers who can later staff the fab. [200]
Turn design staff into design owners. India has the engineers and few chip companies of its own. [202, 203] The DLI scheme reimburses up to 50% of eligible design spending and has produced 16 tape-outs. [201] Raising its scale, and buying the resulting chips for public projects, would do more than another headline figure.
Build the supplier base before the second fab. Semicon 2.0 is right to fund equipment, materials, chemicals and gases alongside plants. [194] A fab with imported tools and imported inputs moves the dependency without ending it. Local gas, chemical and spare-parts supply should be in place by the time Dholera reaches volume in 2028. [196]
Prove the power and water, in public. The Dholera plan rests on a 5 gigawatt solar park and a water plant of 50 million litres a day. [204] These are plans. Publishing delivery dates and actual supply figures would let investors and customers judge the site on evidence, and would show where state promises fall short.
Keep technology access and supply access both open. India’s tools, process technology and packaging partners come from the Netherlands, Taiwan, the United States and Japan, and many finished chips come from China. [196, 197, 198, 199, 204] Pax Silica has no licensing terms attached yet. [205] India should settle those terms early, and ask for assurance that technology it adopts will not be withdrawn. [205]

How it could go wrong

The fab slips again. The date has already moved from end-2026 to mid-2028. [196] Another delay would leave India with packaging lines and no domestic wafers into the 2030s.

Packaging stays at the low-value end. India’s first silicon fab is not due until 2028, so the packaging plants depend on chips and orders from foreign partners. [194, 199] If those partners move volume elsewhere, the plants have little to fall back on.

Smaller subsidies meet higher costs. Support for silicon fabs has dropped from 50% to 40% while tools and materials still come from abroad. [194, 195] The next fab investors may wait.

Alignment brings duties before benefits. Carnegie India says the details of Pax Silica remain unclear and that India has work to do before it gains from it. [205] Meanwhile about 95% of its chips are imported, mainly from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. [204]

Limits. Several items were seen only as search summaries and are kept out of the cited claims. These are: the HCL-Foxconn display driver chip plant near Jewar in Uttar Pradesh (reported as ₹3,706 crore, 20,000 wafers a month, with start dates given as 2027 in one report and 2028 in another, and no 2026 construction update found), the Kaynes capacity and investment figures, the May 2026 approvals of Crystal Matrix and Suchi Semicon, India’s rare earth magnet imports from China, and claims that more than 90% of fab equipment and 85 to 90% of specialty chemicals and gases are imported. No primary figure for equipment or materials import dependence was found, so the table states only what Semicon 2.0 funds. Figures conflict in places. The 20% design share comes from a government backgrounder and a Bastion Research report, while older ministerial remarks cite about 30%. Neither source gives the share of those engineers employed by foreign firms. Project counts differ by date: 10 projects and ₹1.60 lakh crore in December 2025, 12 projects and ₹1.64 lakh crore in July 2026. The count of startups with design-tool access is 95 in January 2026 and 105 in July 2026. The Dholera node story rests on Bloomberg sources as relayed by TrendForce. The process nodes for DHRUV64 and Dhanush were read from a chart image in the government backgrounder, which does not say where DHRUV64 was fabricated. The date India signed Pax Silica is given by Carnegie only as the last day of a New Delhi summit. The Sunday Guardian piece is an opinion analysis with no publication date, only a last-updated date. That packaging plants rely on imported wafers is an inference from the absence of a domestic silicon fab. That export rules of supplier countries apply to tools sold to India is general knowledge and is not cited. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Malaysia · the world’s back end, moving up · written 13 November 2026

Malaysia: the world’s packaging floor, trying to own a chip while others hold the switches

13%Share of the world’s back-end assembly, testing and packaging, by the investment authority’s estimate, as reported in September 2026. [206]

RM212.12bnSemiconductor exports, January to April 2026, up from RM141.23 billion in the same months of 2025. [206]

86.3%Foreign share of the RM16.9 billion in electronic components investment approved in 2025. [206]

RM500bnInvestment target of the National Semiconductor Strategy, launched in May 2024 and reported in 2026 as a goal for 2030. [206, 207]

1,110 MWLive data-centre capacity in Johor, third in Asia-Pacific after Tokyo and Singapore, reported in August 2026. [216]

2030Target year for the first chip designed under the Arm deal to reach the market, with designs expected around 2028. [208]

Malaysia does the unglamorous end of chipmaking and does a lot of it. The Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) estimates the country handles about 13% of the world’s back-end work, meaning assembly, testing and packaging, and about 7% of global semiconductor trade. [206] Semiconductor exports reached RM212.12 billion in the first four months of 2026, up from RM141.23 billion a year earlier. [206] The weakness is ownership: foreign firms supplied 86.3% of the electronic components investment approved in 2025. [206] The factories are in Penang and Kulim. The decisions are made elsewhere.

The government wants to change that. Its National Semiconductor Strategy, launched in May 2024, seeks RM500 billion of investment, 60,000 trained engineers and at least ten home-grown firms in design and advanced packaging. [206, 207] It has bought access to chip blueprints from Arm, the British designer, and wants a Malaysian-designed chip on the market by 2030. [208] Three things sit outside its control. Washington decides the tariff on Malaysian chips and the supply of SI chips to Johor’s data centres. Foreign head offices decide where the next plant goes. Power and water decide how fast any of it can grow.

What Malaysia holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Assembly, testing and packaging	About 13% of the world’s back-end work is done in Malaysia. [206] Semiconductor devices made up 64.5% of RM601.21 billion in electrical and electronics exports in 2024. [206]	Foreign multinationals, which supplied 86.3% of the 2025 investment approved in electronic components [206]	Strong, foreign-owned
Advanced packaging	Intel’s Penang complex carries a RM12 billion commitment and was reported 99% complete, with first-phase assembly and test due to start in 2026. [212] The same project had been on indefinite hold by early 2025. [212]	Intel’s head office	Arriving, not owned
Home chip design	Eight Arm technology packages have gone to five local companies under a RM1.1 billion programme. [208] Four companies are at the design stage, designs are expected around 2028 and the first chip is targeted for 2030. [208]	Arm, which owns the blueprints, and the Economy Ministry, which pays for access	Early, licence-bound
Access to the American market	Malaysian chips were still exempt from American tariffs on 13 October 2026, and the minister said no tariff had been signalled. [213] The 2025 trade agreement lost its legal basis in February 2026, and a Section 301 investigation opened on 11 March 2026. [214]	The White House and the United States Trade Representative	Exempt for now
SI chips for data centres	Malaysia makes none of the advanced SI chips its data centres run on. Since 14 July 2025 it has required a Strategic Trade Permit to export, trans-ship or transit American ones. [210] Customs seized 72 servers worth nearly $13 million at Kuala Lumpur’s airport in June 2026. [211]	The United States government, which licenses the chips, with Malaysia’s trade ministry policing re-export	Supplied on trust
Power and water	Data centres drew 1,102 megawatts in April 2026 against 2,050 megawatts approved. [215] They used 28.68 million litres of water a day in January 2026 against 55.83 million approved. [215] Johor’s pipeline is 8,542 megawatts against 1,110 live. [216]	The Data Centre Task Force, the water regulator SPAN and state water operators [215]	Headroom, already allocated
Chinese investment	Forehope Electronic, a Chinese packaging firm, announced a CNY2.1 billion ($300 million) plant in Penang on 12 January 2026. [209] The project was still in preliminary preparation and no capacity was given. [209]	Malaysian investment approvals, and American rules on origin and excess capacity [213]	Welcome, watched
Rare earth separation	Lynas runs the largest commercial rare earth plant outside China at Gebeng, Pahang, and holds about 10% of the world market. [217] It has produced dysprosium, terbium and samarium oxides there since 2025. [217]	Lynas, an Australian company, under a Malaysian licence renewed for ten years in March 2026 [217]	Rare outside China

Who runs the show

Company or agency	What it does and decides	Technical capability
Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI)	Leads the semiconductor strategy, negotiates tariffs with Washington and issues Strategic Trade Permits through its Strategic Trade Secretariat. [210, 213] Its minister in October 2026 was Johari Abdul Ghani. [213]	Controls the permit regime for American SI chips, including a 30-day advance notice where misuse is suspected. [210] Oversees a strategy with at least RM25 billion in promised fiscal support. [207]
Ministry of Economy	Runs the Arm collaboration and reports on it. Minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir set the 2030 target for the first chip. [208]	A RM1.1 billion programme with eight technology packages awarded to five companies, including Oppstar Technology and Alphaswift Industries. [208] 1,530 people had completed Arm training against a goal of 10,000 in four years. [208]
Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA)	Approves and promotes investment and publishes the figures the industry is judged by. [206]	Reported RM218.5 billion in total approved investment in the first half of 2026, of which electrical and electronics took RM16.6 billion, the largest manufacturing category. [206]
Intel	The anchor foreign employer, in Malaysia since 1972, with Penang and Kulim central to its global back-end network. [212] It decides whether advanced packaging is done here.	A RM12 billion Penang packaging complex reported 99% complete, with first-phase assembly and test for advanced packaging due in 2026. [212]
Infineon, ASE, Micron and Inari Amertron	Infineon makes power chips at Kulim. ASE of Taiwan and Micron of the United States run packaging and test plants in Penang. Inari Amertron is the best-known local packaging firm. Each foreign firm answers to a head office abroad.	Figures for these four firms were found in sources outside the reference list and are set out under limits, not cited here.
Lynas Rare Earths	Separates rare earths at Gebeng under Malaysian licence and decides which heavy rare earths to add. [217]	About 10% of the world rare earth market. [217] Detailed engineering has started on a full heavy rare earth separation circuit, with a full suite of extraction expected by late 2027. [217]
Data Centre Task Force and the water regulator SPAN	Every proposed data centre goes through a technical assessment by the task force. SPAN coordinates checks on water availability by state operators. [215]	Approved demand for operating data centres stands at 2,050 megawatts of power and 55.83 million litres of water a day. [215]

Three pressures

Washington holds the tariff

The United States set tariffs on Malaysian goods as high as 47% in April 2025, then cut most to 19% under an agreement signed on 26 October 2025. [214] The US Supreme Court removed the legal basis on 20 February 2026, and Malaysia’s trade minister called the agreement null and void in March. [214] Chips stayed exempt as of 13 October 2026, but nothing binds that. [213] A Section 301 investigation opened on 11 March 2026 is still running, with excess capacity the one unresolved issue. [213, 214]

The trans-shipment problem

Since 14 July 2025 anyone exporting, trans-shipping or transiting advanced American SI chips through Malaysia needs a Strategic Trade Permit. [210] Where misuse is suspected, the trade ministry must be told 30 days ahead. [210] The rule is being tested. On 5 June 2026 customs officers raided the free trade zone at Kuala Lumpur’s main airport and seized 72 servers, worth nearly $13 million, that had been declared as computer components. [211] Each case of this kind gives Washington a reason to ration chips to Johor.

Foreign owners, thin local base

Malaysia’s back end belongs mostly to others. Of RM16.9 billion in electronic components investment approved in 2025, RM14.6 billion was foreign and RM2.3 billion domestic. [206] Intel’s Penang packaging project shows the risk. It was put on indefinite hold by early 2025 and engineers were moved to New Mexico, before the company revived it. [212] The home-design plan is young. Eight Arm technology packages have gone to five local companies, and the first designs are expected around 2028. [208]

What a realistic policy looks like

Keep the permit system credible. Enforce the 2025 permit rule visibly and publish the outcome of cases such as the June 2026 airport seizure. [210, 211] Amendments to the Strategic Trade Act were proposed in 2026. [210] Passing them, and deciding whether SI chips join the Strategic Items List, would turn a stopgap directive into settled law.
Settle the origin question with Washington. The open Section 301 issue is excess capacity, which the trade minister says may come from third countries whose goods pass through Malaysia. [213] Tighter origin checks on newly arrived plants protect the tariff exemption that Malaysian chips still held in October 2026. [213] Welcoming investment and policing its paperwork are compatible.
Back a few design firms, not many. Four companies had reached the design stage by August 2026, and a design takes about three years. [206] The strategy’s goal of ten firms with revenue of RM1 billion to RM4.7 billion is far off. [207] Concentrating the RM1.1 billion Arm programme on firms with paying customers is more realistic than spreading it thin. [208]
Fix the engineer shortage first. The strategy calls for 60,000 trained engineers. [207] The Arm training scheme had 1,530 graduates against a goal of 10,000 in four years, with at least 5,000 due by the end of 2027. [208] Every other target depends on this one, so university places and pay need to move ahead of new factory approvals.
Price power and water at full cost. Data centres used 1,102 megawatts in April 2026 against 2,050 megawatts approved, and 28.68 million litres of water a day against 55.83 million approved. [215] The headroom exists but it is already promised. Charging full cost and screening projects through the Data Centre Task Force keeps supply available for chip plants. [215]
Use rare earths as a bargaining card. Lynas holds about 10% of the world rare earth market from its plant at Gebeng, and its licence was renewed for ten years in March 2026. [217] A full heavy rare earth circuit is planned by late 2027. [217] Few countries outside China can offer this, and Malaysia can trade on it in tariff talks.

How it could go wrong

Chip tariffs arrive. The exemption on Malaysian chips rested on a minister’s reading of American intentions in October 2026, not on a signed agreement. [213] The trade deal that set the wider terms no longer has a legal basis. [214]

SI chip supply is rationed. More smuggling cases like the 72 servers seized in June 2026 could lead Washington to limit advanced chips for Malaysian data centres. [211] Johor’s 8,542 megawatt pipeline assumes those chips keep coming. [216]

A foreign owner pauses again. Intel’s Penang project was frozen by early 2025 for reasons that had nothing to do with Malaysia. [212] With 86.3% of 2025 component investment coming from abroad, one head-office decision can undo years of policy. [206]

Power, water and people run short. Johor’s data-centre vacancy is 0.7% and rising power and water tariffs are narrowing its cost advantage over Singapore. [216] The Arm scheme had trained 1,530 people against a goal of 10,000. [208]

Limits. Three references have gaps. The Sun article on the Arm timeline (my3) shows no publication date on the page, and Malay Mail places the minister’s statement on 21 August 2026. The CRN Asia article on Intel (my7) also shows no date. The Griffith post (my9) is a student-written university blog. The following were seen only as search summaries and are not cited: Inari Amertron’s revenue of RM1,187.3 million for the year to June 2026 (Business Today, 27 August 2026), Micron’s Penang investment, Penang’s RM2.9 billion water plan and Sungai Muda contingency plan, Johor’s reported halt on some lower-tier and water-cooled data centres, Wood Mackenzie’s view that grid connections are the main constraint, and a July 2025 Bloomberg report that Washington planned to restrict SI chip shipments to Malaysia, which was not confirmed as final. The following were opened but left out of the reference list because of its length limit: Infineon’s Kulim silicon carbide fab at EUR 2 billion for the first phase and EUR 5 billion for the second (MIDA, 8 August 2024), ASE’s plan to grow from about 1 million to 3.4 million square feet and to buy an Analog Devices plant in Penang (TrendForce, 22 October 2025, completion not confirmed), 21,391 semiconductor workers trained by June 2026 (RTM, 7 October 2026), RM91.9 billion of approved semiconductor investment from January 2024 to March 2026 (New Straits Times, 1 September 2026), and Tongfu Microelectronics’ joint venture with AMD in Penang (Caixin, 2 December 2024). Conflicting figures: the Arm deal is given as $250 million over ten years by Fortune and as RM1.1 billion by The Sun, with ringgit conversions of RM1.07 billion and RM1.11 billion elsewhere. The RM500 billion target was announced in 2024 for the first phase of the strategy and is described in 2026 as a goal for 2030. The trade share is given as 7% and as 7.5%. Semiconductors are described as about 40% of total exports in some reports and as 64.5% of electrical and electronics exports in another, which are different measures. Johor’s 1,110 megawatts is live capacity and the national 1,102 megawatts is actual consumption. One tariff calculator site lists a 25% duty on Malaysian chips, which conflicts with the minister’s statement of 13 October 2026, and no American legal text was checked. The status of the 10% global tariff after July 2026 was not found. No report was found that the 2026 amendments to the Strategic Trade Act have passed. From general knowledge and not cited: that Gebeng is near Kuantan, that Kulim is in Kedah, that Malaysia has no leading-edge fab and designs must be made abroad, and the description of the four firms in the Infineon, ASE, Micron and Inari row. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

Malaysia’s chip companies on this site

2 companies based in Malaysia are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

MaterialsLynasRare-earth processing outside China Packaging and testInari AmertronPackaging and test

Singapore · a small island in every chain · written 13 November 2026

Singapore: a tenth of the world’s chips on mature nodes, and a trading hub now policed for what passes through

1 in 10share of global chip output made in Singapore, as stated by the Economic Development Board in February 2026 [218]

1/5share of global chipmaking equipment production, same source, February 2026 [218]

98%share of Micron’s NAND flash memory chips produced in Singapore, February 2026 [218]

22nmmost advanced foundry process on the island, at UMC’s new fab, as described in April 2025 [222]

18%share of Nvidia’s 2024 revenue billed to Singapore, while Singapore said only 1% of the chips physically arrived [227]

US$390mapproximate value of server deals in the fraud cases charged in February 2025 [226]

Singapore makes about one in ten of the world’s chips and one fifth of its chipmaking equipment. [218] The industry is close to 6% of gross domestic product and employs over 35,000 people. [218] Output grew from 100 billion dollars in 2020 to 133 billion in 2024, by the trade ministry’s count. [219] Almost none of this is leading-edge logic. The most advanced foundry process on the island is 22 nanometres, and the newest fab covers 130 to 40 nanometres. [222, 221] Singapore’s strength is volume in flash memory, specialty chips and machines, all made by foreign companies on leased land.

The second role is trade. In 2024 Singapore was Nvidia’s second-largest market by billing, at 18% of revenue, yet the government said only 1% of those chips physically came to the island. [227] That gap drew attention in Washington. In February 2025 Singapore charged three men with fraud over servers sent on to Malaysia, and in April 2025 it told firms it would not condone the circumvention of other countries’ export controls. [225, 226] Singapore polices deception inside its borders, but it has not adopted the United States chip thresholds as its own law. [225]

What Singapore holds and what it depends on. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Position	Who holds the switch	Reading
Share of world chip output	About one in ten chips worldwide is made in Singapore. Semiconductor output reached 133 billion dollars in 2024, up from 100 billion in 2020. [218, 219]	Foreign fab owners, with the Economic Development Board as host	Large, foreign-owned
Chipmaking equipment output	Singapore produces one fifth of the world’s chipmaking equipment. Applied Materials holds roughly half of its global production capacity there and employs about 4,000 people. [218, 224]	United States and European machine makers	Strong, not sovereign
Flash memory	Micron makes 98% of its NAND flash chips in Singapore. It plans about US$24 billion over 10 years for a new wafer fab due to start in the second half of 2028. [218, 220]	Micron, a United States company	Deep single-company bet
Packaging for stacked memory	Micron’s plant for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) packaging is an investment of about US$7 billion, with first output expected in early 2027. It is Micron’s first such plant outside Taiwan. [220]	Micron	Coming, not yet running
Foundry nodes	UMC’s 22 and 28 nanometre processes were described in April 2025 as the most advanced foundry processes in Singapore. The VisionPower fab covers 130 to 40 nanometres. [222, 221]	Taiwanese, United States and Dutch owners	Mature and specialty only
Trade and billing hub for SI servers	Singapore accounted for 18% of Nvidia’s 2024 revenue by billing, while the government said 1% of the chips arrived physically. A 2026 United States House committee report names Singapore as a routing point for smuggled hardware. [227, 225]	United States export rules and Nvidia’s sales channels	Exposed to suspicion
Access to the United States market	A 12.5% United States tariff took effect on 24 July 2026 and covers about a third of Singapore’s domestic exports to the United States. Semiconductors are exempt for now. [229] A separate 25% duty on a narrow band of advanced chips began on 15 January 2026, and broader chip tariffs may follow. [228]	The White House and the United States Trade Representative	Exempt, for now
Land and energy	The trade minister told Parliament in February 2026 that chipmaking is land and energy intensive, so Singapore must be selective about projects. Micron’s new plant will be the island’s first double-storey wafer fab. [219, 220]	Geography and the state as landlord	Hard physical ceiling

Who runs the show

Company or agency	What it does and decides	Technical capability
Economic Development Board (EDB)	The state investment agency that courts chip companies and negotiates projects. With the trade ministry it decides which projects fit the island’s limited land and energy. [218, 219]	Hosts an industry worth close to 6% of gross domestic product and over 35,000 jobs. [218]
Micron	The United States memory maker. It decides how fast to ramp flash memory and stacked-memory packaging, and says it will stay flexible on capacity. [220]	98% of its NAND flash is made in Singapore. New wafer fab at about US$24 billion over 10 years, plus an HBM packaging plant at about US$7 billion. [218, 220]
GlobalFoundries	A United States contract chipmaker with 200mm and 300mm plants in Singapore, focused on specialty chips for radio, power and optical links. [223]	About 1.5 million wafers a year on a 300mm-equivalent basis, with utilisation reported above 90% in September 2026. It bought the local silicon photonics foundry Advanced Micro Foundry in November 2025. [223]
UMC	A Taiwanese foundry running the most advanced foundry processes on the island at its Pasir Ris site. [222]	22 and 28 nanometre processes. Up to US$5 billion for a first phase of 30,000 wafers a month, with volume production from 2026 and more than 1 million wafers a year in total. [222]
VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC)	A joint venture set up in September 2024 by Vanguard International Semiconductor of Taiwan and NXP of the Netherlands. It opened its 300mm fab in Tampines on 28 September 2026. [221]	130 to 40 nanometres for mixed-signal, power and analogue chips. About 44,000 wafers a month and 1,600 jobs by 2029, with volume production from the first quarter of 2027. [221]
Applied Materials	A United States machine maker. It opened a US$500 million campus in Tampines in June 2026 as part of a plan to nearly double global production capacity. [224]	Roughly half of its global production capacity, three manufacturing sites and about 4,000 staff, with 1,000 more jobs planned. [224]
Singapore Customs and the Singapore Police Force	Customs runs the Strategic Goods (Control) Act and permit declarations. The police and prosecutors bring fraud cases when buyers lie to suppliers about where servers will go. [225, 226]	A joint operation raided 22 locations and arrested nine people in the 2025 server cases. [226]

Three pressures

Washington’s rules, Singapore’s courts

Singapore’s control law is territorial and follows multilateral lists. It has not adopted the chip performance thresholds that the United States added from October 2022. [225] So prosecutors used the Penal Code. They charged three men in February 2025 with fraud by false representation, and a fourth person in April 2026. [225, 227] This reaches the lie told to the supplier, not the export itself. A 2026 House committee report still names Singapore as a routing point, and bills in Congress would extend controls to cloud access. [225]

Tariffs that stop at the factory gate, so far

Singapore’s chips have been spared twice. The 25% duty of January 2026 covers only a narrow band of advanced computing chips, with exemptions for uses such as United States data centres. [228] The 12.5% tariff of July 2026 exempts semiconductors. [229] Neither exemption is permanent. The January proclamation says the President may consider significantly broader chip tariffs with an offset programme for firms that build in the United States. [228] An exporter of mature chips and flash memory has little leverage if that happens.

A ceiling set by land and energy

The trade minister said in February 2026 that chipmaking is land and energy intensive, which requires Singapore to be selective. [219] Fabs are now built upward. Micron’s next plant will be the first double-storey wafer fab on the island. [220] Labour is also tight. Four announced projects alone plan about 4,900 new jobs against an industry workforce of just over 35,000. [218, 221, 222, 224] The industry association says gaps remain in critical materials, specialised equipment and chip design. [218]

What a realistic policy looks like

Keep policing deception at the border. The April 2025 advisory told firms that Singapore will not condone circumvention of other countries’ controls, and a circular now requires the final destination country on declarations. [226] Enforcing these rules visibly is the cheapest way to protect the island’s standing with both suppliers and Washington.
Close the gap between billing and shipping. Singapore was billed for 18% of Nvidia’s 2024 revenue but said it received 1% of the chips. [227] Publishing regular figures on what is invoiced, what lands and what leaves again would answer suspicion with data. Without figures, each new diversion case is read as proof of a wider problem.
Choose projects by land and power used. The government already says it must be selective because chipmaking is land and energy intensive. [219] The practical test is output and skills per hectare and per unit of power. Stacked fabs such as Micron’s double-storey plant and packaging lines for high-bandwidth memory fit that test better than sprawling low-margin capacity. [220]
Build on specialty, not the leading edge. The island’s foundry ceiling is 22 nanometres and its newest fab stops at 40. [222, 221] Chasing 2 nanometre logic would use scarce land and energy on a race others fund more heavily. Silicon photonics, power chips and memory packaging are areas where Singapore already has plants and public research. [223, 219]
Negotiate chip tariff terms before they are set. Semiconductors are exempt from the July 2026 tariff, but the January 2026 proclamation leaves room for broader chip duties. [229, 228] Singapore’s case rests on what its plants supply to United States firms, since Micron, GlobalFoundries and Applied Materials all make products on the island. [220, 223, 224]
Fill the gaps in design and materials. The industry association says Singapore still lacks depth in critical materials, specialised equipment and chip design. [218] The government’s stated answer is to attract company research and build public platforms such as the National Semiconductor Translation and Innovation Centre. [219] Local design firms would give the island something it owns.

How it could go wrong

A diversion case ends badly. The fraud trials are not finished, and a ruling that the servers reached a banned buyer would bring calls in Washington to treat Singapore as a risk destination. [225, 227]

Chip tariffs widen. If the United States moves from a narrow 25% duty to broad chip tariffs, Singapore’s exemption under the July 2026 tariff would count for little. [228, 229]

One company carries too much. Micron makes 98% of its NAND flash in Singapore and says it will adjust its ramp to market demand, so a memory downturn would hit the island directly. [218, 220]

The physical ceiling arrives early. Projects that the government cannot fit within its land and energy limits will go to other countries that are competing hard for the same investment. [219]

Limits. Several points were seen only as search summaries, not opened pages. They are: the VisionPower fab’s total investment of about US$7.8 billion and its 2024 capacity target of 55,000 wafers a month, which conflicts with the 44,000 a month on the 2026 opening page. Nvidia’s later filing figures (22% of revenue billed to Singapore in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, and the change to reporting by customer headquarters). The July 2026 not-guilty plea by one accused and the pre-trial dates. The investigation of the Singapore firm Megaspeed, where reports conflict on whether it is open or closed. The update of Singapore’s strategic goods control list from 1 December 2025. The extra wafer-fab park land prepared by the industrial landlord JTC. Analyst notes naming water and labour as limits. Infineon’s Singapore site as a test and regional headquarters with no wafer fab. Also STMicroelectronics’ 200mm wafer plant at Ang Mo Kio. We found no usable source on ASML’s regional base in Singapore, so it is left out. Water and labour limits are therefore general knowledge here, apart from the job counts cited. The trade ministry’s output figures carry a plain dollar sign and are presumably Singapore dollars. Micron’s new fab is given as over S$30 billion by the Economic Development Board and about US$24 billion by Bernama. The ministry reply was read at the meti.gov.sg address that the mti.gov.sg link redirected to. GlobalFoundries’ utilisation figure comes from a trade site relaying DIGITIMES, not from the company. Reuters reporting was read as republished by The Standard, and The Straits Times as republished by the British Chamber of Commerce. The 4,900 jobs figure is our own sum of four company announcements. The ratings and recommendations are this site’s judgment.

Companies

Singapore’s chip companies on this site

1 companies based in Singapore are in the directory. Select one for its profile, technical capabilities, financial reports and latest headlines.

Packaging and testUTACPackaging and test

Companies · who they are, and their latest news

Companies

The firms the chip contest is fought through, 119 of them, grouped by stage of the chain. Select a card for the company’s profile: what it does, where it sits, how the contest touches it, its technical capabilities, its latest financial reports, and the newest headlines about it.

← All companies

United StatesDesigns SI accelerators

Nvidia

about $89bnData-centre revenue, quarter to July 2026

25%Share of China H200 sales paid to the US government

under 1%H200 sales to China as a share of data-centre revenue

What it does

Nvidia designs the graphics processors that became the standard machine for training and running large models, and the networking and software that tie thousands of them into one computer. It owns no factory. TSMC makes its chips, Korean firms supply the stacked memory beside them, and the finished boards are assembled in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

Where it sits in the chain

It sits at the design stage and takes most of the profit in the chain. By most estimates it sells 80 to 90% of the accelerators used for training. Its hold comes as much from software as from silicon: a generation of engineers writes for its programming tools, which is why rivals with good chips still struggle to win customers.

In the contest

The export controls were written around its product list, and each revision has been followed by a chip built to sit just under the new limit. In 2025 the logic changed from denial to price: first 15% of revenue on a weaker chip, then in 2026 a licence for the stronger H200 with 25% of proceeds to the US government, caps on volume and outside verification. Beijing answered by discouraging its firms from buying, so licensed sales stayed under 1% of data-centre revenue and the company’s forecasts assume none. [73, 74, 91] The larger exposure is indirect. Its biggest Southeast Asian customer is under investigation for possibly passing chips to China; the company says those sales were authorised and no violation has been found (see the Vietnam tab for the source).

Technical capabilities

Accelerators made on TSMC’s newest processes, each with tens of billions of transistors
Complete systems: accelerators, processors, networking and liquid-cooled racks sold as one
CUDA, the programming system most SI software is written for
A new accelerator generation about every year

Financial reports

	Year to Jan 2023	Year to Jan 2024	Year to Jan 2025	Year to Jan 2026

Revenue	$27.0 billion	$60.9 billion	$130.5 billion	$215.9 billion
Net income	$4.4 billion	$29.8 billion	$72.9 billion	$120.1 billion
Research and development	$7.3 billion	$8.7 billion	$12.9 billion	$18.5 billion

Revenue up 65% on the year before; net margin 56%; research and development 9% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

August 2025Agrees to pay 15% of China revenue on its H20 chip in return for licences. [91]
January–March 2026Washington approves and then licenses H200 sales to China on a 25% revenue share. [74]
Quarter to 26 July 2026Data-centre revenue about $89 billion; H200 shipments to China under 1% of it; next-quarter forecast excludes China. [73]
November 2026News reports of the chief executive’s resignation and of congressional inquiries into sales reaching China. See the daily briefing in the Library.

What to watch

Whether Congress writes chip limits into law, removing the administration’s room to license.
Whether location tracking for chips becomes a condition of export.
How fast Huawei and Cambricon fill the Chinese demand it has lost.

← All companies

United StatesDesigns SI accelerators and processors

AMD

15%Share of China accelerator revenue owed to the US government

24%China’s share of its sales in 2024, by one report

No. 2Its rank among accelerator designers

What it does

AMD designs processors for personal computers and servers, where it has taken a large share from Intel, and accelerators under the Instinct name. Like Nvidia it has no factories and relies on TSMC.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the second source at the design stage. Large buyers want it to succeed because a single supplier sets the price; its difficulty is the software that surrounds its rival’s chips.

In the contest

Its China-specific accelerator, the MI308, was restricted in April 2025 together with Nvidia’s equivalent and licensed again that August on the same 15% terms. In December 2025 its chief executive said it held licences for part of its MI308 production and was ready to pay. Chinese regulators have since discouraged purchases of foreign accelerators, which limits what the licences are worth. [91, 92]

Technical capabilities

Server and PC processors on TSMC’s leading processes
Instinct accelerators with large amounts of stacked memory
Programmable chips, through its purchase of Xilinx

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$23.6 billion	$22.7 billion	$25.8 billion	$34.6 billion
Net income	$1.3 billion	$854 million	$1.6 billion	$4.3 billion
Research and development	$5.0 billion	$5.9 billion	$6.5 billion	$8.1 billion

Revenue up 34% on the year before; net margin 13%; research and development 23% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

April 2025MI308 placed under licence requirements.
August 2025Licences granted in return for 15% of the revenue. [91]
December 2025Says it is ready to ship and pay; Chinese buyers held back by Beijing. [92]

What to watch

Whether Chinese buyers are allowed to take the licensed chips.
Orders from the largest computing buyers as a check on Nvidia’s share.

← All companies

United StatesDesigns and makes processors; contract chipmaker

Intel

9.9%Stake held by the US government

under 5%Its share of contract chipmaking

$8.87bnGrants converted into shares in 2025

What it does

Intel both designs processors and makes them in its own fabs, the old model that most of the industry abandoned. It is trying to add a second business: making other firms’ chips, as TSMC does.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the only American company with leading-edge fabrication, which makes it the one domestic alternative to Taiwan for the most advanced logic. Its plant in Ho Chi Minh City is also its largest assembly and test site.

In the contest

Washington treats it as a strategic asset. In August 2025 the government converted $8.87 billion of promised grants into 433 million shares, a 9.9% holding with no board seat. The contract business still has under 5% of the market, the newest process has had yield problems, and the company is reported to be steering outside customers to the process after it. A supply agreement with Apple is reported but not final. [79] In April 2026 it joined the Terafab project as technology partner, with its next process chosen for the plant. [72] See the Terafab profile.

Technical capabilities

Makes its own processors on its 18A process, roughly comparable to rivals’ 2-nanometre class
Advanced packaging, including chips mounted on glass and stacked face to face
First large user of the newest type of EUV machine
Fabs in Arizona, Oregon, Ohio (under construction), Ireland and Israel

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$63.1 billion	$54.2 billion	$53.1 billion	$52.9 billion
Net income	$8.0 billion	$1.7 billion	−$18.8 billion	−$267 million
Research and development	$17.5 billion	$16.0 billion	$16.5 billion	$13.8 billion

Revenue down 0% on the year before; net margin -1%; research and development 26% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

August 2025US government becomes a 9.9% shareholder. [79]
2026Reported preliminary agreement to make chips for Apple; yields on the newest process still a concern. [79]

What to watch

A named outside customer in volume on its newest process.
Whether tariffs on imported chips are used to push customers its way.

← All companies

United StatesMakes memory

Micron

$54.2bnRevenue in its latest fiscal quarter

21%Share of stacked memory at the end of 2025, from 9% a year before

mid-2027First wafers from its new Idaho fab

What it does

Micron makes DRAM and flash memory, with fabs in the United States, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. It is the only American memory maker of scale.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the third supplier of the stacked memory fitted beside accelerators, after SK hynix and Samsung, and the one whose growth most reduces Korea’s hold on that stage.

In the contest

China barred its chips from critical infrastructure in 2023, the first time Beijing retaliated against a named American chip firm. The memory boom has more than made up the loss: revenue in the quarter to August 2026 was reported at $54.2 billion, and the year’s at three and a half times the previous record. Its stacked memory is sold out through 2026. It has about $6.1 billion of American grants for new fabs in Idaho, due to produce from mid-2027, and New York, where it expects output around 2030. [93]

Technical capabilities

Leading-edge DRAM and flash; third supplier of stacked memory
Fabs in the United States, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore

Financial reports

	Year to Aug 2023	Year to Aug 2024	Year to Aug 2025	Year to Sep 2026

Revenue	$15.5 billion	$25.1 billion	$37.4 billion	$133.2 billion
Net income	−$5.8 billion	$778 million	$8.5 billion	$85.0 billion
Research and development	$3.1 billion	$3.4 billion	$3.8 billion	$5.7 billion

Revenue up 256% on the year before; net margin 64%; research and development 4% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

2023Chinese regulator bars its products from critical infrastructure.
December 2025Leaves the consumer memory business to concentrate on data centres. [93]
October 2026Reports record quarterly revenue of $54.2 billion. [93]

What to watch

Whether Chinese memory makers push prices down in 2027.
Timing of the Idaho and New York fabs.

← All companies

United StatesPlanned chip factories of SpaceX, Tesla and xAI

Terafab

$16.8bnFirst phase at the main Texas site

1 millionWafers a month it says it wants after 2032

late 2028Target for volume production

What it does

Terafab is the plan by Elon Musk’s companies to make their own chips, logic, memory and packaging together, on a scale no chipmaker has attempted. It was announced in Austin in March 2026. SpaceX, which absorbed xAI earlier in the year, is the lead entity in the Texas agreements; Tesla is the other backer. The stated reason is that world chip output will cover only a small part of what their cars, robots and orbital data centres will need. [71, 97]

Where it sits in the chain

If built as described, it would be a captive, vertically integrated chipmaker: one owner making its own designs, memory and packages. That is the model the industry abandoned thirty years ago in favour of separate designers, contract fabs and memory makers. At the size proposed it would also be the largest chip producer in the world.

In the contest

It matters to the contest in three ways. It would be a very large American fab built mostly with private money. It would compete with TSMC’s, Samsung’s and Intel’s American plants for the same machines, engineers, power and water. And it ties American chipmaking to one man’s companies, which already hold the country’s main launch capacity and one of its large SI developers. Tesla meanwhile keeps a $16.5 billion contract for Samsung to make its next chip in Texas from 2027, so the plan is not its only route. [78, 97]

The plan in numbers

Item	What has been said
Output	About 100,000 wafers a month to start, a million a month after 2032, of which about 70% memory. A million a month is roughly 70% of everything TSMC makes; 700,000 memory wafers would rival Samsung’s whole DRAM output. [97, 100]
Process	2-nanometre-class logic, using Intel’s next process. [72]
Products	A chip for Tesla’s cars and robots, and a chip for satellites carrying computers. The founder has said about 80% of the computing produced would go to orbit. [97]
Sites	A research fab at Tesla’s Austin plant; the production campus, described as 100 million square feet, in Grimes County, north-west of Houston. [98, 99]
Dates	Volume production in the second half of 2028, which the founder calls “very aggressive”. One earlier report said production would begin in 2027. [101, 99]
Speed	A stated goal of cutting chip development from about a year to about a month.

What it is said to cost

First phase, per the Texas governor’s office$16.8 billion

Cost given at the March announcement$20 to 25 billion

County filing$55 billion

County filing, upper limitup to $119 billion

Founder’s figure for the whole project, November$1 trillion

Analysts’ estimate for a plant at full stated scale$5 to 13 trillion

Bars are on a logarithmic scale: each step along is ten times more. Sources: state and county announcements, the founder’s remarks, and estimates by Bernstein and Yole analysts. [98, 99, 102, 104, 105]

The figures differ by a factor of several hundred, because they describe different things. The first phase is a building and its first lines. The trillion is the founder’s own number for the whole campus over many years. The analysts’ $5 to 13 trillion is what the stated output would need at today’s costs: a million leading-edge wafers a month is of the order of fifty of the largest fabs ever built. For comparison, TSMC’s whole commitment in Arizona is reported at $265 billion.

Can it be done?

Machines. Japanese toolmakers report orders, some for delivery within months. [101] The pacing item is lithography: an EUV machine takes over a year to deliver, ASML makes a limited number, and no order from Terafab has been reported. Process. A fab is only as good as its recipe. Terafab has none of its own; it depends on Intel’s next process, which Intel itself has not yet brought to volume, and a role for TSMC is now being discussed. [72, 103] People. The companies have no experience of making chips, as critics point out, and the engineers who do are employed by the firms Terafab would compete with. [104] Money. None of the larger sums is in a published spending plan.

The case for taking it seriously is the record of the same companies in rockets and batteries, where they entered industries with high barriers and cut costs by integrating what others kept separate, and the fact that equipment is being ordered and a site prepared. One analyst who doubts the timetable also notes that the industry has often said something could not be done until someone did it. [104] The case against is that chipmaking rewards accumulated experience more than any other industry, that the integrated model was abandoned because it was less efficient, and that the founder’s timetables have usually slipped.

Reading

The useful way to read Terafab is in stages. A research fab and a first production line, at tens of billions of dollars, late in the decade, with Intel’s or TSMC’s process, is plausible and would matter: it would be a large new American buyer of machines and a second home for Intel’s technology. The million-wafer campus is a statement of demand more than a plan. What it shows about the contest is that the largest buyers of chips now believe supply, not design, is what limits them, and are prepared to spend at the scale of states to change that.

Technical capabilities

None in operation. A research fab is being built at Tesla’s plant in Austin
Planned: 2-nanometre-class logic on Intel’s process, memory, and advanced packaging on one campus
Planned products: a chip for cars and robots, and a chip for satellites and computing in orbit
Stated aim of cutting the time to develop a chip from about a year to about a month

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

Recent record

March 2026Announced in Austin: 2-nanometre logic, starting near 100,000 wafers a month and rising to a million, cost put at $20 to 25 billion. Tesla’s finance chief says the cost is not in its spending plan. [97]
April 2026Intel joins as technology partner; the plan is to use Intel’s next process, which its founder describes as not yet complete. [72]
August 2026Main site confirmed in Grimes County, Texas. First phase put at $16.8 billion and 3,000 jobs; a county filing cites $55 billion and up to $119 billion; a 35-year tax abatement is approved. [98, 99]
Early November 2026A larger role for TSMC in building and running the plant is reported to be under discussion. [103]
6 November 2026At an investor conference the founder accepts a $1 trillion estimate for the whole project, spent in phases. [102]
10 November 2026Orders reported with Japanese equipment makers, some asked to deliver within months; volume production targeted for the second half of 2028. [101, 100]

What to watch

Orders for lithography machines, which take over a year to deliver and have not been reported.
Whether Intel’s process is ready, or TSMC is brought in.
Who pays: none of the larger figures is yet in the companies’ published spending plans.
Hiring: a plant of this size needs thousands of process engineers who mostly work for its rivals.

← All companies

United StatesChip design software

Synopsys and Cadence

over 70%Share of China’s design-software market held with Siemens

16% and 12%China’s share of each firm’s revenue, by one report

5 weeksHow long the 2025 cut-off lasted

What it does

Synopsys and Cadence sell the software in which chips are designed, simulated and checked before manufacture, along with libraries of ready-made circuit blocks. A modern chip cannot be designed without such tools.

Where it sits in the chain

With the American arm of Siemens they supply nearly all advanced design software. This is the first stage of the chain and the least visible.

In the contest

In late May 2025 Washington told the three firms to stop selling to China without a licence. In early July it withdrew the letters as part of a bargain in which China agreed to speed up rare-earth shipments. [94] The episode showed two things: that the lever exists and works within days, and that it was traded away within weeks. China’s own design-software firms cover only part of the flow, so the dependence remains.

Technical capabilities

Synopsys

Full set of tools for designing digital chips, from description to layout
The largest library of ready-made interface and memory blocks
Software that simulates how transistors will behave on a new process, used by the fabs themselves

Cadence

Leading tools for analog and custom circuit design
Full digital design flow and verification hardware that emulates a chip before it exists
Tools for designing chip packages and circuit boards together

Financial reports

Synopsys

	Year to Oct 2022	Year to Oct 2023	Year to Oct 2024	Year to Oct 2025

Revenue	$5.1 billion	$5.3 billion	$6.1 billion	$7.1 billion
Net income	$985 million	$1.2 billion	$2.3 billion	$1.3 billion
Research and development	$1.6 billion	$1.8 billion	$2.1 billion	$2.5 billion

Revenue up 15% on the year before; net margin 19%; research and development 35% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Cadence

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$3.6 billion	$4.1 billion	$4.6 billion	$5.3 billion
Net income	$849 million	$1.0 billion	$1.1 billion	$1.1 billion

Revenue up 14% on the year before; net margin 21%. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

23 and 29 May 2025Licence letters sent to Siemens and Synopsys.
Early July 2025Requirement rescinded, reported as part of a deal on rare earths. [94]

What to watch

Whether the lever is used again if the truce ends.
How far Chinese design software has advanced by the time it is.

← All companies

United StatesChipmaking machines

Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA

3 of the top 5Machine makers by sales

28%China’s share of Applied’s sales in mid-2026, by one report

$600mSales Applied expected to lose to one 2025 rule

What it does

These three firms make the machines that deposit, etch and inspect the layers of a chip. Applied is the broadest, Lam leads in etching, and KLA in inspection and measurement.

Where it sits in the chain

Together with Tokyo Electron and ASML they equip every fab in the world. Their presence in a fab is what brings chips made abroad under American law.

In the contest

They carry the commercial cost of the controls on the American side. China had been about two-fifths of Applied’s sales and was reported at 28% in mid-2026. In autumn 2025 a rule extending restrictions to any company half-owned by a listed firm led Applied to warn of $600 million in lost sales; the rule was suspended after the presidents’ meeting and the sales were restored. [95] Japanese and Dutch rivals complain that American rules have sometimes allowed these firms to keep sales that allies had to give up.

Technical capabilities

Applied Materials

Deposition, etching, ion implantation and polishing
Equipment for the newest transistor and wiring structures

Lam Research

Etching of very deep, narrow holes, essential for flash memory
Deposition of metal and insulating films

KLA

Inspection that finds defects a few nanometres across
Measurement of how accurately each layer lines up with the last

Financial reports

Applied Materials

	Year to Oct 2022	Year to Oct 2023	Year to Oct 2024	Year to Oct 2025

Revenue	$25.8 billion	$26.5 billion	$27.2 billion	$28.4 billion
Net income	$6.5 billion	$6.9 billion	$7.2 billion	$7.0 billion
Research and development	$2.8 billion	$3.1 billion	$3.2 billion	$3.6 billion

Revenue up 4% on the year before; net margin 25%; research and development 13% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Lam Research

	Year to Jun 2023	Year to Jun 2024	Year to Jun 2025	Year to Jun 2026

Revenue	$17.4 billion	$14.9 billion	$18.4 billion	$23.2 billion
Net income	$4.5 billion	$3.8 billion	$5.4 billion	$7.3 billion
Research and development	$1.7 billion	$1.9 billion	$2.1 billion	$2.4 billion

Revenue up 26% on the year before; net margin 31%; research and development 10% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

KLA

	Year to Jun 2023	Year to Jun 2024	Year to Jun 2025	Year to Jun 2026

Revenue	$10.5 billion	$9.8 billion	$12.2 billion	$13.6 billion
Net income	$3.4 billion	$2.8 billion	$4.1 billion	$4.8 billion
Research and development	$1.3 billion	$1.3 billion	$1.4 billion	$1.5 billion

Revenue up 12% on the year before; net margin 36%; research and development 11% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

September–October 2025Affiliates rule announced; Applied warns of a $600 million hit. [95]
Late 2025Rule suspended as part of the truce.

What to watch

Whether the affiliates rule returns when the truce is reviewed.
Controls on servicing machines already installed in China.

← All companies

TaiwanContract chipmaker

TSMC

72.5%Share of contract chipmaking, mid-2026

about 90%Share of the most advanced logic

$265bnReported commitment in Arizona

What it does

TSMC makes chips designed by others and designs none of its own, which is why Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm all trust it with their plans. It invented this model in 1987.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the leading-edge fabrication stage: about nine-tenths of the most advanced logic, nearly every accelerator, and the advanced packaging that joins accelerators to memory.

In the contest

Everything in the contest runs through it. American rules stopped it making Huawei’s chips in 2020. Washington has pressed it to build in Arizona, where it is reported to have committed $265 billion, and Taiwan limits what it may make abroad to processes two generations behind its newest. It began 2-nanometre production at home in late 2025 and plans 3-nanometre lines in both Arizona and Kumamoto. [54, 53, 64] See the Taiwan tab.

Technical capabilities

2-nanometre logic in volume since late 2025; the next step, A16, due in 2026
Advanced packaging that joins accelerators to stacked memory
Capacity of well over a million wafers a month across all processes
Fabs in Taiwan, Arizona, Kumamoto and Dresden

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2021	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024

Revenue	$57.2 billion	$73.7 billion	$70.6 billion	$88.3 billion
Net income	$21.4 billion	$32.3 billion	$27.8 billion	$35.3 billion
Research and development	$4.5 billion	$5.3 billion	$6.0 billion	$6.2 billion

Revenue up 25% on the year before; net margin 40%; research and development 7% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

Late 20252-nanometre production starts in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung. [53]
February–March 2026Second Kumamoto fab switched to 3 nanometres, approved by Taipei. [64]
July 2026Arizona commitment reported raised to $265 billion. [54]

What to watch

Whether the two-generation rule holds as Arizona moves to newer processes.
Energy supply on the island.

← All companies

South KoreaMemory; contract chipmaker

Samsung Electronics

$16.5bnContract to make Tesla’s chips, to 2033

5.9%Share of contract chipmaking, mid-2026

over 30%Share of stacked memory it expects in 2026

What it does

Samsung is the largest memory maker and also runs the second-largest contract chipmaking business, besides making phones and displays.

Where it sits in the chain

It appears at three stages: memory, leading-edge logic and packaging. It is the only firm other than TSMC and Intel that can make the most advanced logic.

In the contest

In memory it fell behind SK hynix on the stacked memory that accelerators need and has spent two years catching up; its newest version is reported to have reached good yields. [106, 77] In logic, Tesla’s $16.5 billion order for 2-nanometre chips from its Texas plant gave the contract business the reference customer it lacked. [78] Its flash plant in Xi’an depends on an American licence that is now renewed yearly. [86] See the Korea tab.

Technical capabilities

Samsung Electronics

DRAM, flash and stacked memory at the leading edge
Leading-edge logic and its own packaging
Memory fabs in Korea and in Xi’an, China

Samsung Foundry

First to use the newest transistor structure, at 3 nanometres; 2 nanometres for Tesla in Texas
Can combine logic, memory and packaging in one company

Financial reports

	2025

Revenue	₩333.60 trillion
Net income	₩45.20 trillion
Research and development	₩37.70 trillion

net margin 14%; research and development 11% of revenue. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

July 2025Wins the Tesla contract. [78]
December 2025Receives a one-year US licence for its plant in China. [86]
August 2026Yield of its newest stacked memory reported at 80%. [106]

What to watch

Its share of Nvidia’s next memory orders.
Renewal of the China licence each December.

← All companies

South KoreaMemory

SK hynix

58%Share of stacked memory, early 2026, by one tracker

about two-thirdsIts part of Nvidia’s next-generation supply

2 plantsIn China, on a yearly US licence

What it does

SK hynix makes DRAM and flash memory. It was the first to mass-produce the stacked memory used with accelerators and has led that product since.

Where it sits in the chain

It holds the memory chokepoint at its narrowest point. An accelerator without this memory is unfinished, so its output sets a ceiling on Nvidia’s.

In the contest

American rules since December 2024 bar sales of stacked memory to China. Its share is falling from a very high level as Samsung and Micron qualify their products, and trackers disagree on the exact figures. [76, 77] Its DRAM plant in Wuxi and flash plant in Dalian run on the same yearly licence as Samsung’s. [86]

Technical capabilities

First to mass-produce each generation of stacked memory
Leading-edge DRAM; flash through its Solidigm unit
Fabs in Korea and in Wuxi and Dalian, China

Financial reports

	2025

Revenue	₩97.15 trillion
Net income	₩42.95 trillion
Research and development	₩6.70 trillion

net margin 44%; research and development 7% of revenue. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

December 2025One-year US licence for its Chinese plants. [86]
January 2026Reported to supply about two-thirds of the memory for Nvidia’s next platform. [77]

What to watch

Whether it keeps first place in each new generation.
The Wuxi plant, which makes a large part of its DRAM.

← All companies

NetherlandsLithography machines

ASML

100%Share of EUV machines

33% to about 20%China’s share of sales, 2025 to 2026

€13.2bnOrders in one quarter at the end of 2025

What it does

ASML makes the lithography machines that print circuit patterns. It alone makes the EUV machines needed for the most advanced chips, each assembled from parts made by hundreds of suppliers, above all Zeiss optics and Trumpf lasers from Germany.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the lithography chokepoint. No EUV machine has ever been shipped to China.

In the contest

The Dutch government has refused EUV licences since 2019 and restricted the most capable older machines from 2023. China nevertheless bought so many permitted machines that it was a third of ASML’s sales in 2025; the company expects about a fifth in 2026. [75] The unused measure that most worries Beijing is a ban on selling and servicing those older machines, which China’s advanced lines depend on.

Technical capabilities

EUV lithography, the only source; the newest type prints finer lines still
Immersion lithography, the workhorse for everything else
Measurement systems that keep lithography on target

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	€21.2 billion	€27.6 billion	€28.3 billion	€32.7 billion
Net income	€5.6 billion	€7.8 billion	€7.6 billion	€9.6 billion
Research and development	€3.3 billion	€4.0 billion	€4.3 billion	€4.7 billion

Revenue up 16% on the year before; net margin 29%; research and development 14% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

2019First EUV licence for China refused.
2023Dutch controls on advanced older machines.
January 2026Forecasts China falling to about 20% of sales; quarterly orders of €13.2 billion, over half for EUV. [75]

What to watch

Any restriction on servicing machines already in China.
Progress of Chinese lithography, which has no confirmed EUV machine.

← All companies

JapanChipmaking machines

Tokyo Electron

about 10%Share of the machine market

over 40% to 32%China’s share of its sales

No. 4Rank among machine makers

What it does

Tokyo Electron makes machines for coating, developing, etching and cleaning wafers. Its coater-developers work alongside every lithography machine.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the largest Japanese machine maker and one reason the 2022 American controls needed Tokyo’s agreement to work.

In the contest

Japan restricted 23 kinds of equipment in 2023 and added more items in 2025. China fell from over 40% of the company’s sales to about a third in 2026, and the five largest Japanese toolmakers sold 12% less in China in fiscal 2025. [66, 70] See the Japan tab.

Technical capabilities

Coating and developing machines used with every lithography machine, including nearly all for EUV
Etching, deposition and cleaning

Financial reports

	Year to Mar 2026

Revenue	¥2.44 trillion
Net income	¥574.5 billion

net margin 24%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

July 2023Japanese controls on 23 kinds of chipmaking equipment.
May 2025Twenty-one more advanced items added. [70]

What to watch

Whether Japan follows any American move on servicing.
Chinese toolmakers taking its place in mature-chip fabs.

← All companies

JapanNew contract chipmaker

Rapidus

2 nmProcess it is developing

¥267.6bnRaised from the state and 32 firms in 2026

late FY2027Target for first volume

What it does

Rapidus was founded in 2022 with the backing of eight Japanese companies to make 2-nanometre chips in Hokkaido, using a process licensed from IBM.

Where it sits in the chain

It is an attempt to add a third or fourth source of leading-edge logic, outside Taiwan and Korea.

In the contest

The state is its largest shareholder, with a golden share, and has approved ¥631.5 billion for the 2026 fiscal year alone; total public support is reported near ¥2.4 trillion. A pilot line has run since April 2025. It aims at customer test chips in late 2026, volume in late fiscal 2027 and full production the year after. Whether it can reach competitive yields and find paying customers is unproven. [61, 62, 63]

Technical capabilities

2-nanometre pilot line with IBM’s process
Aims at fast, small-batch production; not yet in volume

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

Recent record

April 2025Pilot line starts at Chitose. [61]
2026Raises ¥267.6 billion; the state takes 11.5% of the votes. [62]

What to watch

Yield figures, which it has not published.
Named customers beyond those reported.

← All companies

ChinaDesigns accelerators, phones and network chips

Huawei

about $12bnAccelerator revenue it is reported to expect in 2026

about 600,000Analysts’ estimate of its 2026 accelerator output

2019On the American entity list since

What it does

Huawei makes telecom equipment and phones and, through its HiSilicon unit, designs its own chips: phone processors, network chips and the Ascend accelerators.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the design stage of China’s home-grown chain, with SMIC as its manufacturer and Chinese memory makers as its suppliers.

In the contest

Cut off from TSMC in 2020, it returned in 2023 with a 7-nanometre phone chip made by SMIC. Its accelerator roadmap runs from the Ascend 950 in 2026 to the 970 in 2028, and it is reported to expect about $12 billion of accelerator revenue in 2026 as Nvidia’s share in China falls towards zero. Output is limited by SMIC’s yields and by the supply of stacked memory, which it is trying to make itself. [81, 80] Taiwan added it to its own control list in 2025. [58]

Technical capabilities

Kirin phone processors and Ascend accelerators, made by SMIC at a 7-nanometre class
Its own design software, developed after 2019 for older processes
Network and base-station chips
Developing its own stacked memory

Financial reports

	2024	2025

Revenue	CN¥862.0 billion	CN¥880.9 billion
Net income	CN¥62.6 billion	CN¥68.0 billion
Research and development	—	CN¥192.3 billion

Revenue up 2% on the year before; net margin 8%; research and development 22% of revenue. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

2019–2020Entity listing, then loss of access to TSMC.
August 2023Phone with a 7-nanometre processor made in China.
September 2025Three-year accelerator roadmap published. [81]
2026Reported target of about $12 billion in accelerator revenue. [80]

What to watch

Whether the 2026 chip matches its predecessor, which analysts doubt.
Its own stacked memory.

← All companies

ChinaContract chipmaker

SMIC

$3.0bnRevenue in the second quarter of 2026

93.7%Share of its capacity in use

90%Share of its revenue that comes from China

What it does

SMIC is China’s largest contract chipmaker. Most of its output is mature chips; a small, closely watched part is the 7-nanometre-class work it does for Huawei with older lithography machines.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the fabrication stage of China’s chain, and the limit on how many advanced chips China can make.

In the contest

On the American entity list since 2020, it cannot buy EUV machines and makes advanced chips by exposing each layer several times, which is slow and costly. Demand is not its problem: revenue in the second quarter of 2026 passed $3 billion, up 36% on the year, with 93.7% of capacity in use, prices rising, and about $8 billion of capital spending planned for the year. Nine-tenths of its sales are now inside China. [96]

Technical capabilities

7-nanometre-class logic using older lithography with repeated exposures; low yield
Large mature capacity from 28 nanometres upward
No EUV machines

Financial reports

	2025

Revenue	$9.3 billion
Net income	$685 million

net margin 7%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

December 2020Placed on the American entity list.
August 2026Reports quarterly revenue above $3 billion. [96]

What to watch

Any restriction on the older lithography machines and their servicing.
Yield on its most advanced lines, which it does not disclose.

← All companies

ChinaDesigns SI accelerators

Cambricon

about 500,000Accelerators it is reported to target in 2026

14 timesRise in quarterly revenue in a year

No. 2Among Chinese accelerator designers

What it does

Cambricon designs accelerators for data centres. It began as a supplier of chip designs to Huawei and is now its main domestic rival.

Where it sits in the chain

It gives Chinese buyers a second home-grown supplier at the design stage, which matters to large internet firms that do not want to depend on a competitor.

In the contest

It has been on the American entity list since 2022 and has its chips made in China. Demand rose sharply once Beijing discouraged purchases of foreign accelerators: quarterly revenue rose fourteen-fold in a year and the company returned to profit. Its 2026 target is constrained by the same two things as Huawei’s, SMIC’s yields and the supply of stacked memory. [82]

Technical capabilities

Siyuan accelerators for data centres, made in China
Its own software for running models on its chips

Financial reports

	2025

Revenue	CN¥6.5 billion
Net income	CN¥2.1 billion

net margin 32%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

Recent record

2022Placed on the American entity list.
2026Reported target of about 500,000 accelerators. [82]

What to watch

How much SMIC capacity it is given against Huawei.
Whether its software keeps customers once Nvidia’s chips are available again.

← All companies

United States / GermanyDesign software and licensed designs · Design software, especially for checking layouts

Siemens EDA

What it does

The former Mentor Graphics, bought by Siemens of Germany in 2017 and still run from Oregon. Its Calibre software is the standard tool for checking that a finished chip layout can actually be manufactured.

Where it sits in the chain

One of the three suppliers of advanced design software, with Synopsys and Cadence. Almost every advanced chip passes through its checking tools before it is sent to a fab.

In the contest

It received the same American licence letter as its two rivals in May 2025 and the same reprieve that July. Being German-owned did not exempt it: what counted was that the technology is American.

Technical capabilities

Calibre: the industry standard for final layout checks before manufacture
Tools for testing chips and for designing circuit boards
Software for the optical corrections that lithography needs

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Any return of licence requirements on design software.

← All companies

United KingdomDesign software and licensed designs · Licenses the processor design in nearly every phone

Arm

What it does

A British company, majority-owned by SoftBank of Japan, that designs processor cores and licenses them. It makes no chips. Its customers pay a fee and a royalty on every chip sold.

Where it sits in the chain

It holds the licensed-design stage. Its designs are in nearly every phone and, through Apple, Amazon, Google and Nvidia, in a growing share of computers and servers.

In the contest

Its most powerful designs fall under American and British export rules and are not licensed to Chinese buyers. Its Chinese arm is a joint venture it does not control. China’s move to the open RISC-V standard is largely an attempt to escape this dependence.

Technical capabilities

Processor designs from tiny microcontrollers to server cores
Graphics and SI-processing core designs
Complete pre-assembled subsystems that customers can adopt whole

Financial reports

	Year to Mar 2023	Year to Mar 2024	Year to Mar 2025	Year to Mar 2026

Revenue	$2.7 billion	$3.2 billion	$4.0 billion	$4.9 billion
Net income	$524 million	$306 million	$792 million	$904 million
Research and development	$1.1 billion	$2.0 billion	$2.1 billion	$2.8 billion

Revenue up 23% on the year before; net margin 18%; research and development 56% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

How fast Chinese designers move to RISC-V; Arm’s plans to sell chips of its own.

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United StatesDesign software and licensed designs · Processor designs on the open RISC-V standard

SiFive

What it does

An American firm founded by the inventors of RISC-V, an open standard for processor designs that anyone may use without paying a licence.

Where it sits in the chain

It sells ready-made RISC-V processor designs, competing with Arm at the licensed-design stage.

In the contest

Because the standard is open, no government can withhold it. That is why Chinese firms have adopted it, and why some American lawmakers have asked whether American participation in it should be restricted.

Technical capabilities

RISC-V processor core designs, from embedded to high-performance
Customisable cores that customers can alter, which Arm does not allow

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Any American rule on contributing to open chip standards.

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ChinaDesign software and licensed designs · China’s largest design-software firm

Empyrean

What it does

China’s largest maker of chip design software, strongest in tools for analog chips and displays.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the home-grown alternative at the design-software stage, but it does not yet cover the full sequence of steps needed for the most advanced digital chips.

In the contest

Washington placed it on the entity list in December 2024. The brief American cut-off of design software in 2025 was the strongest argument yet for Chinese chip designers to try its tools.

Technical capabilities

Complete tool flow for analog chips and display panels
Partial tools for digital chips; not a full flow at the leading edge

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Whether leading Chinese designers complete a whole advanced chip on domestic software.

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United KingdomDesign software and licensed designs · High-speed connection designs

Alphawave

What it does

A British designer of the high-speed connections that move data between chips and across data centres.

Where it sits in the chain

It licenses designs for a part of the chip that has become a bottleneck as accelerators are linked in ever larger clusters.

In the contest

Qualcomm agreed to buy it in 2025, part of a wider scramble for connection technology. Its earlier dealings with a Chinese affiliate drew scrutiny from investors.

Technical capabilities

Designs for very fast data links between chips
Optical and electrical connection designs for SI data centres

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Who ends up owning the key connection designs.

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United StatesDesign software and licensed designs · Memory interface designs

Rambus

What it does

An American firm that designs the interface between processors and memory, and sells the small chips that manage memory modules in servers.

Where it sits in the chain

A specialist supplier at the design stage; its technology is licensed by every large memory maker.

In the contest

It is little touched by the controls, but its interface chips ride on the same boom in server memory that the contest is being fought over.

Technical capabilities

Interface chips that sit on server memory modules
Designs for memory interfaces and for hardware security

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$455 million	$461 million	$557 million	$708 million
Net income	−$14 million	$334 million	$180 million	$230 million
Research and development	$159 million	$157 million	$163 million	$188 million

Revenue up 27% on the year before; net margin 33%; research and development 27% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Adoption of each new memory standard.

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United StatesChip designers without fabs · Networking chips; custom accelerators for large buyers

Broadcom

What it does

An American designer of networking chips and of made-to-order accelerators for the largest technology companies, including the chips Google designs for itself.

Where it sits in the chain

It is the second-largest designer of chips for SI data centres after Nvidia, and the leader in the switches that connect them. TSMC makes its chips.

In the contest

Custom accelerators are the main way large buyers reduce dependence on Nvidia. Its 2018 bid for Qualcomm was blocked by the American government on national-security grounds, an early sign that chips had become a security matter.

Technical capabilities

Network switch chips that connect accelerators in the largest clusters
Custom accelerator design for cloud firms, on 3- and 2-nanometre processes
Optical connection components

Financial reports

	Year to Oct 2022	Year to Oct 2023	Year to Nov 2024	Year to Nov 2025

Revenue	$33.2 billion	$35.8 billion	$51.6 billion	$63.9 billion
Net income	$11.5 billion	$14.1 billion	$5.9 billion	—
Research and development	$4.9 billion	$5.3 billion	$9.3 billion	$11.0 billion

Revenue up 24% on the year before; research and development 17% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

How much of the largest buyers’ spending moves from Nvidia to custom chips.

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United StatesChip designers without fabs · Phone processors and modems

Qualcomm

What it does

An American designer of the processors and modems in most Android phones, and the holder of key patents on mobile communication.

Where it sits in the chain

A leading chip designer without fabs, relying on TSMC and Samsung. Chinese phone makers are among its biggest customers.

In the contest

Few American firms are as exposed to China. Its licence to sell older chips to Huawei was revoked in 2024, Chinese regulators opened an inquiry into one of its acquisitions in 2025, and its 2018 purchase of NXP failed when Beijing withheld approval.

Technical capabilities

Phone processors with built-in modems on leading processes
Radio-frequency components and 5G modems
Processors for laptops and cars

Financial reports

	Year to Sep 2023	Year to Sep 2024	Year to Sep 2025	Year to Sep 2026

Revenue	$35.8 billion	$39.0 billion	$44.3 billion	$43.1 billion
Net income	$7.2 billion	$10.1 billion	$5.5 billion	$13.6 billion
Research and development	$8.8 billion	$8.9 billion	$9.0 billion	$10.2 billion

Revenue down 3% on the year before; net margin 32%; research and development 24% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Chinese phone makers designing their own processors.

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United StatesChip designers without fabs · Designs the chips in its own devices; TSMC’s largest customer

Apple

What it does

Designs the processors in its phones, tablets and computers, which are among the most advanced chips made anywhere.

Where it sits in the chain

It is TSMC’s largest customer and usually the first to use each new manufacturing process, which gives it early access and helps pay for TSMC’s next fab.

In the contest

It has promised to buy chips made in Arizona and is moving some assembly out of China. In 2022 it dropped a plan to buy memory from China’s YMTC after pressure in Washington.

Technical capabilities

Phone and computer processors, the first products on each new TSMC process
Its own modem and wireless chips, replacing bought ones
Design of whole systems around its own silicon

Financial reports

	Year to Sep 2023	Year to Sep 2024	Year to Sep 2025	Year to Sep 2026

Revenue	$383.3 billion	$391.0 billion	$416.2 billion	$478.8 billion
Net income	$97.0 billion	$93.7 billion	$112.0 billion	$132.2 billion
Research and development	$29.9 billion	$31.4 billion	$34.5 billion	$45.8 billion

Revenue up 15% on the year before; net margin 28%; research and development 10% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

How much of its chip supply really comes from American fabs.

← All companies

United StatesChip designers without fabs · Data-centre and custom chips

Marvell

What it does

An American designer of chips for data-centre networking and storage, and of custom chips built to order for cloud companies.

Where it sits in the chain

A supplier of the connecting tissue of data centres, and a rival to Broadcom in custom accelerators.

In the contest

A significant part of its sales has gone to China, which exposes it to both American licences and Chinese retaliation.

Technical capabilities

Custom chips for cloud firms on leading processes
Optical and electrical chips for data-centre links
Storage and networking controllers

Financial reports

	Year to Jan 2023	Year to Feb 2024	Year to Feb 2025	Year to Jan 2026

Revenue	$5.9 billion	$5.5 billion	$5.8 billion	$8.2 billion
Net income	−$164 million	−$933 million	−$885 million	$2.7 billion
Research and development	$1.8 billion	$1.9 billion	$2.0 billion	$2.1 billion

Revenue up 42% on the year before; net margin 33%; research and development 25% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Orders for custom accelerators from the largest cloud firms.

← All companies

United StatesChip designers without fabs · Designs its own accelerators for its data centres

Google

What it does

Designs its own accelerators, called TPUs, for its data centres, with Broadcom’s help, and has them made by TSMC.

Where it sits in the chain

It is both one of Nvidia’s largest customers and, through its own chips, one of its few real competitors.

In the contest

Its chips are not sold, only rented through its cloud. Rules on who may use American computing power remotely, now being drafted, bear directly on that business.

Technical capabilities

TPU accelerators, now in their seventh or later generation
Its own server processor based on Arm designs
Designs tuned to its own software and data centres

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$282.8 billion	$307.4 billion	$350.0 billion	$402.8 billion
Net income	$60.0 billion	$73.8 billion	$100.1 billion	$132.2 billion
Research and development	$39.5 billion	$45.4 billion	$49.3 billion	$61.1 billion

Revenue up 15% on the year before; net margin 33%; research and development 15% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Whether it offers its accelerators to other companies’ data centres.

← All companies

United StatesChip designers without fabs · Designs its own server processors and accelerators

Amazon

What it does

Designs server processors and accelerators for its own cloud through Annapurna Labs, an Israeli firm it bought in 2015.

Where it sits in the chain

A very large buyer of chips that increasingly makes its own, with TSMC as manufacturer.

In the contest

As the largest cloud provider, it is the firm most affected by any rule on Chinese customers renting computing power abroad.

Technical capabilities

Graviton server processors based on Arm designs
Trainium accelerators for training and running models
Its own networking and storage chips

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$514.0 billion	$574.8 billion	$638.0 billion	$716.9 billion
Net income	−$2.7 billion	$30.4 billion	$59.2 billion	$77.7 billion

Revenue up 12% on the year before; net margin 11%. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

The share of its computing that runs on its own chips.

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United StatesChip designers without fabs · Designs its own data-centre chips

Microsoft

What it does

Designs an accelerator and a server processor for its own data centres, first announced in 2023.

Where it sits in the chain

A top buyer of Nvidia’s chips that is trying to supply part of its own needs.

In the contest

Its data centres abroad, including in the Gulf and Southeast Asia, depend on export licences for the accelerators inside them.

Technical capabilities

Maia accelerator and Cobalt server processor
Systems designed around liquid cooling for its data centres

Financial reports

	Year to Jun 2023	Year to Jun 2024	Year to Jun 2025	Year to Jun 2026

Revenue	$211.9 billion	$245.1 billion	$281.7 billion	$331.8 billion
Net income	$72.4 billion	$88.1 billion	$101.8 billion	$133.7 billion
Research and development	$27.2 billion	$29.5 billion	$32.5 billion	$35.6 billion

Revenue up 18% on the year before; net margin 40%; research and development 11% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Licence conditions for data centres outside the United States.

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United StatesChip designers without fabs · Designs its own accelerators

MediaTek

What it does

A Taiwanese designer whose processors are in more phones than any other firm’s, mostly mid-priced Android models, and in televisions and routers.

Where it sits in the chain

A large chip designer without fabs and one of TSMC’s biggest customers.

In the contest

Its main customers are Chinese phone makers, and its main supplier is under American rules, so it has to satisfy both. It has also begun designing custom chips for American cloud firms.

Technical capabilities

Phone processors on TSMC’s leading processes
Chips for televisions, routers and connected devices
Custom chip design for cloud customers

Financial reports

	2025

Revenue	NT$596.0 billion
Net income	NT$106.1 billion

net margin 18%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Whether American rules on advanced chips reach phone processors sold to China.

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TaiwanChip designers without fabs · Networking and audio chips

Realtek

What it does

A Taiwanese designer of the networking, audio and connection chips found in most personal computers.

Where it sits in the chain

A supplier of inexpensive, essential chips made on mature processes.

In the contest

It competes directly with Chinese designers of mature chips, the area where China is expanding fastest.

Technical capabilities

Ethernet, Wi-Fi and audio chips on mature processes
Controllers for displays and storage

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Price pressure from Chinese rivals.

← All companies

TaiwanChip designers without fabs · Display driver chips

Novatek

What it does

A Taiwanese designer of the driver chips that control display panels.

Where it sits in the chain

A leading supplier to panel makers, most of which are now Chinese.

In the contest

Chinese panel makers are steadily moving to Chinese driver chips, which is a preview of what may happen in other mature chips.

Technical capabilities

Driver chips for LCD and OLED panels
Controller chips for televisions and monitors

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its share at Chinese panel makers.

← All companies

ChinaChip designers without fabs · Server processors and accelerators

Hygon

What it does

A Chinese designer of server processors, based on designs licensed from AMD in 2016, and of accelerators.

Where it sits in the chain

It supplies the processors in many Chinese government and state-company servers.

In the contest

It has been on the American entity list since 2019, which ended further technology transfer from AMD. It has since developed the designs itself and is merging with the server maker Sugon.

Technical capabilities

x86-compatible server processors derived from AMD designs
Accelerators for SI workloads

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

How far its processors have moved beyond the original AMD designs.

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ChinaChip designers without fabs · Home-designed processors

Loongson

What it does

A Chinese designer of processors built on its own instruction set, originally developed at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Where it sits in the chain

It supplies processors for government computers where independence from foreign designs matters more than speed.

In the contest

On the American entity list since 2023. Its chips are slower than foreign ones but owe nothing to Arm or to American licences.

Technical capabilities

Processors on its own LoongArch instruction set, made on mature Chinese processes
Complete domestic design, without Arm or x86 licences

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Adoption outside government purchasing.

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ChinaChip designers without fabs · Graphics processors

Moore Threads

What it does

A Chinese designer of graphics processors, founded in 2020 by a former Nvidia executive.

Where it sits in the chain

One of several young Chinese firms trying to supply graphics and SI chips in place of Nvidia.

In the contest

Placed on the American entity list in October 2023, which cut it off from TSMC. It listed its shares in Shanghai in late 2025 to fund the effort.

Technical capabilities

Graphics processors for PCs and data centres, made in China
Its own software stack for graphics and SI

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Whether its software attracts developers.

← All companies

ChinaChip designers without fabs · SI accelerators

Biren

What it does

A Chinese designer of SI accelerators, founded in 2019.

Where it sits in the chain

A would-be domestic alternative to Nvidia for data centres.

In the contest

Its first chip was made by TSMC until the 2022 controls; it was added to the entity list in 2023 and now depends on Chinese manufacturing.

Technical capabilities

General-purpose accelerators for data centres

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Access to enough manufacturing capacity in China.

← All companies

ChinaChip designers without fabs · Phone processors

Unisoc

What it does

A state-backed Chinese designer of processors for low-cost phones and connected devices.

Where it sits in the chain

It supplies the bottom of the phone market, in China and in developing countries.

In the contest

It still has its chips made by TSMC on processes that are not restricted, which shows how much of China’s industry remains inside the global chain.

Technical capabilities

4G and 5G processors for low-cost phones, made by TSMC on unrestricted processes

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Any widening of controls to mid-range phone chips.

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United StatesMakers that both design and manufacture · Analog and power chips, made in its own fabs

Texas Instruments

What it does

The largest maker of analog chips, the simple components that manage power and signals in every electronic device. It makes most of them in its own fabs in Texas and Utah.

Where it sits in the chain

A maker that both designs and manufactures, on mature processes, with tens of thousands of products.

In the contest

It is building new American fabs with public support and competes head-on with China’s expansion in mature chips. In 2025 China opened an anti-dumping inquiry into American analog chips.

Technical capabilities

About 80,000 analog and embedded products
Own 300-millimetre fabs for mature processes, which lowers cost per chip
Fabs in Texas and Utah

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$20.0 billion	$17.5 billion	$15.6 billion	$17.7 billion
Net income	$8.7 billion	$6.5 billion	$4.8 billion	$5.0 billion
Research and development	$1.7 billion	$1.9 billion	$2.0 billion	$2.1 billion

Revenue up 13% on the year before; net margin 28%; research and development 12% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

The outcome of China’s inquiry; prices of mature chips.

← All companies

United StatesMakers that both design and manufacture · Analog chips

Analog Devices

What it does

An American maker of high-performance analog chips used in industry, cars, communications and defence.

Where it sits in the chain

It designs its own chips and makes some of them itself.

In the contest

Its products are in many military systems, and analog chips of this kind are regularly found in weapons recovered in Ukraine, which shows how hard they are to control.

Technical capabilities

High-precision converters, amplifiers and radio chips
Mix of own fabs and outside foundries

Financial reports

	Year to Oct 2022	Year to Oct 2023	Year to Nov 2024	Year to Nov 2025

Revenue	$12.0 billion	$12.3 billion	$9.4 billion	$11.0 billion
Net income	$2.7 billion	$3.3 billion	$1.6 billion	$2.3 billion
Research and development	$1.7 billion	$1.7 billion	$1.5 billion	$1.8 billion

Revenue up 17% on the year before; net margin 21%; research and development 16% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Enforcement against re-export of ordinary components.

← All companies

United StatesMakers that both design and manufacture · Power chips, including silicon carbide

onsemi

What it does

An American maker of power chips and image sensors for cars and industry.

Where it sits in the chain

A leading supplier of the silicon-carbide power chips used in electric vehicles.

In the contest

Chinese makers of silicon-carbide chips have cut prices sharply, making this one of the first advanced-material markets where China sets the price.

Technical capabilities

Silicon-carbide power chips, from raw crystal to finished module
Image sensors for cars

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$8.3 billion	$8.3 billion	$7.1 billion	$6.0 billion
Net income	$1.9 billion	$2.2 billion	$1.6 billion	$121 million
Research and development	$600 million	$577 million	$613 million	$584 million

Revenue down 15% on the year before; net margin 2%; research and development 10% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Chinese share in power chips for electric vehicles.

← All companies

United StatesMakers that both design and manufacture · Microcontrollers

Microchip

What it does

An American maker of microcontrollers, the small computers inside appliances, cars and weapons.

Where it sits in the chain

A maker that designs and manufactures its own mature chips.

In the contest

A long-standing supplier to the American military and a recipient of public money to expand domestic fabs.

Technical capabilities

Microcontrollers, programmable chips and timing devices
Radiation-tolerant chips for space and defence

Financial reports

	Year to Mar 2023	Year to Mar 2024	Year to Mar 2025	Year to Mar 2026

Revenue	$8.4 billion	$7.6 billion	$4.4 billion	$4.7 billion
Net income	$2.2 billion	$1.9 billion	−$0 million	$230 million
Research and development	$1.1 billion	$1.1 billion	$984 million	$1.1 billion

Revenue up 7% on the year before; net margin 5%; research and development 23% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Demand from defence customers.

← All companies

United StatesMakers that both design and manufacture · Silicon carbide materials and chips

Wolfspeed

What it does

An American maker of silicon-carbide wafers and chips, the material used in efficient power electronics.

Where it sits in the chain

Long the leader in silicon-carbide wafers, a material stage with few suppliers.

In the contest

It went through bankruptcy protection in 2025 as Chinese wafer makers undercut it, despite public support for its new factories.

Technical capabilities

Silicon-carbide crystals and 200-millimetre wafers
Power devices made from them

Financial reports

	Year to Jun 2022	Year to Jun 2023	Year to Jun 2024	Year to Jun 2025

Revenue	$572 million	$758 million	$807 million	$758 million
Net income	−$201 million	−$330 million	−$864 million	−$1.6 billion
Research and development	$143 million	$166 million	$202 million	$175 million

Revenue down 6% on the year before; net margin -212%; research and development 23% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Whether a non-Chinese source of silicon carbide survives.

← All companies

GermanyMakers that both design and manufacture · Power and automotive chips

Infineon

What it does

Germany’s largest chipmaker and the world’s largest maker of power chips, with a strong position in cars.

Where it sits in the chain

It designs and makes its own chips in Germany, Austria and Malaysia.

In the contest

Its new fab in Dresden is supported under the European Chips Act. China is one of its largest markets, so it has much to lose from a trade break in either direction.

Technical capabilities

Power chips in silicon, silicon carbide and gallium nitride
Microcontrollers and sensors for cars
300-millimetre fabs for power chips in Dresden and Villach

Financial reports

	Year to Sep 2024	Year to Sep 2025

Revenue	€15.0 billion	€14.7 billion
Net income	€1.3 billion	€1.0 billion

Revenue down 2% on the year before; net margin 7%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

European policy on imports of Chinese mature chips.

← All companies

GermanyMakers that both design and manufacture · Automotive chips and sensors

Bosch

What it does

The world’s largest car-parts supplier, which makes its own chips and sensors in Germany.

Where it sits in the chain

A user that became a maker; it is also a partner in TSMC’s joint fab in Dresden.

In the contest

The 2021 chip shortage and the Nexperia affair of 2025 showed how quickly its industry stops without basic chips.

Technical capabilities

Sensors and power chips for cars
Own fabs in Dresden and Reutlingen, including silicon carbide

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Progress of the Dresden joint fab.

← All companies

France / ItalyMakers that both design and manufacture · Automotive, power and sensor chips

STMicroelectronics

What it does

A Franco-Italian chipmaker, part-owned by both governments, strong in automotive and power chips and sensors.

Where it sits in the chain

It designs and makes its own chips in France, Italy and Singapore.

In the contest

It has a joint venture in Chongqing to make silicon-carbide chips for the Chinese market, a way of staying in China by producing there.

Technical capabilities

Silicon-carbide power devices, with its own wafer supply
Microcontrollers, sensors and chips for cars
Fabs in France, Italy and Singapore

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$16.1 billion	$17.3 billion	$13.3 billion	$11.8 billion
Net income	$4.0 billion	$4.2 billion	$1.6 billion	$166 million
Research and development	$1.9 billion	$2.1 billion	$2.1 billion	$2.0 billion

Revenue down 11% on the year before; net margin 1%; research and development 17% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

How European rules treat production inside China.

← All companies

NetherlandsMakers that both design and manufacture · Automotive and secure chips

NXP

What it does

A Dutch maker of chips for cars and of the secure chips in payment cards and passports.

Where it sits in the chain

A leading automotive supplier and a partner in TSMC’s joint fab in Dresden.

In the contest

Qualcomm’s agreed purchase of it collapsed in 2018 when China withheld approval during a trade dispute, an early use of merger review as a weapon.

Technical capabilities

Processors and radar chips for cars
Secure chips for payment and identity
Mature processes in its own fabs; advanced chips from TSMC

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$13.2 billion	$13.3 billion	$12.6 billion	$12.3 billion
Net income	$2.8 billion	$2.8 billion	$2.5 billion	$2.0 billion
Research and development	$2.1 billion	$2.4 billion	$2.3 billion	$2.4 billion

Revenue down 3% on the year before; net margin 16%; research and development 19% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Its China sales as carmakers there turn to local suppliers.

← All companies

Netherlands (Chinese-owned)Makers that both design and manufacture · Basic chips for cars; taken under Dutch control in 2025

Nexperia

What it does

A Dutch maker of the simplest chips, diodes and transistors, sold by the billion to carmakers. A Chinese company has owned it since 2019.

Where it sits in the chain

A supplier of basic parts that no car can be built without, with much of its packaging in China.

In the contest

In 2025 the Dutch government took control of it under an emergency law. China answered by blocking exports from its Chinese plants, and European carmakers warned of stoppages within weeks.

Technical capabilities

Diodes, transistors and logic chips made in very high volume
Fabs in Hamburg and Manchester; assembly mainly in China

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Who ends up controlling it, and whether its Chinese and European halves separate.

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JapanMakers that both design and manufacture · Automotive microcontrollers

Renesas

What it does

Japan’s main maker of microcontrollers for cars, formed from the chip divisions of NEC, Hitachi and Mitsubishi.

Where it sits in the chain

One of the largest suppliers of the chips that run engines, brakes and dashboards.

In the contest

The 2011 earthquake, which stopped its main fab and car production worldwide, was the first lesson in how concentrated this supply is.

Technical capabilities

Microcontrollers and system chips for cars
Power and analog chips
Mix of own fabs and TSMC

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its use of TSMC’s Kumamoto fab.

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JapanMakers that both design and manufacture · Image sensors

Sony

What it does

The largest maker of image sensors, the chips behind phone and car cameras.

Where it sits in the chain

It holds about half of the image-sensor market and is both a customer of and an investor in TSMC’s Kumamoto fab.

In the contest

Its sensors are among the Japanese components most often named in discussions of military use, since cameras guide drones and missiles.

Technical capabilities

Stacked image sensors for phones and cars
Sensors for industrial and scientific cameras

Financial reports

	Year to Mar 2022	Year to Mar 2023	Year to Mar 2024	Year to Mar 2025

Revenue	¥9.92 trillion	¥10.97 trillion	¥13.02 trillion	¥12.96 trillion

Revenue down 0% on the year before. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Controls on advanced sensors.

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JapanMakers that both design and manufacture · Power chips

Rohm

What it does

A Japanese maker of power chips, including silicon carbide, for cars and industry.

Where it sits in the chain

A second Japanese source of power semiconductors after Mitsubishi and alongside Renesas.

In the contest

It faces the same Chinese price pressure in silicon carbide as its American and European rivals.

Technical capabilities

Silicon-carbide power devices and modules
Analog and power-management chips

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Consolidation among Japanese power-chip makers.

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JapanMakers that both design and manufacture · Power modules

Mitsubishi Electric

What it does

A Japanese industrial group that makes power modules for trains, factories and the grid.

Where it sits in the chain

A leader in the heavy end of power electronics.

In the contest

Its products depend on gallium and other metals now caught in China’s export controls on Japan.

Technical capabilities

High-power modules for trains, factories and grids
Radio-frequency devices using gallium compounds

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Supply of metals from China.

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TaiwanContract chipmakers · Mature chips

UMC

What it does

Taiwan’s second contract chipmaker, which gave up the race to the leading edge in 2018 to concentrate on mature chips.

Where it sits in the chain

It has fabs in Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and China, and is working with Intel on a process to be made in Arizona.

In the contest

It pleaded guilty in 2020 in an American case over memory trade secrets passed to a Chinese partner. It now competes mainly with Chinese fabs on price.

Technical capabilities

Mature processes from 14 to 90 nanometres and above
Specialised processes for display drivers, power and radio

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2021	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024

Revenue	$7.7 billion	$9.1 billion	$7.3 billion	$7.1 billion
Net income	$1.8 billion	$2.9 billion	$1.9 billion	$1.5 billion
Research and development	$466 million	$422 million	$434 million	$476 million

Revenue down 3% on the year before; net margin 21%; research and development 7% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Its partnership with Intel.

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TaiwanContract chipmakers · Mature chips and memory

PSMC

What it does

A Taiwanese contract maker of mature logic and memory chips.

Where it sits in the chain

A smaller foundry that sells its know-how as well as its chips.

In the contest

It is the technology partner for India’s first chip fab, with Tata, one of several attempts by states to buy a place in the chain.

Technical capabilities

Mature logic and memory processes
Sells process know-how to new entrants

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Progress of the Indian fab.

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TaiwanContract chipmakers · Mature and power chips

Vanguard (VIS)

What it does

A Taiwanese contract maker of mature and power chips, part-owned by TSMC.

Where it sits in the chain

A specialist in the older processes that TSMC no longer expands.

In the contest

It is building a new fab in Singapore with NXP, an example of capacity moving to neutral ground.

Technical capabilities

Mature and power processes on 200-millimetre wafers; 300-millimetre fab being built in Singapore

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

The Singapore fab’s schedule.

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United StatesContract chipmakers · Mature and specialised chips; fabs in the US, Germany and Singapore

GlobalFoundries

What it does

The largest American-based contract chipmaker, created from AMD’s former fabs and majority-owned by Abu Dhabi’s state investor.

Where it sits in the chain

It stopped developing leading-edge processes in 2018 and makes mature and specialised chips in New York, Vermont, Dresden and Singapore.

In the contest

It is the Pentagon’s main trusted supplier of mature chips and a recipient of public support in the United States and Germany.

Technical capabilities

Processes down to 12 nanometres
Specialised radio, silicon-photonics and low-power processes
Fabs certified for American defence work

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$8.1 billion	$7.4 billion	$6.8 billion	$6.8 billion
Net income	$1.4 billion	$1.0 billion	−$265 million	$885 million
Research and development	$482 million	$428 million	$496 million	$518 million

Revenue up 1% on the year before; net margin 13%; research and development 8% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Western demand for mature chips not made in China.

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IsraelContract chipmakers · Analog and specialised chips

Tower Semiconductor

What it does

An Israeli contract maker of analog and specialised chips, with fabs in Israel, the United States and Japan.

Where it sits in the chain

A specialist foundry for radio, sensor and power chips.

In the contest

Intel’s agreed purchase of it lapsed in 2023 when Chinese regulators did not approve it in time, another case of merger review used as leverage.

Technical capabilities

Analog, radio, sensor and power processes
Silicon photonics for data-centre links

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$1.7 billion	$1.4 billion	$1.4 billion	$1.6 billion
Net income	$265 million	$518 million	$208 million	$220 million
Research and development	$84 million	$80 million	$79 million	$86 million

Revenue up 9% on the year before; net margin 14%; research and development 6% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

New ownership or partnerships.

← All companies

ChinaContract chipmakers · Mature and power chips

Hua Hong

What it does

China’s second-largest contract chipmaker, focused on mature and power chips.

Where it sits in the chain

A large part of China’s expansion in mature capacity, with fabs in Shanghai and Wuxi.

In the contest

It is not restricted in the way SMIC is, because its processes are old. Its growth is what Western makers of mature chips fear.

Technical capabilities

Mature and power processes, including for electric vehicles
300-millimetre fabs in Wuxi

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Western trade measures against Chinese mature chips.

← All companies

ChinaContract chipmakers · Display driver and mature chips

Nexchip

What it does

A state-backed Chinese contract chipmaker in Hefei, best known for display driver chips.

Where it sits in the chain

Part of the wave of mature-chip capacity built with provincial money.

In the contest

It shows how Chinese cities, not only the central government, pay for fabs.

Technical capabilities

Display driver and image sensor processes at mature nodes

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its move into more advanced processes.

← All companies

VietnamContract chipmakers · Building Vietnam’s first fab, at 32 nanometres

Viettel

What it does

Vietnam’s largest telecom company, owned by the defence ministry, which also designs chips.

Where it sits in the chain

It has designed a 5G radio chip and a security chip, and in January 2026 began building Vietnam’s first fab, at Hoa Lac, to start trial production at 32 nanometres by the end of 2027.

In the contest

The fab is meant to give Vietnam a domestic source for state and military chips. See the Vietnam page under Countries.

Technical capabilities

Designed a 5G radio chip and a 28-nanometre security chip
Fab under construction for a 32-nanometre process

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Whether the fab meets its 2027 date.

← All companies

JapanMemory · Flash memory

Kioxia

What it does

Japan’s maker of flash memory, the former memory division of Toshiba, which invented the technology.

Where it sits in the chain

One of the five large flash makers, sharing its fabs in Japan with SanDisk.

In the contest

It was sold in 2018 to a group that included SK hynix, after Toshiba’s crisis, and listed in Tokyo in 2024. Japan treats it as a strategic asset.

Technical capabilities

Flash memory with well over 200 layers
Joint fabs with SanDisk at Yokkaichi and Kitakami

Financial reports

	Year to Mar 2025	Year to Mar 2026

Revenue	¥1.71 trillion	¥2.34 trillion
Net income	¥272.3 billion	¥554.5 billion

Revenue up 37% on the year before; net margin 24%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Any merger among flash makers.

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United StatesMemory · Flash memory, made jointly with Kioxia

SanDisk

What it does

An American maker of flash memory, separated from Western Digital in 2025.

Where it sits in the chain

It produces its memory in fabs in Japan shared with Kioxia.

In the contest

Its supply depends on Japan, and its prices on how fast China’s YMTC expands.

Technical capabilities

Flash memory and solid-state drives, made in the joint fabs in Japan

Financial reports

	Year to Jun 2023	Year to Jun 2024	Year to Jun 2025	Year to Jul 2026

Revenue	$6.1 billion	$6.7 billion	$7.4 billion	$20.2 billion
Net income	−$2.1 billion	−$672 million	−$1.6 billion	$11.4 billion
Research and development	$1.2 billion	$1.1 billion	$1.1 billion	$1.3 billion

Revenue up 175% on the year before; net margin 56%; research and development 7% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Chinese flash output.

← All companies

ChinaMemory · China’s main DRAM maker

CXMT

What it does

China’s main maker of DRAM memory, based in Hefei.

Where it sits in the chain

The home-grown supplier for the memory that every computer needs, and a developer of stacked memory for Chinese accelerators.

In the contest

It is not on the American entity list, though it has been considered for it, and is restricted mainly by the controls on machines. Analysts expect its output to weigh on world memory prices.

Technical capabilities

DRAM a generation or two behind the leaders
Early production of stacked memory

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its stacked memory; any entity listing.

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ChinaMemory · China’s main flash maker; on the American entity list

YMTC

What it does

China’s main maker of flash memory, based in Wuhan.

Where it sits in the chain

A supplier of storage chips for Chinese phones and computers.

In the contest

It was placed on the American entity list in December 2022 and lost access to American machines and engineers. It has rebuilt much of its production with Chinese equipment, which makes it a test of how far that equipment has come.

Technical capabilities

Flash memory using its own method of bonding two wafers
Lines increasingly equipped with Chinese machines

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

The share of Chinese machines in its lines.

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TaiwanMemory · DRAM

Nanya

What it does

A Taiwanese maker of DRAM memory, part of the Formosa Plastics group.

Where it sits in the chain

A smaller producer a generation or two behind the three leaders.

In the contest

It is the kind of producer most exposed if Chinese memory arrives in volume.

Technical capabilities

DRAM on its own processes, behind the leaders

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Memory prices.

← All companies

TaiwanMemory · Specialised memory

Winbond

What it does

A Taiwanese maker of specialised memory used in cars, industry and networking.

Where it sits in the chain

A leading supplier of a type of flash memory that stores start-up code in almost every device.

In the contest

Its products are simple and widely available, the kind that pass easily through distributors.

Technical capabilities

Specialised flash and DRAM for cars and industry

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Demand from carmakers.

← All companies

JapanChipmaking machines · Wafer cleaning

Screen

What it does

A Japanese maker of wafer-cleaning machines, used many times in the making of every chip.

Where it sits in the chain

The leader in cleaning equipment, with a large share of the market.

In the contest

Like other Japanese toolmakers it has lost Chinese sales to the controls and to Chinese rivals.

Technical capabilities

Wafer cleaning machines, single-wafer and batch

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Chinese cleaning-equipment makers.

← All companies

JapanChipmaking machines · Deposition furnaces

Kokusai Electric

What it does

A Japanese maker of the furnaces that deposit thin films on many wafers at once.

Where it sits in the chain

A specialist toolmaker important for memory.

In the contest

Applied Materials’ agreed purchase of it lapsed in 2021 without approval from Chinese regulators.

Technical capabilities

Furnaces that deposit films on many wafers at once

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Demand from memory makers.

← All companies

JapanChipmaking machines · Older lithography machines

Nikon

What it does

Once the leading maker of lithography machines, now a distant rival to ASML that still sells older types.

Where it sits in the chain

A supplier of the previous generations of lithography.

In the contest

Its older machines are among the Japanese equipment covered by the 2023 controls, and are what Chinese fabs buy when they cannot get ASML’s.

Technical capabilities

Older deep-ultraviolet lithography machines; no EUV

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Sales of older lithography machines to China.

← All companies

JapanChipmaking machines · Older lithography; nano-imprint machines

Canon

What it does

A Japanese maker of older lithography machines and of a newer technique that stamps patterns onto wafers.

Where it sits in the chain

A supplier of mature lithography, and the developer of a possible cheaper route to fine patterns.

In the contest

Its stamping machines were added to Japan’s control list before they were sold widely, a sign of how carefully alternatives to EUV are watched.

Technical capabilities

Older lithography machines
Nano-imprint machines that stamp patterns, still unproven for advanced logic

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Whether stamping lithography proves usable for advanced chips.

← All companies

JapanChipmaking machines · Inspection of EUV masks

Lasertec

What it does

A Japanese company that is the only maker of machines for inspecting EUV masks with EUV light.

Where it sits in the chain

A small firm holding a monopoly inside the EUV process.

In the contest

It is one of several hidden single suppliers on the allied side, like Zeiss and Trumpf.

Technical capabilities

Inspection of EUV masks and mask blanks using EUV light

Financial reports

	Year to Jun 2025	Year to Jun 2026

Revenue	¥242.1 billion	¥202.9 billion
Net income	¥83.7 billion	¥67.9 billion

Revenue down 16% on the year before; net margin 33%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Demand as more fabs adopt EUV.

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JapanChipmaking machines · Wafer cutting and grinding

Disco

What it does

A Japanese maker of the machines that grind wafers thin and cut them into chips.

Where it sits in the chain

It holds most of the market for both, and its grinders are essential for stacked memory.

In the contest

The memory boom has made it one of the quieter winners of the contest.

Technical capabilities

Precision saws, grinders and polishers for wafers

Financial reports

	Year to Mar 2026

Revenue	¥436.8 billion
Net income	¥135.5 billion

net margin 31%. Source: press reports of the company’s annual results, not checked against its filing; the link goes to its investor pages, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Orders from memory makers.

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JapanChipmaking machines · Chip testers

Advantest

What it does

A Japanese maker of the machines that test finished chips.

Where it sits in the chain

The leader in testers for accelerators and other complex chips.

In the contest

Every accelerator shipped has passed through such a tester, so its sales track the boom closely.

Technical capabilities

Testers for accelerators, processors and memory

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Tester demand for accelerators.

← All companies

NetherlandsChipmaking machines · Atomic-layer deposition

ASM International

What it does

A Dutch maker of deposition machines that lay down films one layer of atoms at a time.

Where it sits in the chain

The leader in a technique that the newest transistor designs need more of.

In the contest

It is the second Dutch company whose machines matter to export policy, after ASML.

Technical capabilities

Atomic-layer deposition and epitaxy

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Dutch licence rules for advanced deposition.

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NetherlandsChipmaking machines · Advanced packaging machines

BESI

What it does

A Dutch maker of machines for assembling chips, including a new method that joins chips directly, copper to copper.

Where it sits in the chain

A leader in the most advanced packaging equipment.

In the contest

Advanced packaging has become a route to performance that does not need the finest lithography, which is why it interests China and its regulators.

Technical capabilities

Die-attach and hybrid bonding machines

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Whether advanced packaging machines are added to controls.

← All companies

GermanyChipmaking machines · The mirrors inside every EUV machine

Zeiss

What it does

A German optics company, owned by a foundation, that makes the mirrors and lenses for ASML’s machines.

Where it sits in the chain

The only supplier of EUV optics. ASML owns a minority of the division that makes them.

In the contest

Without it there is no EUV machine, which makes it a chokepoint inside the chokepoint.

Technical capabilities

Mirrors for EUV machines, polished to within atoms
Lenses for older lithography

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its capacity for the next generation of EUV optics.

← All companies

GermanyChipmaking machines · The laser inside every EUV machine

Trumpf

What it does

A German family-owned maker of industrial lasers.

Where it sits in the chain

It supplies the high-power laser that creates the light in every EUV machine.

In the contest

Another sole supplier on which ASML, and so the whole leading edge, depends.

Technical capabilities

The pulsed laser that turns tin droplets into EUV light

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Any disruption to its laser production.

← All companies

United StatesChipmaking machines · Chip testers

Teradyne

What it does

An American maker of chip-testing machines and industrial robots.

Where it sits in the chain

One of the two leading tester makers, with Advantest.

In the contest

It moved much of its manufacturing out of China in 2023 as controls tightened.

Technical capabilities

Testers for system chips and memory

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$3.2 billion	$2.7 billion	$2.8 billion	$3.2 billion
Net income	$716 million	$449 million	$542 million	$554 million
Research and development	$441 million	$418 million	$461 million	$505 million

Revenue up 13% on the year before; net margin 17%; research and development 16% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Its remaining China exposure.

← All companies

South KoreaChipmaking machines · Bonding machines for stacked memory

Hanmi Semiconductor

What it does

A Korean maker of the machines that bond layers of memory together.

Where it sits in the chain

The main supplier of bonding machines for stacked memory, to SK hynix and Micron.

In the contest

A small firm on which the supply of accelerator memory partly depends.

Technical capabilities

Thermal-compression bonders for stacking memory

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Competition from other bonding methods.

← All companies

ChinaChipmaking machines · State-owned Shenzhen toolmaker linked to Huawei’s supply chain

SiCarrier

What it does

A chipmaking-equipment company founded in Shenzhen in 2021 and wholly owned by the city government’s investment arm. Chinese press describe it as close to Huawei.

Where it sits in the chain

It is building a broad range of machines at once, with sister companies for instruments, design software, optical parts and materials, so that a fab could be equipped from one domestic group.

In the contest

It is the clearest example of how China’s effort is organised: public ownership, private-sector urgency, and Huawei as the customer that sets the specifications. It showed deposition, etching and epitaxy machines in 2025. Reports that it has a lithography machine have never been confirmed by the company.

Technical capabilities

Epitaxy, atomic-layer deposition, physical and chemical vapour deposition, and etching machines, first shown in 2025
Sister firms for measuring instruments, design software, optics and photoresist
No confirmed lithography product

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Whether its machines are adopted by SMIC and the memory makers in volume.

← All companies

ChinaChipmaking machines · Etching and deposition

Naura

What it does

China’s largest maker of chipmaking machines, covering etching, deposition and cleaning.

Where it sits in the chain

The broadest domestic supplier in the stage where China is weakest after lithography.

In the contest

It has grown quickly as Chinese fabs were told to buy at home. Several of its units are on the American entity list.

Technical capabilities

Etching, deposition, cleaning and furnace equipment for mature and some advanced processes

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

The share of Chinese machines in new Chinese fabs.

← All companies

ChinaChipmaking machines · Etching

AMEC

What it does

A Chinese maker of etching machines, founded by an engineer who had worked at American toolmakers.

Where it sits in the chain

Its etchers are used by leading chipmakers, including outside China.

In the contest

The most technically advanced of China’s toolmakers and a sign of what the others might become.

Technical capabilities

Plasma etching machines used on advanced lines
Deposition equipment for LEDs and power chips

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its progress in the most demanding etching steps.

← All companies

ChinaChipmaking machines · China’s lithography maker; far behind ASML

SMEE

What it does

China’s maker of lithography machines, based in Shanghai.

Where it sits in the chain

It sells machines several generations behind ASML’s and has long promised a more advanced one.

In the contest

Lithography is the stage where China is furthest behind. SMEE has been on the American entity list since 2022.

Technical capabilities

Lithography machines for 90-nanometre-class and packaging work
A more advanced immersion machine has been announced but not seen in production

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

A working, widely used advanced lithography machine.

← All companies

ChinaChipmaking machines · Deposition

Piotech

What it does

A Chinese maker of deposition machines.

Where it sits in the chain

A domestic supplier in a field led by Applied Materials and Lam.

In the contest

Added to the American entity list in December 2024 along with other Chinese toolmakers.

Technical capabilities

Plasma deposition equipment

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its use in Chinese memory fabs.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Largest maker of silicon wafers; photoresist

Shin-Etsu Chemical

What it does

A Japanese chemical company and the largest maker of silicon wafers; it also makes photoresist.

Where it sits in the chain

It supplies about a quarter of the world’s wafers.

In the contest

It is the centre of Japan’s materials chokepoint. See the Japan page under Countries.

Technical capabilities

300-millimetre silicon wafers of the highest purity
Photoresist, including for EUV

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Any Japanese restriction on materials exports.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Silicon wafers

Sumco

What it does

A Japanese maker of silicon wafers, second to Shin-Etsu.

Where it sits in the chain

With Shin-Etsu it supplies over two-fifths of the world’s wafers.

In the contest

Its long contracts with chipmakers make wafer supply stable, and hard for newcomers to enter.

Technical capabilities

300-millimetre silicon wafers for leading-edge logic and memory

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Chinese wafer makers moving up in quality.

← All companies

TaiwanMaterials · Silicon wafers

GlobalWafers

What it does

A Taiwanese maker of silicon wafers, third in the world.

Where it sits in the chain

It has plants in Asia, Europe and the United States, including a new one in Texas.

In the contest

Its bid for Germany’s Siltronic failed in 2022 when Berlin did not approve it in time. It then built in America with public support.

Technical capabilities

Silicon wafers of all sizes; silicon carbide

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its American expansion.

← All companies

GermanyMaterials · Silicon wafers

Siltronic

What it does

A German maker of silicon wafers.

Where it sits in the chain

The largest European wafer supplier, with plants in Germany, Singapore and the United States.

In the contest

The blocked sale to GlobalWafers showed that European governments now also treat chip materials as strategic.

Technical capabilities

300-millimetre silicon wafers

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

European support for materials makers.

← All companies

South KoreaMaterials · Silicon wafers

SK Siltron

What it does

The wafer-making arm of Korea’s SK group.

Where it sits in the chain

Korea’s domestic source of silicon wafers, and a maker of silicon-carbide wafers in the United States.

In the contest

Part of Korea’s effort since 2019 to depend less on Japan for materials.

Technical capabilities

Silicon wafers; silicon-carbide wafers

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Ownership changes within the SK group.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Photoresist

JSR

What it does

A Japanese maker of photoresist, the light-sensitive chemical used to print circuit patterns.

Where it sits in the chain

One of the three firms that lead in the resists needed for EUV.

In the contest

A state-backed fund bought it in 2024, so that Japan’s resist makers could be consolidated under national control.

Technical capabilities

Photoresist for EUV and older lithography

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Mergers among Japanese resist makers.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Photoresist, including for stacked memory

Tokyo Ohka Kogyo

What it does

A Japanese maker of photoresist and related chemicals.

Where it sits in the chain

A leader in resists, and the main supplier of the kind used in making stacked memory.

In the contest

Korean memory makers depend on it, which is one of the gaps Korea has not closed since 2019.

Technical capabilities

Photoresist for EUV, and thick resists used in packaging and stacked memory

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Korean efforts to find a second source.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Photoresist and chemicals

Fujifilm

What it does

The Japanese photography company, now a large maker of photoresist and other chip chemicals.

Where it sits in the chain

A leading supplier of the chemicals used around lithography.

In the contest

One of the Japanese materials firms that would matter if Tokyo ever restricted exports again.

Technical capabilities

Photoresist, developers and polishing slurries

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its new plants abroad.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Packaging materials

Resonac

What it does

A Japanese chemical company, formerly Showa Denko, that makes materials for chip packaging.

Where it sits in the chain

A leader in the films and compounds used in advanced packages.

In the contest

It leads a group of Japanese and American firms working on packaging materials, as packaging becomes a bottleneck.

Technical capabilities

Films, underfills and laminates for advanced packaging

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Demand from accelerator packaging.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · The insulating film in nearly every advanced chip package

Ajinomoto

What it does

A Japanese food company that also makes an insulating film used in the base of nearly every advanced chip package.

Where it sits in the chain

The dominant supplier of that film, discovered as a by-product of its seasoning business.

In the contest

A reminder that chokepoints can sit in unexpected firms.

Technical capabilities

Build-up insulating film used in almost all high-end package substrates

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Shortages of the film when accelerator demand jumps.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Mask blanks for EUV

Hoya

What it does

A Japanese glass company that makes the blank plates from which EUV masks are made.

Where it sits in the chain

The leading supplier of EUV mask blanks.

In the contest

Another small, essential Japanese position in the EUV process.

Technical capabilities

Mask blanks for EUV and older lithography

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Capacity for the next generation of EUV.

← All companies

JapanMaterials · Package substrates

Ibiden

What it does

A Japanese maker of the substrates on which processors and accelerators are mounted.

Where it sits in the chain

A main supplier to Intel and Nvidia.

In the contest

Substrates were a bottleneck in the 2021 shortage and are again as accelerators grow larger.

Technical capabilities

High-layer-count package substrates for processors and accelerators

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its new capacity in Japan.

← All companies

TaiwanMaterials · Package substrates

Unimicron

What it does

A Taiwanese maker of package substrates and circuit boards.

Where it sits in the chain

One of the largest substrate suppliers, alongside Ibiden.

In the contest

Part of the Taiwanese supply base that surrounds TSMC’s packaging.

Technical capabilities

Package substrates and high-density circuit boards

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Substrate supply for accelerators.

← All companies

GermanyMaterials · Specialty chemicals and gases

Merck

What it does

The German science company, which sells specialty chemicals and gases for chipmaking.

Where it sits in the chain

A leading supplier of the materials used in deposition and patterning.

In the contest

One of Europe’s contributions to the chain that is seldom noticed.

Technical capabilities

Deposition materials, patterning chemicals and specialty gases

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its plants in Asia and the United States.

← All companies

Germany / United StatesMaterials · Industrial gases

Linde

What it does

The world’s largest industrial-gas company.

Where it sits in the chain

It supplies the ultra-pure gases that fabs use in great quantity, often from a plant built beside the fab.

In the contest

The 2022 fear of a neon shortage after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed that gases too can be a weak point.

Technical capabilities

Ultra-pure nitrogen, oxygen, argon and rare gases, often made on site

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$33.4 billion	$32.9 billion	$33.0 billion	$34.0 billion
Net income	$4.1 billion	$6.2 billion	$6.6 billion	$6.9 billion
Research and development	$143 million	$146 million	$150 million	$147 million

Revenue up 3% on the year before; net margin 20%; research and development 0% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Gas supply for new fabs in America and Asia.

← All companies

FranceMaterials · Industrial gases

Air Liquide

What it does

A French industrial-gas company.

Where it sits in the chain

A major supplier of ultra-pure gases to fabs worldwide.

In the contest

It builds gas plants next to new fabs, so its investments show where capacity is really going.

Technical capabilities

Ultra-pure gases and the chemicals used in deposition

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its contracts at new American and Japanese fabs.

← All companies

United StatesMaterials · Filters and ultra-pure materials

Entegris

What it does

An American maker of filters, containers and ultra-pure chemicals for fabs.

Where it sits in the chain

A supplier of the means of keeping chipmaking clean, on which yield depends.

In the contest

Its products are needed more as processes shrink, and it sells to every leading chipmaker.

Technical capabilities

Filters, wafer carriers and purification systems

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$3.3 billion	$3.5 billion	$3.2 billion	$3.2 billion
Net income	$209 million	$181 million	$293 million	$236 million
Research and development	$229 million	$277 million	$316 million	$329 million

Revenue down 1% on the year before; net margin 7%; research and development 10% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Its exposure to Chinese fabs.

← All companies

Australia / MalaysiaMaterials · Rare-earth processing outside China

Lynas

What it does

An Australian company that mines rare earths in Australia and processes them in Malaysia.

Where it sits in the chain

The largest producer of separated rare earths outside China.

In the contest

It is the main existing alternative to Chinese supply, and has support from the Japanese and American governments.

Technical capabilities

Mining in Western Australia; separation of light and some heavy rare earths in Malaysia

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its output of the heavy rare earths that China restricts.

← All companies

United StatesMaterials · Rare-earth mining and magnets

MP Materials

What it does

The owner of the Mountain Pass rare-earth mine in California, which is building magnet production in Texas.

Where it sits in the chain

The only large American rare-earth producer.

In the contest

In 2025 the Pentagon became its largest shareholder and guaranteed it a minimum price, and Apple agreed to buy its magnets: the clearest case of the state building a supply chain outside China.

Technical capabilities

Mining and separation at Mountain Pass; magnet production in Texas

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$528 million	$253 million	$204 million	$224 million
Net income	$289 million	$24 million	−$65 million	−$86 million

Revenue up 10% on the year before; net margin -38%. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Whether it produces magnets at scale.

← All companies

TaiwanPackaging and test · Largest packaging and test firm

ASE

What it does

A Taiwanese company that is the world’s largest packager and tester of chips.

Where it sits in the chain

It finishes chips for most designers, and offers some of the advanced packaging that accelerators need.

In the contest

Its plants are spread across Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia, so it is exposed to pressure from every side.

Technical capabilities

Conventional and advanced packaging; testing
System-in-package modules

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$21.8 billion	$19.0 billion	$18.2 billion	$20.6 billion
Net income	$2.0 billion	$1.2 billion	$987 million	$1.3 billion
Research and development	$793 million	$833 million	$879 million	$1.0 billion

Revenue up 13% on the year before; net margin 6%; research and development 5% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

New plants outside China.

← All companies

United StatesPackaging and test · Packaging and test; large plants in Korea and Vietnam

Amkor

What it does

An American-based packaging and test company with most of its plants in Asia.

Where it sits in the chain

The second-largest packager, with large sites in Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam.

In the contest

Its campus in Bac Ninh is one of Vietnam’s largest chip investments, and it is building a plant in Arizona next to TSMC’s with public support.

Technical capabilities

Advanced packaging and test for phones, cars and computing

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$7.1 billion	$6.5 billion	$6.3 billion	$6.7 billion
Net income	$766 million	$360 million	$354 million	$374 million
Research and development	$149 million	$177 million	$163 million	$167 million

Revenue up 6% on the year before; net margin 6%; research and development 2% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

The Arizona plant’s start.

← All companies

TaiwanPackaging and test · Memory packaging

Powertech

What it does

A Taiwanese company that packages and tests memory chips.

Where it sits in the chain

A main partner of Micron and other memory makers.

In the contest

It sold its plant in China as customers asked for capacity elsewhere.

Technical capabilities

Packaging and testing of DRAM and flash

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Demand from memory makers.

← All companies

ChinaPackaging and test · China’s largest packaging firm

JCET

What it does

China’s largest chip packaging and test company.

Where it sits in the chain

The third-largest packager in the world, after buying a Singaporean rival in 2015.

In the contest

Packaging is the stage where China is strongest, and JCET is where Chinese accelerators are finished.

Technical capabilities

Conventional and advanced packaging, including for accelerators

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its progress in advanced packaging.

← All companies

ChinaPackaging and test · Packaging, including for AMD

Tongfu Microelectronics

What it does

A Chinese packaging company that bought most of AMD’s packaging plants in China and Malaysia in 2016.

Where it sits in the chain

AMD’s main packaging partner.

In the contest

An example of how closely American designers and Chinese packagers are still tied.

Technical capabilities

Packaging of processors and graphics chips

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Whether AMD moves packaging elsewhere.

← All companies

ChinaPackaging and test · Packaging

Huatian

What it does

A Chinese chip packaging and test company.

Where it sits in the chain

The third of China’s large packagers.

In the contest

Part of the capacity that makes packaging China’s strongest stage.

Technical capabilities

Conventional and wafer-level packaging

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Advanced packaging for Chinese accelerators.

← All companies

South KoreaPackaging and test · Memory packaging, much of it in Vietnam

Hana Micron

What it does

A Korean company that packages memory chips, with large plants in northern Vietnam.

Where it sits in the chain

A main packaging partner of SK hynix.

In the contest

It moved capacity to Vietnam at the request of customers who wanted less done in China.

Technical capabilities

Packaging and testing of memory

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Further expansion in Vietnam.

← All companies

SingaporePackaging and test · Packaging and test

UTAC

What it does

A Singapore-based packaging and test company with plants across Southeast Asia.

Where it sits in the chain

A mid-sized packager for carmakers and others.

In the contest

It has been owned by a Chinese investment firm since 2020, which shows how ownership and location can point different ways.

Technical capabilities

Packaging and test for automotive, analog and sensor chips

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Scrutiny of Chinese-owned firms in Southeast Asia.

← All companies

MalaysiaPackaging and test · Packaging and test

Inari Amertron

What it does

A Malaysian packaging and test company based in Penang.

Where it sits in the chain

A specialist in radio-frequency chips for phones.

In the contest

One of the home-grown firms in Malaysia’s packaging cluster, most of which is foreign-owned.

Technical capabilities

Packaging of radio-frequency and optical chips

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Malaysia’s enforcement of its permit rules.

← All companies

VietnamPackaging and test · First Vietnamese-owned packaging and test plant; chip design

FPT

What it does

Vietnam’s largest technology company, which designs power chips and opened the first Vietnamese-owned packaging and test plant in 2026.

Where it sits in the chain

A designer and, now, a packager, working with Viettel on small SI chips.

In the contest

It is the main private vehicle for Vietnam’s chip ambitions. See the Vietnam page under Countries.

Technical capabilities

Design of power-management chips
Packaging and test plant in Bac Ninh

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Orders for its plant.

← All companies

VietnamPackaging and test · Packaging and test

CT Semiconductor

What it does

A privately owned Vietnamese company with a packaging and test plant in the south of the country.

Where it sits in the chain

One of the few Vietnamese-owned firms in the packaging stage.

In the contest

Small, but part of the effort to own some of what is done on Vietnamese soil.

Technical capabilities

Packaging and test

Financial reports

No annual figures were found automatically for this company. It is private, state-owned, a division of a larger group, or reports only in its home market.

What to watch

Its first large customers.

← All companies

United StatesChip designers without fabs · Designs chips for its cars and robots; a partner in Terafab

Tesla

What it does

The electric-car maker designs the chips that run its driver-assistance systems and its humanoid robot, and is one of the three companies behind Terafab.

Where it sits in the chain

A chip designer without fabs: Samsung and TSMC make its chips, and Samsung holds a contract to make the next one in Texas through 2033.

In the contest

It is a large buyer trying to become its own supplier. Its founder argues that world chip output will not cover what its cars and robots need. See the Terafab profile.

Technical capabilities

Chips for driver assistance, designed in-house and made by Samsung and TSMC
A planned next chip for cars and robots on a 2-nanometre process

Financial reports

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$81.5 billion	$96.8 billion	$97.7 billion	$94.8 billion
Net income	$12.6 billion	$15.0 billion	$7.1 billion	$3.8 billion
Research and development	$3.1 billion	$4.0 billion	$4.5 billion	$6.4 billion

Revenue down 3% on the year before; net margin 4%; research and development 7% of revenue. Source: annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, read on 13 November 2026.

What to watch

Whether Terafab gets a site, a partner and machines.

Filter

Design software and licensed designs 8

United StatesSynopsysDesign and verification software; ready-made circuit blocks$7.1bn revenue United StatesCadenceDesign and verification software$5.3bn revenue United States / GermanySiemens EDADesign software, especially for checking layouts United KingdomArmLicenses the processor design in nearly every phone$4.9bn revenue United StatesSiFiveProcessor designs on the open RISC-V standard ChinaEmpyreanChina’s largest design-software firm United KingdomAlphawaveHigh-speed connection designs United StatesRambusMemory interface designs$708m revenue

Chip designers without fabs 21

How this tab is made. Sixteen profiles (Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Micron, Terafab, Synopsys and Cadence, the American toolmakers, TSMC, Samsung, SK hynix, ASML, Tokyo Electron, Rapidus, Huawei, SMIC and Cambricon) were researched on 13 November 2026 from sources read through search summaries. The other profiles, and every list of technical capabilities, were written from general knowledge of the industry and were not checked against sources for this page. Financial figures are taken automatically from companies’ annual filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission where they file there, in the currency and fiscal year they report; for eleven large companies that do not file there (Samsung, SK hynix, Tokyo Electron, Disco, Lasertec, Huawei, SMIC, Cambricon, MediaTek, Infineon and Kioxia) they come from press reports of annual results; for the rest none were found automatically. The headlines are added automatically every day from news search feeds, matched by company name, and are not checked by a person.

Governance · rules, enforcement and war

Governance

Who writes the rules for chips and with what instruments, how trade terms and state ownership back them up, how they are enforced and evaded, what the weapons used in Ukraine show about their reach, and where the rules could go next.

Overview · written 13 November 2026

Rules decide who may buy a chip. Enforcement decides whether it arrives. War shows which chips the rules never reach.

6Times since 2022 that the limit on what Nvidia may sell to China has been redrawn

18% v. 1%Share of Nvidia’s 2024 revenue billed to Singapore, against the share of chips that arrived there [227]

72 serversSeized at Kuala Lumpur airport on 5 June 2026, declared as computer components [211]

300+Older Dutch lithography machines thought to be running in Chinese plants [172]

5,816Foreign components counted in 202 Russian weapon systems to August 2026 [108]

27 Nov 2026End of China’s suspension of its metals ban on the United States [169]

Governing chips means three different jobs, and most argument about export controls confuses them. The first is writing the rule: which chip, which machine, which buyer. The second is enforcing it across ports, distributors and data centres in countries that did not write it. The third is the purpose the rule is meant to serve, which in this contest is military advantage. This page takes them in that order.

The finding is the same at each step. Control works on things that are scarce, large and need their maker’s continuing help, and fails on things that are common, small and work by themselves. A lithography machine is the first kind, and none of the most advanced type has reached China. [172] A data-centre accelerator sits in between, and it leaks through billing addresses and mislabelled crates. [227, 211] The chips inside a missile are the second kind, and four years of the widest embargo ever tried have not removed them from Russian weapons. [108]

The same test applies in the other direction. China’s hold on refined gallium, germanium and rare earths is scarce and concentrated, so its controls work too, and it has kept the bar on military users in force while suspending the rest. [169]

Part 1Who makes the rulesRule-makers, US rule book, Congress, China’s toolkit, China at home, China’s statutes, The 0.1% rule, Limits of the long arm, Lists and blocking, Trade law 2026, 2025 in review, China’s position, Four models of control, Taiwan’s list, Alliances, Treaties.Part 2The instrumentsWho uses what, Timeline, Nvidia line, Tariffs, Taiwan–US deal, China’s response, Mature chips, Car chips, Silicon carbide, Money rules, Taiwan’s outbound rule, Mergers, China’s probes, State as owner, Nexperia, Minerals, Rare-earth law, Rare-earth licences, Paused controls, Technology catalogue, Model thresholds, Design and standards, Design software, Compute rules, China’s compute.Part 3Building at homePermits and power, Taiwan’s power, Taiwan’s water, Talent and visas, K visa, The chip job market, Taiwan’s tax credit, Rapidus, Japan’s funding frame, Korea’s chip act, Yongin’s power, China’s incentives, Big Fund III, Chip mergers, CXMT listing, Tool makers at the exchange, YMTC listing, Packaging listing, Buy-domestic rule, Full and idle at once, The open architecture bet, Inside the machine, Photoresist: 5%, Optical chips, China’s cities, Shanghai to 2030, Beijing to 2030, Guangdong.Part 4Enforcement and resultsEnforcement, Tracking, Cloud and Gulf, People and secrets, Penalties, TSMC 2 nm case, Poaching raids, Japan’s clearances, Korea’s leaks, Korean plants in China, China enforces, Customs penalties, August 2026 package, China’s secrets cases, Crisis tools, Results, China’s chip trade, Exports doubled, Huawei’s roadmap, The Tao law, Three walls, 3,900 design firms, Cambricon, Stacked memory, SMIC in 2026, China’s toolmakers, Chip profits, Taiwan’s exports.Part 5What the studies foundCost to sellers, Effect on targets, Chinese studies, A Chinese reading, Washington’s two camps, The “compound blockade”, “Limited release”, Four logics, Two roads to general SI, “Irreplaceable”, Tool sales, Measured gap, Japan v. Korea, Subsidy returns, Scientists, Cold War record.Part 6Chips in warWar, Reach v. weight, War in numbers, Who supplies whom, War timeline, Chip types, Kill chain, Teardowns, Inside, by origin, Russia, Sanctions routes, Iran and others, India and Pakistan, Drones, Drone makers, China’s drone rules, 2026 drone rules, Taiwan’s drones, Counter-drone, Cost exchange, Electronic warfare, Edge SI, Space and navigation, Missile defence, Burn rate, At sea.Part 7Armies and their supplyMunitions, Metals, Trusted supply, Sabotage and fakes, Supercomputers, Allied armies, Europe rearms, China lists America, China lists Europe, Pacific allies, China lists Japan, China’s army, Taiwan strait, China on military SI, China at Geneva, Army thinkers on compute, Rivals with shared risks, Rules for machines, Seven misreadings, Lessons by country, Open questions, War: watch, Glossary.Part 8What followsWhat works, China’s plan, Electronics plan, The 2026 to 2030 window, Scenarios, Rules: conclusions, War: conclusions, Watch.

Part 1

Who makes the rules

The governments that write the rules, the American and Chinese systems in detail, and the alliances and missing treaties between them.

Rule-makers

Seven governments write the rules, and no two use the same instrument

Who governs the chip trade in November 2026. The last column is this site’s reading of each rule-maker’s weak point.

Rule-maker	Instrument	What it reaches	Weak point
United States Commerce Department	A list of barred buyers. A rule that applies American law to anything made with American machines. Performance limits on chips since October 2022. Since January 2026, case-by-case licences for one class of chip, capped at half the volume shipped to American customers, with outside testing and customer checks. [163] A 25% tariff on the same band. [162]	Chips, machines and design software anywhere American technology is used.	The line keeps moving Six months after the licences opened, very few chips had shipped. [164]
Netherlands Trade minister	A national licence rule for lithography machines since 1 September 2023, widened on 1 April 2025 to some measurement and inspection tools. [174] No sale of the most advanced machine to China has been allowed since 2019. [172]	The one machine no advanced fab can do without.	Older machines and servicing A bill in Congress would give the Dutch 150 days to match American rules. The minister calls cooperation by force undesirable. [172, 173]
Japan Trade ministry	Amended export control rules covering chipmaking machines and materials. [70]	Machines, wafers, resists and chemicals.	Open to reprisal China imposed dual-use controls on Japan in January 2026 and listed Japanese firms. [67, 69]
Taiwan Science council, economics ministry	A rule that any process moved abroad must trail the newest by two generations. [145, 55] Review of investment abroad. [146] Huawei and SMIC on its own control list since June 2025. [58] Prison terms for trade-secret theft. [147]	Where the newest fabrication is done, and who learns it.	Pressure from its protector Washington has asked for half of production to move. Taiwan refused. [56]
South Korea	No comparable rule of its own. Its memory plants in China run on American licences renewed one year at a time, which allow upkeep and not expansion. [86]	Nothing directly. It is governed more than it governs.	A rule-taker Its largest plants abroad depend on a yearly decision in Washington. [86]
China Commerce ministry	A ban on gallium, germanium and antimony sales to the United States from December 2024, suspended until 27 November 2026 except for military users. [169] Dual-use controls on Japan. [67] A halt to deliveries of basic chips to Europe during the Nexperia dispute. [175] Guidance to its own firms not to buy the Nvidia chips on offer.	Refined metals, magnets, basic chips finished in China, and its own market.	Few Its controls sit where it is the main supplier. Their cost is that buyers start building elsewhere.
Transit states Singapore, Malaysia	Singapore’s control law follows international lists and has not adopted the American chip limits, so its prosecutors charge fraud. [225] Malaysia has required a permit to move advanced American SI chips through the country since 14 July 2025. [210]	The ports and data centres the chips pass through.	Other people’s rules They enforce limits they did not write, at a cost to their own trade.

Lists, limits, licences

American control has passed through three forms. First a list of barred firms. Then a technical limit that the seller designed up to, twice. Since 2025 a licence decided case by case, granted for a share of revenue and tied to trade talks. Each form is more flexible than the last and less predictable.

Allies license for themselves

The Dutch, Japanese and Taiwanese rules are national law, applied by national ministers. They follow Washington’s lead on the newest technology and diverge on older machines, servicing and the China market. That gap is what the bill in Congress is aimed at. [172]

The counter-rule is the same rule

China’s metals licences copy the American method: a list of items, a list of users, a military exception, and a suspension that can be ended. [169] Both sides now hold a control that works, and both have chosen to suspend it and keep the option.

How the controls work

The American rule book grew tighter for three years, then turned into a bargaining tool

140entities added to the Entity List in the package of 2 December 2024 [602]

24types of chipmaking equipment newly controlled on 2 December 2024, with 3 types of software tool [602]

50%cap on H200-class exports to China, measured against the same chips shipped to US customers, in the January 2026 rule [606]

19%share of BIS staff lost since 2024, or 101 employees, in federal personnel data reported in April 2026 [607]

76 daysaverage time to process chip licences for allies in the first half of 2025, against 38 days in fiscal 2023 [607]

$450 millionBIS budget request for fiscal 2027, with 1,077 positions, not yet enacted in June 2026 [608]

American chip controls are written by one small office, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), inside the Commerce Department. Its first big rule, on 7 October 2022, required a licence to send advanced chips, computers containing them and some chipmaking equipment to China and Macau. [601] An update on 17 October 2023 closed gaps, and a third package on 2 December 2024 added memory chips and more tools. [601, 602] Each rule widened the same four instruments instead of inventing new ones. Those instruments are a list of named firms, a reach over foreign-made goods, a default answer to licence requests, and a ban on help from Americans.

The direction changed in 2025. A rule sorting the world into three tiers was issued on 15 January 2025 and rescinded on 13 May 2025, two days before firms had to comply. [603] A rule extending the Entity List to subsidiaries took effect on 29 September 2025 and was suspended six weeks later as part of a trade deal with China. [604] On 13 January 2026 BIS opened a licensing path for Nvidia’s H200 and similar chips. [606] The rules that survive are the older ones. The newer ones were traded, paused or loosened.

The main American chip export rules since 2022, what each one did, and where each stands in November 2026.

Rule	Date	What it did	Where it stands
First chip rule	7 October 2022 [601]	Required licences for advanced chips, computers containing them and some chipmaking equipment going to China and Macau. Added two foreign direct product rules and barred US persons from supporting advanced chip production there without a licence. [601]	Core still stands Most advanced chips bound for China remain under a presumption of denial. [606]
Update and loophole fix	17 October 2023 [601]	Added a performance density test to catch chips designed just under the line. Extended equipment licensing to 21 more arms-embargo destinations. Added 13 entities. Most changes took effect on 17 November 2023. [601]	Holds The January 2026 rule carved an exception out of it but did not repeal it. [606]
Memory and tools package	2 December 2024 [602]	Controlled high-bandwidth memory (HBM), 24 types of equipment and 3 types of software. Added 140 entities and two new foreign direct product rules. [602]	No reversal found None of the sources read for this section reports a rollback.
Diffusion rule	15 January 2025 [603]	Sorted countries into three tiers with different limits on SI chips. Compliance was due on 15 May 2025. [603]	Rescinded, never enforced BIS announced the rescission on 13 May 2025 and promised a replacement that had not appeared by June 2025. [603]
Affiliates rule	29 September 2025 [604]	Applied Entity List licence requirements to any foreign firm owned 50% or more by listed parties. [604, 605]	Suspended to 2027 Paused from 10 November 2025, then extended through 10 January 2027. [604, 605]
H200 licensing rule	13 January 2026 [606]	Moved chips below set performance and memory thresholds from presumption of denial to case-by-case review for China and Macau, with conditions. [606]	Loosened with conditions In force from 15 January 2026. Reports say China may not approve many H200 imports. [606]
Chip import duty	14 January 2026 [606]	A presidential proclamation set a 25% duty on certain advanced chips imported into the United States, which eligible foreign-made chips would likely meet when brought in for testing. [606]	Revenue, not security Effective 15 January 2026 alongside the licensing rule. [606]

A list of names and a long arm

The Entity List names foreign firms that need a licence to receive controlled items. The foreign direct product rule stretches that reach to goods made abroad. The December 2024 package used it to claim jurisdiction over foreign-made chipmaking equipment bound for China, and over foreign-made equipment containing any American chip. [602] This is how Washington binds factories it does not host. The affiliates rule would have added majority-owned subsidiaries of listed firms. [604]

The default answer and the people rule

A licence requirement is only as strict as its review policy. Under the 2023 rules, covered items going to China face a presumption of denial, meaning the default answer is no. [601] Case-by-case review, used for H200-class chips since January 2026, means each application is judged on conditions. [606] The US-persons rule works differently. It bars Americans from supporting advanced chip production in China without a licence, whatever the origin of the equipment. [601]

A small office with a long queue

BIS lost 101 employees, or 19%, since 2024, and at least 15 licensing officers left. [607] Licences processed fell by about 25% in 2025. [607] The fiscal 2027 request asks for $450 million, a 91.5% rise, including $151.9 million for 290 special agents. [608] Lawyers who read the request found no money for licensing and no mention of the backlog. [608] The plan funds enforcement and leaves the licence queue unaddressed.

The lasting part of the rule book is the part built between 2022 and 2024. Those rules still set the default answer for the most advanced chips and tools at no. [606] The rules written since then have behaved differently. The diffusion rule was withdrawn before it applied. [603] The affiliates rule has been suspended twice in step with a trade truce, and it could return on 10 January 2027 unless the pause is extended again. [605] Export control has become one of the things Washington trades with Beijing.

The January 2026 rule shows the new method. It does not lift controls. It sets thresholds, a volume cap, independent testing in the United States and customer checks, and a 25% import duty came into force alongside it. [606] That design asks more of the licensing office at a time when the office has fewer licensing staff and slower processing. [607] A rule that depends on case-by-case judgment is only as strong as the people available to judge each case.

Limits. The plain-word definitions of the Entity List and of licence presumptions are general knowledge, phrased to match the cited law-firm and BIS descriptions. The 2022 and 2023 rules are described from one law-firm alert, not from the Federal Register text, and its publication date of 25 October 2023 was seen only in a search listing. The number of countries in each diffusion tier appeared only in a search summary and is left out. A second summary put a different figure on the fiscal 2027 enforcement request (about $255 million, and separately $122 million rising to $301 million in testimony); the $151.9 million used here is for special agents only. The staffing and processing figures come from Bloomberg reporting republished by Transport Topics, and BIS has published no annual report for 2024 or 2025 according to that article. Whether a replacement for the diffusion rule was issued after June 2025 was not checked. The Under Secretary’s July 2026 House testimony could not be opened.

The legislature pushes back

Congress has written tighter chip controls four times and has not yet made one of them law

42 to 2House Foreign Affairs Committee vote for the AI OVERWATCH Act, 21 January 2026, with one member voting present [609]

3chip bills agreed for a proposed Senate amendment to the fiscal 2027 defence bill, reported 16 July 2026 [611]

150 daystime the MATCH Act gives allies to show progress before the United States applies its own rules to their equipment [610]

900,000H200-equivalent chips China could still buy under the 50% cap, a Lawfare estimate from March 2026 (nearly 900,000) [609]

12 January 2026deadline two ranking Democrats set for Commerce to hand over its H200 licensing records [613]

Since late 2025 the pressure for stricter chip controls has come from Congress, and the resistance has come from the White House. In December 2025 the administration allowed sales of Nvidia’s H200 chip to China, and in January 2026 Commerce wrote that decision into a rule. [609] Lawmakers of both parties answered with bills. One would give Congress a review of chip exports, one would require chips to report their location, one would bind allies on chipmaking tools, and one would cover rented computing power. [609, 611, 614] The fight is over who decides, as much as over what is sold.

The bills share a route. Stand-alone passage is slow, so sponsors attach them to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the yearly defence policy bill. That route failed once. The GAIN AI Act passed the Senate in 2025 and was dropped from the final defence bill after lobbying by the White House and Nvidia. [609] In July 2026 Senate negotiators agreed to put three chip bills into a proposed amendment to the fiscal 2027 bill. [611] On 13 November 2026 their place in the final text was still not agreed. [612]

The main chip export bills and oversight moves of 2025 and 2026, how far each got, and where each stood on 13 November 2026.

Measure	What it would do	Furthest point reached	Status, mid-November 2026
GAIN AI Act	Require chipmakers to serve American customers before exporting to China and other countries of concern. [609]	Passed the Senate as part of the fiscal 2026 defence bill. [609]	Dropped in 2025 Removed from the final bill after White House and Nvidia lobbying. [609]
Remote Access Security Act	Amend the Export Control Reform Act so that controls cover remote access to controlled chips through cloud computing. [614]	Passed the House on 12 January 2026. [614]	Senate vote not found No Senate passage appears in the sources read.
AI OVERWATCH Act (H.R. 6875)	Give Congress notice and a review window for H200-class exports, and require denial of more powerful chips such as Nvidia’s Blackwell, with no waiver. [609]	Cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee 42 to 2 on 21 January 2026. Added to the proposed Senate defence amendment in July 2026. [609, 611]	In negotiation Senate leaders had not agreed to keep it in the final text. [612]
Chip Security Act	Require location verification mechanisms on export-controlled advanced chips, to deter smuggling through third countries. [611, 612]	Added to the proposed Senate defence amendment in July 2026. [611]	In negotiation Same position as the other two bills. [612]
MATCH Act	Bar sale and servicing of key chipmaking tools to advanced Chinese plants, name five Chinese firms, and give allies 150 days to align. [610]	Introduced in both chambers on 2 April 2026. Added to the proposed Senate defence amendment in July 2026. [610, 611]	In negotiation The House committee chair rated the chances of inclusion as very high. [612]
Records demand on H200 licences	Use a clause of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 that obliges Commerce to give licensing information to committee leaders on request. [613]	Letter from Representative Meeks and Senator Warren to the Under Secretary, 22 December 2025. [613]	Rule issued anyway Commerce published the H200 rule on 13 January 2026, a day after the deadline. [606, 613]
Fiscal 2027 defence bill	Carry the three chip bills into law as part of a measure Congress treats as must-pass. [612]	Senate floor debate was blocked, at least for a time, on 14 July 2026. [611]	Leaders split The Speaker backs the curbs. The Senate majority leader and the Armed Services chair had not agreed to include them. [612]

What the three live bills add

Each bill fills a gap the executive rules leave open. The Chip Security Act targets smuggling by making chips verify where they are. [611] The MATCH Act targets servicing, and names SMIC, Huawei, Hua Hong, CXMT and YMTC. [610] If allies do not show sufficient progress in 150 days, Commerce would apply foreign direct product rules on its own. [610] The AI OVERWATCH Act would end existing licences for covered chips to countries of concern. [609]

Letters when votes are slow

Oversight has filled the time between votes. On 22 December 2025 the senior Democrats on House Foreign Affairs and Senate Banking invoked the Export Control Reform Act to demand Commerce’s records on H200 licences by 12 January 2026. [613] They also asked for a briefing before any licence was approved. [613] Their letter said approval would be deeply at odds with the policy Congress set in that law. [613] Commerce issued its rule on 13 January 2026. [606]

The White House position

The administration treats chip sales as a tool of trade policy and resists limits on its discretion. [609] The White House SI adviser, David Sacks, endorsed a post calling the AI OVERWATCH Act an assault on presidential authority. [609] The Commerce Secretary defended the conditions in the January 2026 rule. [609] The objection rests on the president’s foreign affairs powers, a claim the Lawfare author finds weakened by Congress’s long record of regulating exports. [609]

Congress has shown it can agree and has not yet shown it can finish. The votes are lopsided. A Republican chairman’s bill to review the president’s chip licences cleared committee 42 to 2. [609] Yet the one bill that passed a full chamber and reached final talks in 2025 was removed, and the 2026 bills depend on the same vehicle and face the same opponents. [609, 612] Until a bill is signed, every American chip control remains an executive decision that the next deal can change.

The outcome matters beyond Washington. Analysts at the Center for a New American Security argue that allied coordination is the hard part of equipment controls, and that mixed signals from the executive and Congress weaken it. [610] A law would give allies a fixed American position to align with. A further year of bills that stall would tell them that policy follows the trade talks. On 13 November 2026 the Speaker said a consensus was forming in Congress, and the Senate leaders had not yet committed. [612]

Limits. Status on 13 November 2026 rests on one Seoul Economic Daily article, machine-translated from Korean and relaying Semafor; it refers to a controversy around Nvidia’s chief executive without detail, which is not repeated here. A Crypto Briefing item of 9 November 2026, citing CNBC, reported the opposite: that the chip provisions were left out of the final defence bill talks. The CNBC original was not found, so the section says only that inclusion was not agreed. Seen only in search summaries: the House vote of 369 to 22 on the Remote Access Security Act, the Chip Security Act bill numbers (H.R. 3447, S. 1705) and its 42 to 0 committee vote of 26 March 2026, the MATCH Act bill numbers, a bill by Representatives Meeks and Issa on the licence backlog, and letters from Senators Warren, Schumer, Banks and Coons on H200 sales. Senate press pages returned errors. No hearing transcript was read. The 12 January deadline and 13 January rule are placed side by side from two sources; neither says whether Commerce answered the letter.

Beijing’s instruments

Beijing answers chip controls with licences, lists and probes that it can switch on and off

7Medium and heavy rare earths under export licence since 4 April 2025. This rule was not suspended. [264]

0.1%Chinese rare earth content that would bring a foreign-made product under Chinese licence, in the rules of 9 October 2025. [264]

10 Jan 2027New end date of the suspension of the October 2025 rules, set by Announcement No. 58 of 2026. [265]

40 + 40Japanese entities on China’s export control list and on its watch list after the rounds of February and 29 June 2026. [267]

$6.9bnValue of Nvidia’s Mellanox purchase, which China’s market regulator said on 15 September 2025 broke the conditions of its approval. [268]

70%Share of Nexperia’s global output made at the Dongguan plant that China barred from exporting on 4 October 2025. [271]

China has built legal tools that mirror the American ones. The strongest is export licensing for materials that chip and magnet makers cannot easily buy elsewhere. On 4 April 2025 the Ministry of Commerce put seven medium and heavy rare earths under licence, and those controls stayed in place after the later truce. [264] On 9 October 2025 it added five more elements, taking the count to 12 of 17, and wrote rules that reached products made abroad. [264] That reach beyond China’s borders is what made the October rules a counterpart to American chip controls.

The October rules would have required a Chinese licence for foreign-made magnets and sputtering targets, a material used to coat chips, with 0.1 percent or more Chinese rare earth content, from 1 December 2025. [264] Exports meant for logic chips at 14 nanometres or below, or memory chips of 256 layers or more, were singled out for licence review. [264] Beijing suspended the package on 7 November 2025 for one year, in exchange for a pause in an American ownership rule. [264] A notice reported on 9 November 2026 keeps six October announcements suspended from 11 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. [265]

Eight instruments China has used since 2023, with the basis each rests on, when it was used and what it did.

Instrument	Basis	When used	Effect and status
Rare earth export licences	Joint announcement by the Ministry of Commerce and the customs agency, under the dual-use export regime	4 April 2025, for seven elements and their oxides and compounds. [264]	Still in force It was left out of the November 2025 suspension. [264] It is not among the measures named in the November 2026 extension. [265]
Rules on foreign-made products with Chinese material	Ministry of Commerce Announcements No. 61 and No. 62 of 2025, with four joint announcements numbered 55 to 58. [265]	Issued 9 October 2025, with the foreign-product rule due to start on 1 December 2025. [264]	Paused, not repealed Suspended on 7 November 2025. [264] The suspension now runs to 10 January 2027. [265]
Unreliable entity list	China’s unreliable entity provisions, applied by the Ministry of Commerce. [266]	4 March 2025: 10 American firms listed over arms sales to Taiwan. [266]	Narrow in reach Listed firms may not trade with China or make new investments there. Illumina was also barred from exporting gene sequencers to China. [266]
Export control list and watch list	Ministry of Commerce controls on dual-use goods, which have civilian and military uses. [267]	February 2026 and 29 June 2026, against Japanese firms. Each round put 20 on the control list and 20 on the watch list. [267]	A diplomatic signal No exporter may sell Chinese-made dual-use items to control-list firms. Watch-list sales need special licences, risk reports and written pledges. [267]
Merger and antitrust cases	Anti-Monopoly Law, enforced by the State Administration for Market Regulation. [268, 269]	Nvidia: probe announced in December 2024, preliminary finding on 15 September 2025. [268] Qualcomm: case opened on 10 October 2025 over the Autotalks purchase. [269]	Open threat The Nvidia statement named no fine and promised further investigation. [268]
Anti-dumping and anti-discrimination probes	Trade remedy powers of the Ministry of Commerce. [268]	13 September 2025, against American analog chips from firms such as Texas Instruments and ON Semiconductor. [268]	Result not verified A second probe opened the same weekend into American measures against China’s chip sector. [268]
Cybersecurity review and buying guidance	Review by the cyberspace regulator, then unpublished guidance to buyers. [270]	2023 against Micron. 2025 against advanced Nvidia chips, on security grounds. [270]	Market closed Micron later left China’s server chip market. Nvidia says its share of China’s SI chip market fell from 95 percent in 2022 to zero. [270]
Nexperia export halt	Export control notice from the Ministry of Commerce. [271]	4 October 2025, four days after the Dutch state took control of the firm on 30 September. [271]	Fast leverage Exemptions were offered from 1 November. First shipments reached Europe’s suppliers on 11 November. The Dutch order was suspended on 19 November. [271]

A pause keeps the rule alive

Beijing did not withdraw the October 2025 rules. It suspended them, first to 10 November 2026 and then to 10 January 2027. [264, 265] The second pause is two months long, not a year. [265] The April 2025 licences were never part of either pause. [264] Buyers of the seven listed elements still depend on a permit from the Ministry of Commerce.

Probes arrive with the talks

The anti-dumping case on American analog chips opened on a Saturday. The Nvidia finding followed on Monday 15 September 2025. [268] American and Chinese negotiators were meeting in Madrid that same week. [268] The Qualcomm case opened on 10 October 2025, one day after the rare earth rules. [269, 264] The regulator’s cases rest on competition law, but their timing follows the trade calendar.

Nexperia showed the speed

The Dutch state took control of Nexperia on 30 September 2025. China’s export notice came on 4 October. [271] By 27 October workers said the Dongguan plant had cut output and idled machines. [271] German carmakers were working to limit shortages by 6 November. [271] On 19 November the Dutch government suspended its order as a show of goodwill. [271] The whole cycle took about seven weeks.

China’s toolkit works less by banning trade than by making it conditional. Licences, lists and investigations all leave the final decision with a Chinese agency, and each can be paused or revived without new law. The 2025 record shows the pattern. The rare earth rules were written, suspended after the leaders’ meeting of 30 October 2025, and suspended again in November 2026. [271, 265] The Nexperia halt was eased through exemptions within a month. [271]

For chip firms the practical lesson is that a suspension is not a settlement. The April 2025 licences remain. [264] The October 2025 rules sit ready with an end date of 10 January 2027. [265] The Japanese lists of 2026 show the same tools now turn on allies of the United States as well. [267] Companies that rely on Chinese rare earths, Chinese assembly or Chinese merger approval face a regulator that has shown it will use each one.

Limits. The names of the underlying laws (the Export Control Law, the dual-use export regulations and list, the Anti-Monopoly Law, the Cybersecurity Law and review measures, the anti-dumping regulations) come from general knowledge or search summaries and are not tied to a cited page; no dates are given for them for that reason. The November 2026 extension is cited to a Shanghai Metals Market report, not to the Ministry of Commerce notice itself, which was not opened; Benchmark Mineral Intelligence gave the same end date. Search summaries, not opened pages, said that 15 American firms joined the export control list on 4 March 2025, that 11 more joined the unreliable entity list in April 2025, and that a trade law firm counted 21 unreliable-entity and 31 export-control entries lifted for American firms in November 2025; these are left out of the cited text. The customs campaign against Nvidia shipments and the cyberspace regulator’s order on the RTX Pro 6000D chip were seen only in secondary reports of Financial Times stories from September and October 2025, so the table uses the more general Reuters wording. The exact date of the Micron decision (reported as 21 May 2023) was seen only in search summaries. Sources conflict on when Qualcomm closed the Autotalks deal (June 2024 or June 2025) and on the Nvidia fine range (1 to 5 percent or 1 to 10 percent of sales), so neither appears. No source was found for the outcome of the Nvidia, Qualcomm or analog chip cases, or for Nexperia’s status in November 2026.

Domestic governance

At home, Beijing steers chips through party leadership, state money and buying rules that are rarely published

344bn yuanRegistered capital of the national chip fund’s third phase, set up in May 2024, against 98.72bn and 204.15bn for phases one and two. [274]

114bn yuanCombined stake of the six large state banks in phase three, about one third. It is their first time as shareholders. [274]

50%Share of home-made tools sought in new chip plant capacity under unofficial guidance described in February 2026. [273]

30%Completion level below which state-funded data centres were told to remove foreign SI chips, reported on 5 November 2025. [270]

8bn yuanRaised by graphics chip designer Moore Threads, the second-largest share listing in mainland China in 2025. [276]

$100bn+State funding drawn by SI data-centre projects in China since 2021, by a Reuters count of tenders. [270]

Chip policy in China is led from the top of the Communist Party. Ding Xuexiang sits on the Politburo Standing Committee and is director of the Central Science and Technology Commission, the party body for science policy. [272] One detailed study calls him the most senior official overseeing semiconductor industrial policy. [273] Below him, a semiconductor team at the National Development and Reform Commission, the state planner, works under Vice Minister Xiangli Bin. [273] The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology oversees the national chip fund. [273] Authority is concentrated, but the daily rules come from several agencies.

Money and markets are shaped in public. The national fund’s third phase was registered with 344 billion yuan in capital, more than the first two phases combined. [274] The securities regulator reopened a listing route for loss-making technology firms on 18 June 2025. [276] Buying rules are different. The requirement to use home-made tools, the list of approved SI chips and the order on data-centre chips all reached the public through unnamed sources, not through a published document. [273, 275, 270]

Eight levers Beijing uses on its own chip industry, who holds each one and how firm the public evidence is.

Lever	Who holds it	What it does	Evidence
Party leadership	Central Science and Technology Commission, directed by Ding Xuexiang. [272]	Works to the party goal of sharply higher self-reliance in science and technology for the new five-year plan period. [272]	Official record Title and speech reported by the state news agency on 26 January 2026. [272]
Ministries	State planner’s semiconductor team, and the industry ministry. [273]	The planner backs Huawei and controls a venture guidance fund of up to 1 trillion yuan, created in late 2025. The industry ministry oversees the chip fund. [273]	Analyst account One study, published 20 February 2026. [273]
National chip fund	Fund company with 19 shareholders, including the Ministry of Finance. [274]	Three phases with registered capital of 98.72bn, 204.15bn and 344bn yuan. Phase three runs 15 years, up from 10. [274]	Company registry Phase-three spending has been slow, one study says. [273]
Home-made tool quota	Unofficial guidance, probably from the industry ministry. [273]	New capacity should use 50 percent domestic tools. Plans below that are reportedly rejected, with leeway for advanced lines. [273]	Not published It mainly bites on older processes above 28 nanometres. [273]
Government buying list	Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. [275]	SI processors from Huawei and Cambricon joined the official procurement list. Agencies and state-owned firms received written guidance. [275]	List not released Reported on 10 December 2025, citing the Financial Times. [275]
Data-centre chip order	Issuing regulator not named. [270]	Projects with any state funds must use only home-made SI chips. Those under 30 percent complete must remove foreign chips or cancel orders. [270]	Two unnamed sources Reuters report of 5 November 2025. Its national scope is unclear. [270]
Listing rules	China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Shanghai exchange. [276]	A growth tier on the technology board and a reopened route for firms without profits, announced 18 June 2025. [276]	Public rules Wafer maker Xi’an Eswin raised 4.636bn yuan and listed on 28 October 2025. [276]
Travel approval for key staff	Authorities not named. [277]	Some senior SI workers at private firms, including Alibaba and DeepSeek, must get approval before going abroad. [277]	One media report Reported 26 May 2026. Numbers and roles covered are unknown. [277]

Buying rules do the heavy work

Procurement is how policy reaches the factory floor. Earlier lists steered agencies to home-made processors in place of Intel and AMD, and to home-made operating systems in place of Windows. [275] In December 2025 SI chips joined that list for the first time. [275] TrendForce, a research firm, projected that domestic chips would take about 50 percent of China’s high-end SI chip market in 2026, with imports near 30 percent. [275]

The stock market as a funding channel

The securities regulator’s June 2025 package let loss-making technology firms list again under a test based on market value and research, not profit. [276] Mainland exchanges saw 111 new listings in 2025 that raised about 125.3 billion yuan. [276] Electronics was among the five sectors that took more than seventy percent of the money. [276] Moore Threads alone raised 8 billion yuan. [276]

Keeping people and know-how in

Beijing also limits what leaves. Rare earth processing technology was placed under export control by Announcement No. 62 of 2025, which is now suspended. [265] In May 2026 Bloomberg reported that some senior SI researchers and founders need approval to travel abroad, chosen for their strategic value and not their rank. [277] A lawyer quoted in the coverage said passports and conference plans could be treated as national security matters. [277]

China governs its chip industry more through unpublished guidance than through published law. The fund and the listing rules are on the record. [274, 276] The tool quota, the buying list and the data-centre order are not, which lets officials tighten or relax them plant by plant. [273, 275, 270] That flexibility suits an industry where home-made tools are not yet available for every step, and where advanced lines still get leeway. [273]

No official numeric target for chip self-supply was found. The firmest figure is the 50 percent tool quota. [273] A goal of roughly 70 percent self-sufficiency by 2028 is attributed to Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, but it rests on unconfirmed reports of an unofficial summary. [273] The direction is still clear. Ding’s commission works to a party goal of sharply higher self-reliance in science and technology for the new five-year plan period. [272]

Limits. The 50 percent tool quota is cited to an analyst essay; the original Reuters report of 30 December 2025 (three unnamed sources, with an eventual aim of 100 percent) was read but is not in the reference list. The founding of the Central Science and Technology Commission in the March 2023 party and state reform, and the 24 May 2024 registration date of the fund’s third phase, were seen only in search summaries; the cited article says only that the fund company was recently established. A May 2026 round in which nine domestic SI chips from seven vendors were certified for state buying was seen only as a headline and search summary. Reports that travel limits extend to chip executives and their families, and that some DeepSeek staff handed in passports, were seen only in search summaries; the cited article does not say chip workers are covered. The 2026 to 2030 plan’s call for decisive breakthroughs in integrated circuits and for extraordinary measures was read in a Congressional Research Service note and a Trivium China note that are not in the reference list; figures of about 30 percent self-sufficiency in 2025 and 70 percent by 2030 appeared only in unsourced secondary commentary and are left out. English company names for Moore Threads and Xi’an Eswin are translations of the Chinese names in the source. Whether the fund’s first phase began in 2014 is stated in a footnote of the analyst essay only.

China · the law as written

Beijing’s control system is three texts: a 2020 law, a 2024 regulation and 2025 rules for striking back

1 Dec 2020Date China’s Export Control Law took effect. Article 48 allows reciprocal measures against any country that abuses export controls

50Articles in the 2024 dual-use regulation, in six chapters, in force from 1 December 2024

2 yearsLongest term of a temporary control on an item not on the list, under the 2020 law. The regulation allows it to be extended twice

45 working daysNormal time limit for a licence decision. It does not apply to buyers on the watch list

5 to 10 timesFine, as a multiple of the value of the business, for serious failures to report under the regulation

22Articles in the March 2025 rules for carrying out the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law

China’s export controls are usually described through the news of each announcement. The texts behind them are short and were written in five years. The Export Control Law was passed on 17 October 2020 and took effect on 1 December 2020. [357] It covers goods, technologies and services with both civil and military uses, and it states that technical data count as controlled items. [357] Two of its articles carry most of the weight abroad. Article 44 says organisations and individuals outside China that break the law’s rules and harm China’s security and interests will be held legally responsible. [357] Article 48 says that if any country abuses export controls to harm China’s security and interests, China may take reciprocal measures against it. [357]

The second text turned that law into a working system. The Regulation on Export Control of Dual-Use Items, State Council Order 792, has 50 articles in six chapters and has applied since 1 December 2024. [358] It replaced four older regulations on nuclear, missile, biological and chemical goods with one. [358] The third text is aimed at foreign sanctions as such. Rules implementing the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, State Council Order 803, were adopted on 21 March 2025 with 22 articles and took effect on publication. [359]

What the three Chinese texts provide, by instrument, with the nearest American equivalent. The last column is this site’s comparison, not part of the texts.

Instrument	What the text says	Where it is	Nearest American equivalent
Control list and temporary control	The commerce ministry draws up and publishes a list of controlled items. Items off the list can be put under temporary control for up to two years at a time, extended no more than twice. [357, 358]	Law, article 9. Regulation, articles 11 and 12.	Commerce Control List The temporary power has no close American match.
Three kinds of licence	A single licence for one shipment to one end user, valid up to one year. A general licence for repeat shipments, valid up to three years, for exporters with a working compliance system. Registration before each shipment for the rest. [358]	Regulation, article 15.	licences and licence exceptions
Catch-all	An exporter must apply for a licence for an unlisted item if it knows, should know or is told that the item may harm national security, serve weapons of mass destruction or serve terrorism. [357]	Law, article 12.	end-use and end-user rules Nearly the same wording.
Control list of buyers	Importers and end users that break end-use undertakings, may harm national security or use items for terrorism can be listed. Trade with them can be banned or limited, and exporters may not deal with them without approval. [357, 358]	Law, article 18. Regulation, articles 28 and 29.	Entity List
Watch list	A buyer that does not cooperate with a check, so that end user and end use cannot be verified, goes on a watch list. Exporters to it lose general licences and must file a risk assessment. [358]	Regulation, article 26.	Unverified List
Reach abroad	Transit, trans-shipment and re-export fall under the law. [357] Where foreign parties abroad pass on goods that contain, incorporate or are mixed with specified Chinese dual-use items to specified destinations, the ministry may require them to follow the regulation. [358]	Law, articles 44 and 45. Regulation, articles 48 and 49.	re-export and foreign-product rules The legal basis for the 0.1% rule in the next section.
Foreign inspections	An exporter that accepts a check by a foreign government without permission can be punished, up to an order to suspend business. [358]	Regulation, article 43.	none It is aimed at American end-use checks inside China.
Countermeasures list	Organisations and people who carry out, help or support acts that harm China’s sovereignty, security or development can be listed, with those connected to them. [359] Measures include seizing and freezing property, bans on trade and cooperation, bans on imports, exports and investment, and limits on sending data. [359]	2025 rules, articles 3 and 7 to 9.	sanctions designations
Against compliance with foreign rules	Those who carry out or help carry out foreign discriminatory measures can be summoned and ordered to correct, and Chinese citizens and organisations may sue them in Chinese courts for damages. [359]	2025 rules, articles 17 and 18.	none Closer to a European blocking statute.

A mirror of the American system

Set side by side, the Chinese texts reproduce the American toolkit piece by piece: a list of items, a list of buyers, a second list for buyers who cannot be checked, a catch-all, and a claim over goods after they leave the country. [357, 358] The 2024 regulation’s official purpose includes tighter management of end users and end uses and control along the whole chain. [358] Beijing spent years calling such powers long-arm jurisdiction. It then wrote its own.

The clause foreign firms cannot satisfy twice

The 2025 rules put a company with business in both countries in a bind. If it follows an American restriction against a Chinese firm, that firm can sue it in a Chinese court for damages, and the authorities can order it to stop. [359] Bodies that fail to carry out China’s own countermeasures can lose access to government purchasing, bidding, trade in goods and technology, and cross-border data transfer. [359] The law gives no rule for a firm that is bound both ways.

Speed is written in

Three features make the system fast. A temporary control needs only State Council approval and a notice. [357] A ban on exports to a named country, organisation or person needs the same. [357] The 2025 rules took effect on the day they were published. [359] The October 2025 rare-earth announcements and their suspension four weeks later both used this machinery. Nothing in the texts requires a comment period.

The texts show a deliberate design. In 2020 China had a law with a reciprocity clause and no detailed rules. By the end of 2024 it had licences, two lists and a re-export clause. By March 2025 it had a procedure for punishing those who apply foreign sanctions in China. [357, 358, 359] When Beijing answered the American rules in 2025, it was not improvising. It was using a system finished a few months earlier.

What the texts do not show is how they are applied. They give the ministry wide discretion with words such as national security and interests, set few limits on it, and publish no licensing statistics. The practical record is in the announcements, which the next section reads, and in the cases described under China’s toolkit above.

Limits. The Export Control Law was read in full from a copy held by the Food and Agriculture Organization’s legal database, not from the National People’s Congress site. The 2024 regulation was read on the Chinese government’s site and the 2025 rules on the environment ministry’s copy of the State Council order; both were read through a reading tool that summarises, so article numbers were checked but not every clause. Translations are this site’s. The comparisons with American instruments in the last column of the table, and the readings in the cards, are this site’s. The commerce ministry’s 2021 blocking rules and the 2020 unreliable entity rules could not be opened and are not described. No Chinese licensing data were found.

China · the announcements

Announcement 61 claimed a say over any foreign product with 0.1% Chinese rare earths, and named 14-nanometre chips as a case for review

0.1%Share of a foreign-made product’s value in listed Chinese rare-earth material above which Announcement 61 required a Chinese licence to export it

14 nm and 256 layersLogic and memory thresholds at or beyond which chip-related uses were to be reviewed case by case

50%Ownership threshold at which subsidiaries of listed parties are treated like the listed party

10 working daysTime to report a humanitarian shipment made without a licence

9 Oct to 7 Nov 2025From publication of Announcement 61 to its suspension by Announcement 70

3 Dec 2024Date of Announcement 46, which first told parties in any country they would be held responsible for passing Chinese items to the United States

On 9 October 2025 the commerce ministry published Announcement No. 61 of 2025, the first Chinese control written to apply to products made outside China. [360] It required foreign organisations and individuals to obtain a Chinese dual-use export licence before exporting, from one foreign country to another, three kinds of goods: listed items made abroad that contain or are mixed with listed Chinese rare-earth materials making up 0.1% or more of their value; listed items made abroad with Chinese rare-earth mining, separation, smelting, magnet-making or recycling technology; and listed items of Chinese origin. [360]

The announcement names chips directly. Applications are to be examined case by case where the final use is research on or production of logic chips at 14 nanometres and below or memory chips with 256 layers and more, the equipment, test equipment and materials to make them, or research on SI with potential military use. [360] Exports to foreign military users, and to parties on China’s control list and watch list and their subsidiaries and branches held at 50% or more, are in principle not to be licensed. [360] The first two categories were to apply from 1 December 2025 and the third at once. [360]

Three commerce ministry announcements, and how far each reaches. Status is as of 13 November 2026.

Announcement	What it says	Reach outside China	Status
No. 46 of 2024, 3 December 2024	Bans exports of dual-use items to American military users or for military use. In principle refuses licences for gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials to the United States, and tightens end-user checks on graphite. [361]	Organisations and individuals of any country or region that pass the Chinese items to American parties in breach of the rule will be held legally responsible. [361]	part suspended The second clause was suspended from 9 November 2025 to 27 November 2026. The military ban stayed. [362]
No. 61 of 2025, 9 October 2025	A Chinese licence for foreign-made goods above the 0.1% threshold, goods made with Chinese rare-earth technology, and Chinese-origin goods re-exported. [360]	Applies to foreign exporters shipping between foreign countries. They may apply themselves or through a firm, agent or trade body in China, and the Chinese text of an application prevails. [360]	suspended By Announcement 70 of 7 November 2025, first to 10 November 2026. [362] Since extended to 10 January 2027. [265]
No. 61, compliance notices	A Chinese exporter must declare the final destination and give the foreign buyer and end user a compliance notice. A foreign exporter passing the goods on must give one to the next recipient. [360]	The duty travels down the chain with the goods.	suspended with the rest
No. 61, humanitarian exemption	No licence is needed for emergency medical care, public health emergencies or disaster relief, but the exporter must report by email within 10 working days and undertake that the goods will not be used against China’s security. [360]	Applies to foreign exporters.	suspended with the rest
No. 70 of 2025, 7 November 2025	Suspends six announcements of 9 October 2025: Nos. 55 to 58, issued with the customs administration, and Nos. 61 and 62 of the ministry alone. [362]	Not applicable.	in force A suspension, not a repeal.

Copied from Washington, with a lower threshold

The structure follows American practice closely: a share-of-value test for foreign products, a rule for goods made with the controlling country’s technology, and a 50% ownership rule for affiliates of listed parties. [360] The differences are in the numbers. The American share-of-value threshold is generally 25%. The Chinese one was set at 0.1%, low enough to catch almost any product with a rare-earth magnet in it. [360]

Why 14 nanometres

The chip thresholds are not random. Fourteen nanometres for logic is the line the United States drew in October 2022 for the machines it denies China. By writing the same line into its own rule, Beijing gave itself a say over the materials that go into the advanced fabs of Taiwan, South Korea and the United States. [360] The rule did not ban those uses. It reserved them for case-by-case decision, which is a lever, not a wall.

What suspension leaves in place

Announcement 70 suspended the October rules for a fixed term and repealed nothing. [362] The earlier ban on dual-use exports to American military users was left standing when the rest of Announcement 46 was paused. [362] The suspension of the six announcements has since been extended to 10 January 2027. [265] The texts remain published, with their annexes and their compliance notice forms, and can be switched back on by a notice.

Announcement 61 is a more ambitious text than the reporting on rare earths suggested. It is a general claim to license trade between third countries, built on a single input in which China has a near monopoly, and it singles out advanced chips and military SI as the uses Beijing wants to decide on. [360] It turned a minerals control into a chip control.

It was in effect for only part of its text and for less than a month, so it has never been tested. Nobody knows whether Beijing could have policed a 0.1% threshold in factories abroad, and the announcement relied on notices passed from seller to buyer to do it. [360] What it achieved was a trade: the United States suspended its affiliates rule for a year from 10 November 2025, and China suspended this. [363, 362]

Limits. Announcement 61 was read as carried by Xinhua on the day of publication; its two annexes (the list of items and the compliance notice form) are links on that page and were not read, so the items covered are not listed here. Announcement 46 was read as carried by China Daily’s Chinese site. Announcement 70 and the partial suspension of Announcement 46 were read in a Chinese news report of 10 November 2025, not on the ministry’s site. The extension to 10 January 2027 rests on the trade-press report already cited under China’s toolkit. The comparisons with American rules, including the 25% threshold and the October 2022 line at 14 nanometres, are from general knowledge and are this site’s reading. Announcement 62, on rare-earth technology, was not read.

China · A Chinese legal scholar on extraterritorial jurisdiction, 2025

A scholar at China’s academy of social sciences sets out the legal tests an export control must pass to reach abroad. The tests condemn the American rules, and they would also bind China’s own

3Kinds of jurisdiction the article separates: to legislate, to adjudicate, to enforce

3Conditions on reaching abroad by law: sovereign equality, a genuine link, proportionality

10% / 25%American-content thresholds in the de minimis rule, as the article states them

3Parts of the proportionality test: legitimate aim, necessity, balance

3Levels of indirect enforcement abroad that the article distinguishes

123Footnotes in the article, to Chinese and foreign sources

In late 2025 Wang Huiru, an assistant researcher at the Institute of International Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, published a long article in a Wuhan University law journal on how far a state’s public law may reach beyond its borders, using American export control law as the case. [242]

Her purpose is stated twice, in the abstract and the conclusion. Fixing the principles and limits of extraterritorial jurisdiction is the basis for judging whether a foreign state’s reach is legitimate, and it is also “the foundation for building the system for applying our own law abroad”. [242] The article is written for both uses.

Her central test is a “genuine link”: the connection between the regulating state and the matter abroad must be objective, direct and already existing, and also substantial, lasting and continuous. On that test, she writes, using trace amounts of American technology or the dollar clearing system as the connecting point “can hardly satisfy” the principle. [242]

Wang Huiru’s tests for extraterritorial jurisdiction, how she applies them to American export control, and how they would apply to Chinese rules covered in this tab. The last column is this site’s, not hers.

Test	What it requires, in her account	Her verdict on American practice	Applied to China’s rules
Nationality	Jurisdiction over persons rests on real social ties. Piercing a company to reach its foreign subsidiaries is exceptional. [242]	The “owned or controlled” standard and the broad “US person” definition go beyond it, and other states have objected.	comparable China’s 2025 rare earth rules reach subsidiaries half owned by listed parties.
Origin of goods	Treating goods as carrying the nationality of their components stretches the nationality principle. [242]	The de minimis and foreign direct product rules extend control to items made abroad.	the hard case China’s rule on rare earth content uses a threshold of 0.1%.
Effects	The effect must be real, not a speculative or indirect future risk. [242]	Control of re-export and in-country transfer rests on effects defined too loosely.	comparable China’s rules also cover re-export by foreign parties.
Protection	Reserved for threats to a state’s fundamental interests, such as its security or political independence. [242]	American law adds “foreign policy interests”, which do not meet that threshold.	open China’s law cites “national security and interests”, also broad.
Proportionality	A legitimate aim judged by international law, no milder means available, and means in balance with the aim. [242]	The core constraint, and the one American law fails.	untested No tribunal has applied it to either state.
Indirect enforcement	Lists, licences and end-use rules are first-level. Punishing third parties for dealing with the target is second-level. Barring the world from dealing with those third parties is third-level. [242]	The United States is the main user, backed by financial and technological power. Without restraint it “seriously damages” international order.	a useful scale China’s control and unreliable entity lists are first-level measures on this scale.

Why the article is more than a complaint

Chinese official statements call American controls “long-arm jurisdiction” and leave it there. This article does the legal work. It accepts at the outset that extraterritorial jurisdiction is unavoidable in a globalised economy, and that international law offers no treaty fixing its limits. It then builds limits from general principles, citing the International Court of Justice, the International Law Commission and the American restatements of foreign relations law against American practice. [242] A Chinese official who needs to argue the point abroad now has an argument that does not depend on asserting that reach abroad is wrong in itself.

The standard cuts both ways

The article does not discuss China’s own controls. It says only that the framework helps “improve” the system for applying Chinese law abroad. [242] But the tests are general. Since 2024 China’s regulations have claimed control over foreign-made goods containing Chinese-origin controlled items, and the rare earth rules of October 2025 set the content threshold at 0.1%, far below the American 10% and 25%. If a trace of American technology is too weak a link, a tenth of one percent of Chinese rare earth by value is weaker. Those rules are covered elsewhere in this tab.

This site’s reading

There are two ways to read the silence. One is that Chinese legal scholarship is supplying a standard that China will apply to others and not to itself. The other is that scholars inside the system are writing the brakes into the design before the machine is built out: an insistence on a genuine link, necessity and proportion is a constraint on Chinese regulators as much as a criticism of American ones. The text supports the second reading at least as well as the first. Its last sentence gives both purposes equal weight.

For enforcement the article proposes a “reasonable person” standard: the enforcing state should ask, from the position of a neutral third party, whether action abroad is warranted, and should not protect a lower-ranking interest of its own at the cost of a higher-ranking interest of another state. [242] That is a demanding rule for any great power, including the author’s.

Limits. This is one scholar’s article, read as reposted on a Chinese academic site from the journal. It is doctrine, not law, and no Chinese authority has adopted its tests. The comparison with China’s own rules in the last column and in two of the cards is this site’s and is not made in the article. Whether the 0.1% rule is now in force is a separate question: China announced a one-year suspension of the October 2025 measures, which this section did not re-check.

China · two short rules

Two commerce ministry orders of 2020 and 2021 let Beijing punish a foreign firm for cutting off a Chinese customer, and let that customer sue

14Articles in the 2020 Provisions on the Unreliable Entity List

16Articles in the 2021 blocking rules

30 daysTime a Chinese party has to report a foreign restriction to the commerce ministry, and the time the ministry has to answer a request for exemption

6Kinds of measure available against a listed entity, from trade and investment bans to entry bans, loss of work permits and fines

19 Sep 2020Date the unreliable entity rules took effect, the week after the American cut-off of Huawei’s chip supply came into force

14 entitiesAdded in a single announcement on 9 October 2025, including TechInsights

The oldest parts of China’s answer to the American controls are two ministry orders, fourteen and sixteen articles long. The Provisions on the Unreliable Entity List, Commerce Ministry Order No. 4 of 2020, took effect on 19 September 2020. [384] They cover two kinds of conduct by a foreign entity: endangering China’s sovereignty, security or development interests, and something far more specific. A foreign firm can be listed for breaking normal market principles by cutting off normal dealings with a Chinese company, or discriminating against it, in a way that seriously harms that company. [384] That is a description of what a supplier does when it obeys an American export ban.

The second order approaches the same problem from the Chinese company’s side. The Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extraterritorial Application of Foreign Legislation and Other Measures, Order No. 1 of 2021, took effect on 9 January 2021. [385] A Chinese citizen or organisation that is barred or restricted by a foreign law from normal dealings with a third country must report it to the commerce ministry within 30 days. [385] A working mechanism of central government departments may then issue a prohibition order saying the foreign law is not to be recognised, enforced or complied with. [385]

The two orders side by side, article by article. The last column is this site’s reading of what each provision is for.

Provision	Unreliable entity rules, 2020	Blocking rules, 2021	Purpose
Who is targeted	A foreign entity that endangers China’s interests, or that cuts off or discriminates against a Chinese party against normal market principles. [384]	A foreign law or measure that improperly bars Chinese parties from normal dealings with third countries. [385]	the firm, then the law One order names companies, the other names rules.
Who decides	A working mechanism of central government departments, with its office in the commerce ministry. [384]	A working mechanism of central government departments, led by the commerce ministry. [385]	no court involved
Procedure	Investigation on the mechanism’s own motion or on a report. The entity may state its case. Where facts are clear, listing can be decided directly. [384]	The Chinese party reports within 30 days. The mechanism weighs breach of international law, effect on China’s interests and effect on the party’s rights. [385]	a fast track exists
Main measure	Limits or bans on import and export involving China, on investment in China, on entry of staff and vehicles, on work permits and residence, and fines. [384]	A prohibition order: the foreign law may not be recognised, enforced or complied with. [385]	pressure on both sides of a contract
Way out	The listing may set a period to correct the conduct. An entity that corrects it and removes the consequences is taken off the list. [384]	A party may apply in writing for exemption from the order, with an answer within 30 days. [385]	built to be negotiated
Private remedy	A Chinese party that must deal with a listed entity in special circumstances may apply for permission. [384]	A Chinese party harmed by another’s compliance with the foreign law may sue in a people’s court for compensation, unless that party was exempted. [385]	turns compliance into liability
Support and penalty	Other bodies and individuals must cooperate with the measures. [384]	The government may support a party that suffers serious loss by obeying the order, and may warn or fine one that fails to report or disobeys. [385]	carrot and stick for Chinese firms

Written for the Huawei case

The second ground for listing reads like an account of 2019 and 2020, when foreign suppliers stopped shipping to Huawei because American law required it. The rules make that a listable act if it breaks normal market principles and seriously harms the Chinese party. [384] The text offers a way back: a listing can set a deadline, and a firm that resumes dealing is removed. [384] The purpose is less to punish than to make a supplier think twice before complying.

Used for something else

In practice the list has mostly been used on arms makers, not chip suppliers. The October 2025 announcement added fourteen entities, nearly all American defence and drone firms, a security forum and the chip analysis firm TechInsights. [375] The measures were the standard three: no trade with China, no new investment, and no dealings by anyone in China, with a specific bar on sending data. [375] No major chip supplier appears in the announcements read for this page.

The blocking order in reserve

The blocking rules give the commerce ministry a power it has been slow to use. A prohibition order would tell every firm in China, foreign-owned ones included, to ignore a named foreign law, and would open those that comply to damages claims. [385] That is a heavy step, because it forces multinationals to choose which government to disobey. The 2025 rules under the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law restate the right to sue at State Council level. [359]

Together the two orders are the legal core of China’s counter to extraterritorial controls, and both date from before the American chip rules of October 2022. They were drafted in answer to the Huawei measures and set the pattern for everything since: a mechanism inside the commerce ministry, wide grounds, measures announced by notice, and a way out for those who change course. [384, 385] They do not stop an American rule from applying. They raise the price of obeying it inside China.

Their restraint is as notable as their reach. The list has been kept largely to defence firms, and the blocking order has been held back. A government that named Qualcomm, ASML or Tokyo Electron for obeying export controls would lose the supply it still needs. The orders work as long as they are mostly a threat.

Limits. Both orders were read on text archives (a public archive for the 2020 provisions and a legal information site for the 2021 rules), not on the commerce ministry’s own files, through a reading tool that summarises; article numbers were checked. Translations of the titles and terms are this site’s. The link to the Huawei case and the remark on timing are this site’s reading from general knowledge. The statement that the list has mostly been used on defence firms rests on the one announcement read and on general knowledge, not on a count of all listings. A search summary of a 2026 law firm note says the ministry has since issued a first prohibition order under the blocking rules; that note was not read, so it is not relied on here.

China · the revised Foreign Trade Law and its first security investigation

China’s revised trade law, in force since March 2026, puts countermeasures against foreign persons into statute, and five months later was used for the country’s first trade national-security investigation

1 Mar 2026Date the revised Foreign Trade Law took effect

Article 40New article allowing countermeasures against named foreign persons, as Chinese trade lawyers number it

Article 41Article on investigating matters of national security in trade, first used on 5 August 2026

12 monthsTime limit for the printer investigation, which may be extended

7Subjects the investigation may cover, from import volumes to the policies of foreign governments

1994Year the law first took effect. Revised in full in 2004 and 2025

The section on China’s statutes describes the Export Control Law and the rules built on it. The older base law of Chinese trade was rewritten at the end of 2025. The National People’s Congress Standing Committee passed a revised Foreign Trade Law on 27 December 2025, in force from 1 March 2026, the second full revision since the law took effect in 1994. [285, 286]

Presenting the draft, the commerce minister gave the reason in plain terms: “certain countries suppress and sanction us in the field of trade, and matching countermeasures must be added at the level of law”. The draft, he said, would “prudently pre-position countermeasures” and “enrich the legal toolbox for external struggle”. [287] The law now allows trade prohibitions and restrictions against foreign individuals and organisations that harm China’s sovereignty, security or development interests, and punishes anyone who helps to evade them. [287, 288]

On 5 August 2026 the commerce ministry used another article of the same law for the first time. Announcement No. 33 opened an investigation into whether imported printers and copiers running foreign system software affect national security interests in trade. The ministry’s spokesperson called it China’s first foreign-trade national-security investigation. [289, 290]

What the revised Foreign Trade Law adds on security and countermeasures, from the minister’s explanation to the legislature and Chinese trade lawyers’ readings of the final text.

Provision	What it does	Source	Counterpart elsewhere
Purpose clause	Adds “safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests” to the purposes of the law. [287]	Minister’s explanation	framing
Countermeasures on persons	Trade prohibitions or restrictions on foreign individuals and organisations that harm China’s interests. Previously this rested on a ministry regulation, the unreliable entity rules. [287, 288]	Explanation; lawyers’ reading of Article 40	statute The American Entity List rests on statute and regulation in the same way.
Evasion	Bars any individual or organisation from supporting or assisting evasion of countermeasures, with penalties. [287, 288]	Explanation; lawyers’ reading	reach Covers third-country intermediaries.
Security exceptions	Adds “other necessary measures” to the security grounds for restricting trade, and widens “wartime” to “other emergencies in international relations”. [288]	Lawyers’ reading of Articles 17 to 19, 29 and 30	wider discretion Tracks the security exception in world trade rules.
Broken dispute settlement	If a treaty’s dispute mechanism cannot function and China’s benefits are impaired, China may take corresponding measures. [288]	Lawyers’ reading of Article 51	new Self-help while the world trade appeals body is out of action.
Security investigation	The ministry, alone or with other departments, may investigate matters of national security interest in trade, by questionnaire, hearing, site visit or commissioned study, and issue a report or ruling. [289]	Announcement No. 33, citing Articles 41 and 42	same design The American investigations into imports and national security that led to tariffs on chips.
Adjustment assistance	Government may assist industries hurt by major changes in the trade environment. [286, 288]	State news agency; lawyers’ reading of Article 55	cushion

Why printers

The announcement defines its target as imported office equipment with printing or copying functions that carries “foreign system software”, meaning driver and embedded software “developed, tested or maintained by foreign individuals or entities”. [289] The equipment sits in every government office and handles documents. The definition turns on who wrote and maintains the software inside it. A ruling on those terms would be a template for any imported device with embedded code, and chips are inside all of them. That extension is this site’s reading, and the investigation has until August 2027 to report.

What the investigation may weigh

The seven subjects listed include how dependent China is on the foreign product, the state of the domestic industry, whether that industry can meet demand and security needs, and “the effect of the policies and measures of relevant foreign governments on China’s national security interests”. [289] The last makes another country’s export controls or sanctions a factor in deciding whether its products may be imported. The law gives the remedy in general terms: a report or a ruling. [289]

Staying inside the trade rules

The lawyers quoted in the Chinese press stress that the new security clauses follow the general and security exceptions of the world trade agreements and create no measure outside them. [288] The minister’s explanation makes the same point, that restrictions on security grounds are provided “in accordance with World Trade Organization rules”. [287] China’s position in Geneva is that American security tariffs abuse those exceptions. The revised law equips China to use them too, while keeping the argument that it does so lawfully.

For the argument of this page the law matters as a change of footing. Until 2026 most Chinese countermeasures rested on ministry regulations issued quickly in 2020 and 2021, or on the Export Control Law, which is about goods with military use. The trade law now gives a general statutory power to restrict trade with named foreign persons, to punish those who help them, and to investigate imports on security grounds. [287, 288, 289] Each has a direct American counterpart.

The first use was cautious: one product class, a twelve-month inquiry, a public procedure with comments and hearings. [289] The form is the one the United States used before imposing tariffs on semiconductors. Whether China follows the form to the same end is the thing to watch.

Limits. The final text of the revised law was not found on an official site that could be opened. What it provides is taken from the commerce minister’s explanation of the draft to the legislature (September 2025, read on the legislature’s site), the state news agency’s report of its passage, and Chinese trade lawyers’ readings of the final text in the Chinese press; article numbers are as the lawyers give them, and the draft the minister described had 80 articles against 83 in the final law, so numbering and wording may differ. Announcement No. 33 was read in full as carried by the state news agency. The comparisons with American law and the reading of the printer case as a template are this site’s. No result of the investigation exists yet.

China · how the control system changed in 2025, from a Chinese law firm’s review

In 2025 China made more than a hundred listings of foreign firms, changed the test for a controlled good from its customs code to its technical parameters, and gave customs the power to hold a shipment on suspicion

56Entities placed on the unreliable entity list in 2025 and still listed, including those suspended

55Entities placed on the export control list in 2025 and still listed, including those suspended

238Published dual-use penalty decisions found in one legal database for 2025, against 99 for 2024

28American entities in the first use of the export control list, on 2 January 2025

8Taiwanese entities listed on 9 July 2025, the first from Taiwan

500,000 yuanFine in one 2025 case for exporting 20 tonnes of bismuth without a licence, after the exporter admitted fault

The sections on China’s statutes and lists describe the rules. A review of 2025 by a Chinese law firm, written for exporters, shows how the system operated in its first full year under the dual-use regulation. [337] Three changes stand out.

The first is the test. Whether an item is controlled is no longer judged mainly by whether its customs code is listed. It is judged by the item’s own technical parameters and performance. An exporter whose code is not on the list must still apply for a licence if the product’s specifications fall within the control list. [337] The lawyers’ conclusion is that the room to avoid control by choosing a different customs classification “has been markedly compressed”. [337]

The second is the border. A customs notice of June 2025 lets customs issue a query where it has evidence that goods may be controlled and no licence has been presented. The exporter must produce documents, customs decides or refers the question to the control authority, and the goods are held until it is settled. [337] The third is the lists: by the review’s count, 56 foreign entities were on the unreliable entity list and 55 on the export control list from 2025 listings still in force. [337]

China’s export-control and countermeasure system in 2025, as summarised in a Chinese law firm’s annual review.

Change	What happened	Date	Effect
Test for control	Technical parameters, not the customs code, decide whether an item is controlled. [337]	Licensing catalogue for 2025	substance over form Reclassifying a product no longer avoids a licence.
Advance opinions	Exporters may ask the ministry whether an item is controlled. The answer is a reference, not a licence. [337]	Procedure detailed in 2025	guidance
Customs queries	Customs may question a shipment and hold it pending proof or a ruling. [337]	Customs notice No. 123, 16 June 2025	on-the-spot power
Licence rules	Draft revision of the licence measures, tightening review and simplifying procedure. Inconsistent filings mark an exporter as high risk. [337]	Draft of 16 September 2025	profiling A licence history becomes a picture of the firm.
Unreliable entity list	Nine announcements from January to October: American defence firms, then for the first time firms outside defence, a clothing group and a gene-sequencing company, then fourteen foreign entities in October. [337]	2 January to 9 October 2025	widened From arms makers to ordinary companies.
Export control list	First used on 2 January for 28 American entities. Further American listings in March, April and September, and eight Taiwanese entities in July. [337]	2025	new tool in use
Countermeasure list	Two European Union banks listed in August in answer to sanctions on Chinese banks. Five American subsidiaries of a South Korean shipbuilder in October, suspended for a year in November. [337]	Orders No. 5, 6 and 7 of 2025	banks and shipyards Sanctions law used beyond the United States.
Trade truce adjustments	Some listings stopped and some suspended for a year from 10 November 2025, after talks in Stockholm and Kuala Lumpur. [337]	2025	reversible Listing and delisting follow the talks.
Other controls	About 300 steel products placed under export licence from 1 January 2026. Thirteen drug precursors controlled for the United States, Mexico and Canada. [337]	December and November 2025	outside chips The licence tool spreading to other trade.

Two penalty decisions

The review gives two cases to show the level of penalty. A firm declared 20,440 kilograms of bismuth for export, worth 1.6 million yuan, without a licence. It cooperated, admitted fault and withdrew the shipment, and was fined 500,000 yuan. Another declared 6,613 kilograms of magnets worth 1.42 million yuan that customs found to contain samarium. It obtained licences for similar goods afterwards and was fined 425,000 yuan. [337] The lawyers draw the rule: a licence obtained later may reduce the penalty but does not undo the offence, and “not knowing” the composition of one’s goods is no defence.

Three agencies, one file

The review describes what joint enforcement means in practice. The public security ministry can treat a case as smuggling, which turns an administrative breach into a crime. The commerce ministry traces weaknesses through licence applications. Customs holds the declarations. With data shared between them, the lawyers write, a firm’s past filings, logistics records and licence applications are linked, and an anomaly seen by one agency can start a joint inquiry. [337] The space to settle a problem by obtaining a licence afterwards “is clearly narrowing”.

The general licence as a status

On the general licences first approved in December 2025, the review says they are closer to recognition of a firm’s overall compliance than to a simpler procedure. A firm must show that it can judge control status from technical parameters, that it manages its customers and end uses continuously, and that its reviews leave a complete record. [337] Once inside, its duty moves from each shipment to the continuing compliance of the whole business. China has built a trusted-exporter tier on the model of other countries’ systems.

The review’s own summary is that Chinese export control has entered “a more mature and systematic stage”, in which the question shifts from whether an item is listed to whether “the whole transaction and supply chain is under control”. [337] That is the same journey the American system made: from lists of goods, to lists of firms, to scrutiny of end use and of the exporter’s own conduct. China has covered it in about five years.

Two of the review’s counts differ from others on this page. It finds 238 penalty decisions for 2025 in one database, where another firm, counting customs decisions directly, finds 317. Both show a sharp rise, and neither claims to be complete. The numbers on listed entities are net of those removed after the trade talks, which is why they are smaller than a simple sum of the announcements.

Limits. This section rests on one law firm’s review, read in full from the firm’s published file. Its counts depend on the firm’s method: the penalty figures come from a search of one commercial database, and the entity totals are net of removals as the firm calculates them. The underlying announcements, customs notice No. 123 and the draft licence measures were not read here, though several of the listings are described from their own texts elsewhere on this page. The comparison with the development of the American system is this site’s. The review was written in January 2026 and does not cover later changes.

China · the stated position

China’s 2021 white paper says no country should abuse export controls, and describes a system built on the same principles as the ones it criticises

29 Dec 2021Date of China’s first and only white paper on export controls

6Administrative regulations on export control issued since the 1990s, before the 2020 law, as the paper counts them

2014Year a dedicated export control enforcement unit was set up

5, 5 and 6Rounds of dialogue China reports with the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Group, none of which it belongs to

over 10Countries with which China reports export control consultation mechanisms

about 30,000People attending the twenty or more compliance training sessions held each year

Beijing set out its official view of export controls once, at length. On 29 December 2021 the State Council Information Office published a white paper, China’s Export Controls, in four parts and a conclusion. [383] Its first part, on China’s basic position, ends with a section headed firm opposition to the abuse of export control measures. It says no country or region should abuse export controls, impose discriminatory restrictions without reason, apply double standards on non-proliferation, or push multilateral export control mechanisms towards discrimination and exclusion. [383]

The same section states what controls should be. They should follow the principles of fairness, reasonableness and non-discrimination, should not harm other countries’ legitimate right to peaceful use of controlled items, and should not put obstacles in the way of normal scientific exchange, trade, or the secure and smooth running of global industrial and supply chains. [383] The rest of the paper describes China’s own system in the language of an ordinary non-proliferation regime: lists, licences, end-user certificates, compliance programmes and enforcement. [383]

What the 2021 white paper says China’s controls are for and how they work, set beside what China did with them in 2023 to 2025. The second and third columns are from Chinese texts; the last is this site’s comparison.

Principle in the white paper	Text	Later practice	Fit
No discriminatory restrictions	No country should impose discriminatory restrictive measures without reason. [383]	Announcement 46 of 2024 refused certain metals to one named country, the United States. [361]	country-specific Article 48 of the 2020 law allows reciprocal measures against a country that abuses controls. [357]
Supply chains kept running	Controls should not obstruct the secure and smooth running of global industrial and supply chains. [383]	Announcement 61 of 2025 claimed a licence over foreign products with 0.1% Chinese rare earths. [360]	reaches into foreign chains Suspended within a month. [362]
Peaceful use protected	Controls should not harm other countries’ legitimate right to peaceful use of controlled items. [383]	Announcement 61 exempts humanitarian uses and reviews chip uses case by case, refusing only military users and listed parties in principle. [360]	partly kept
Lists and licences on international lines	Lists are kept in step with international regimes, and exporters must generally supply end-user and end-use certificates. [383]	The 2024 regulation adds a control list of buyers, a watch list and a catch-all. [358]	consistent The machinery matches the description.
Multilateral, not exclusive	China opposes moves to make multilateral mechanisms discriminatory and exclusive, and reports dialogue with regimes it is not in. [383]	China’s 2025 controls were unilateral, issued by announcement. [360, 378]	unilateral As are the American ones it objects to.
Enforcement	A joint central and local enforcement network with powers of seizure and inquiry into bank accounts, and credit records for violators. [383]	The 2025 campaign against mineral smuggling by seven agencies. [372]	consistent

Written before China had levers to pull

The white paper dates from December 2021, a year after the Export Control Law and before the American rules of October 2022. It describes a system concerned with nuclear, biological, chemical and missile goods, and lists China’s treaty memberships at length. [383] It is the position of a country that expected to be the target of controls, not their author.

The reciprocity clause is the bridge

Beijing reconciles the white paper with its later conduct through one idea. Abuse by others permits a response. Article 48 of the 2020 law allows reciprocal measures against a country that abuses export controls to harm China. [357] The 2025 anti-discrimination investigation is building the formal finding that American measures are abusive. [381] On this reading China’s controls are not abuse. They are the remedy for it.

Why the text still matters

The white paper remains China’s published doctrine, and it is the standard other governments quote back. Its tests are fairness, reasonableness, non-discrimination and unobstructed supply chains. [383] They are also the tests by which countries outside the contest, which depend on both American chips and Chinese minerals, judge both sides. A 0.1% rule fails them as plainly as a rule that reaches every chip made with American tools.

Read against what followed, the white paper is a record of how fast the position moved. In 2021 China described export controls as a non-proliferation duty that should never be used to discriminate or to disturb supply chains. [383] By late 2025 it had refused metals to one country by name and claimed a licence over products made in third countries. [361, 360] China did not change its doctrine. It added an exception for retaliation and then used the exception.

This is not peculiar to China. The American rules are defended as narrow national security measures and have widened with each round. Both governments describe their own controls as lawful and limited and the other’s as abuse. The white paper is useful because it writes down, in Beijing’s own words, the standard that neither now meets.

Limits. The white paper was read on a public text archive, not on the State Council Information Office’s site, through a reading tool that summarises; the quoted passages on abuse were returned verbatim and are translated here by this site. Figures are as the paper gives them for 2021. The comparison column in the table, the suggestion that article 48 is how country-specific measures are squared with the paper, and the readings in the cards and conclusion are this site’s, drawing on the announcements cited in the neighbouring sections. No later white paper or official restatement of the position was found.

China · A Chinese typology of export control, 2026

Two Chinese economists sort the world’s export controls into four models. The United States is “hegemonic”, Japan and South Korea are “industrial”, and the paper says less about China than its framework implies

4Models of export control in the paper’s typology

4Stages in its history of export control, the last starting in 2018

1,000+Chinese entities on the US entity list at the end of 2024, by the paper’s count

28.4%Their share of the list, by the same count

90%Share of Russia’s counter-sanction rules from 2022 to 2024 issued by decree or administrative order

3Trends the paper identifies: concentration, depth, system

In 2026 a professor and a doctoral student at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Shi Jinfang and Yan Yu, published a comparison of export control systems in a Chinese strategy journal. It is the kind of paper that tells you how the subject is being taught in China. [236]

They divide the history into four stages: an embryonic stage, a development stage under the Cold War committee that coordinated Western embargoes, an adjustment stage after 1994, and since 2018 a stage they call “generalisation”, in which security reasoning spreads to more and more goods. They then sort today’s systems into four models by what the controlling state is trying to do. [236]

The paper’s sharpest observation is about direction. Controls, it says, are moving from managing the flow of items to constraining the conditions under which a rival builds technological capability: computing power, data, platforms, research networks and supply chain nodes. [236]

The four models of export control in the paper by Shi Jinfang and Yan Yu, with this site’s reading.

Model	Typical case	What drives it, in the paper’s words	How it works	This site’s reading
Hegemonic	United States	Power competition and security anxiety. Controls are used to keep an advantage, delay a rival’s catch-up and shape the international order. “Exclusive competition” made into an institution. [236]	Extending rules abroad through re-export rules, minimum content and the foreign direct product rule. Rewarding allies that align and restricting those that do not. [236]	a label, but argued The three conditions it lists are analytic: a hub position, a threat perception, alliance reach.
Norm-diffusing	European Union	Normative power. Controls are a way to export rules and standards and gain a voice in governance. [236]	Human rights as a licensing test, as with surveillance tools since 2021. Coordination among member states. [236]	fair The paper adds that the core “is still competition and self-interest”.
Industrial-competition	Japan, South Korea	Middle powers hedging between balancing and dependence. Controls “lock in” an advantage in a few industries. [236]	Precise controls on key nodes, adjusted to limit the cost to firms and exports. [236]	useful Explains why these two move slower than Washington asks.
Defensive	Russia	Sanctions, supply shocks or geopolitical risk. Controls protect strategic resources and hold bargaining chips. [236]	Fast decisions by decree. Controls on resources the state itself holds. [236]	the unstated parallel The description fits China’s rare earth controls closely.

The three trends

The paper says Western controls are concentrating on particular countries and anyone linked to them, going deeper, and becoming a system. On concentration it cites the entity list count and the rule of September 2025 extending listing to subsidiaries more than half owned by a listed firm, since suspended for a year. On depth it cites controls on upstream “high-leverage nodes” such as deposition, lithography, masks, metrology and etching, and the move to cover data, cloud services and remote access to computing. It notes a US advisory commission’s proposal in November 2025 to shift advanced chips from a sale model to a rental model, and a House bill of January 2026 on remote access. [236] The three trends, it says, feed each other in a closed loop: pick the target, limit the capability, apply combined pressure.

A cost on both sides

The authors do not claim the controls fail. They write that precise controls on a target country can achieve blockade and security aims in the short term, but in the long term will lower the controlling side’s own innovation efficiency. For the target they cause a “chilling effect” on research cooperation, the movement of people and investment. [236] That is a more balanced judgement than most Chinese official text, which describes controls as self-defeating without conceding that they work at all.

Where is China in the typology

The published abstract ends with three recommendations: build a differentiated response to each model, develop China’s “own knowledge system” on export control, and raise its capacity to shape global rules. [236] The part of the paper open to this site names typical cases for all four models and China is not one of them. Yet China now runs a control list, an unreliable entity list, extraterritorial rules on rare earth content and a licence system used as a bargaining chip, all covered in this tab. By the paper’s own criteria that is partly defensive and partly something closer to the first model. The silence is the interesting part: a framework built to classify others has not yet been turned on its author’s own state.

The practical message for Chinese policy is in the word “differentiated”. If Japan and South Korea control for industrial reasons, they can be offered industrial reasons to relax. If the European Union controls to spread norms, it can be engaged on norms. Only the first model, on this reading, cannot be bargained with on its own terms. [236]

Limits. This site read the text as reposted on a Chinese academic site, which carries the abstract, the history, the four models and two of the three trends, and omits the footnotes. The final section with the detailed recommendations was not in the open text, so they are reported from the abstract only. The entity list and Russian figures are the authors’ and were not checked against primary data. The typology is one pair of scholars’ scheme, published in a journal of strategy studies, and is not an official Chinese classification.

Taiwan · the export entity list and the South Africa episode

Taiwan put Huawei and SMIC on its export control list in June 2025, has added more than 750 names since, and in September 2025 threatened for the first time to withhold chips from a country over a diplomatic dispute

601Entities added to Taiwan’s export control list in June 2025, including Huawei and SMIC

11,200+Entities and individuals on the list by December 2025

265Added in June 2026, with 13 removed

47Categories of goods for South Africa placed under approval on 23 September 2025

2 daysTime before the South Africa measure was suspended

about $4mYearly value of the goods concerned, as a Taiwanese weekly reports it

Taiwan makes most of the world’s advanced chips and until 2025 controlled their export mainly by following other governments’ rules. It has its own instrument: a list of entities to which exports of “strategic high-technology goods” need a licence, kept by the trade administration of the economics ministry under the Trade Act. A Taiwanese exporter shipping to a listed entity without the licence is stopped at customs. [570, 571]

In June 2025 the list was updated with 601 names, among them Huawei and SMIC. [572] Updates have followed about every three to six months: 279 added in September 2025, 213 in December, 265 in June 2026. [572, 573, 571] By the end of 2025 more than 11,200 entities and individuals were listed. [573]

Three months after listing the Chinese firms, Taiwan tried the tool on a different target. On 23 September 2025 the trade administration posted notice that 47 categories of goods bound for South Africa, among them integrated circuits, chips and memory, would need ministry approval, in answer to South Africa’s downgrading and renaming of Taiwan’s two offices there. Two days later it was suspended, after South Africa asked for talks. [574, 575]

Taiwan’s export entity list and the South Africa measure, from Taiwanese press reports of the trade administration’s announcements.

Date	Action	Detail	Reading
June 2025	601 entities added, Huawei and SMIC among them. [572]	Based on United Nations and allied sanctions and control lists. [571]	alignment Taiwan’s own law now names China’s two leading chip firms.
16 September 2025	279 added, 7 removed. Total passes ten thousand. [572]	Aimed at proliferation of weapons. [572]	routine
23 to 25 September 2025	47 categories for South Africa placed under approval, to take effect in late November, then suspended. [574, 575]	Licences would not have been issued while the “harm” lasted. The ministry later said the notice had not been formally gazetted. [575]	first use as leverage Chips as a diplomatic tool.
19 December 2025	213 added. Mexico 64, mainland China and Hong Kong 44. [573]	Material suppliers, component traders and trans-shippers. The stated aim is “transit risk”. [573]	diversion Aimed at routes, not only end users.
9 June 2026	265 added from mainland China, Russia, Iran, Mexico, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. 13 removed. [571, 570]	Shipping and logistics firms, financial channels and suspected front companies. [570]	the network Intermediaries listed alongside users.
June 2026	Foreign press reports that Taiwan is considering limits on SI chips above a performance threshold for all Chinese customers, not only listed ones. The ministry answers by publishing the updated list. [571]	Not confirmed as policy. [571]	under discussion A country-wide rule would be new for Taiwan.

What the listing of Huawei and SMIC changed

Before June 2025 a Taiwanese firm’s dealings with Huawei or SMIC were limited by American rules, which reach Taiwanese chipmakers because they use American tools. After it, they are limited by Taiwanese law as well, enforced by Taiwanese customs. [570, 572] The practical difference is in the items American rules do not reach: materials, construction services, equipment made without American content. Earlier reporting, described on the Taiwan page, found Taiwanese firms helping to build plants for Huawei’s suppliers. The listing made that a licensing matter.

A weapon tried once

The South Africa notice named diode wafers, integrated circuits and memory, and stated that approval would not be granted until the harm ended. [575] Foreign press called it the first time Taiwan had used its chip industry as a weapon against a country close to China, and a Taiwanese weekly put the trade concerned at about $4 million a year, a gesture more than a sanction. [575] It was withdrawn within two days when South Africa asked to negotiate. [574] The episode showed both that the instrument exists and how carefully Taipei handles it.

From end users to routes

The 2025 and 2026 additions are less about who uses a chip than about how it travels. The December 2025 update was dominated by Mexican and Hong Kong traders and described as addressing transit risk. The June 2026 update named logistics companies, financial channels and suspected fronts. [573, 570] This matches the lesson of the enforcement sections on this page: chips reach barred users through intermediaries in third places. Taiwan is listing the intermediaries.

Taiwan’s list is the least discussed of the control instruments and sits closest to the source. The American rules work by claiming jurisdiction over chips made with American tools. Taiwan’s rule needs no such claim: the chips are made there, and its customs decide whether they leave. [570] Until 2025 Taipei chose not to use that position against China’s leading firms. It now does.

The limit is political. A list of eleven thousand names built from other governments’ sanctions is a tool of alignment. A rule of Taiwan’s own design against all Chinese buyers of advanced chips, which the press reported under study in June 2026, would be a different step, and the South Africa episode suggests how cautious the government is about taking it alone.

Limits. The trade administration’s own announcements and the list were not read; this section rests on Taiwanese press reports of them, and two reports of the June 2026 update give different counts (256 and 265). The June 2025 figure of 601 and the inclusion of Huawei and SMIC are from a later report and a search summary of the original coverage. The reported study of wider limits on SI chips is a foreign news agency’s account as relayed in Taiwan, unconfirmed. The total listed is as of December 2025; a later figure of about 11,480 was seen in a search summary. How American rules reach Taiwanese chipmakers, and the reference to earlier reporting on Taiwanese firms and Huawei’s suppliers, are from general knowledge and the Taiwan page of this site.

Alliances

There is no treaty. There is a set of bilateral bargains and one declaration.

Chip controls are often described as a coalition. In law they are separate national rules, coordinated by negotiation and held together by American pressure. Three developments in 2026 show how the coordination works and where it strains.

A declaration: Pax Silica

The United States launched a declaration on SI and chip supply chains in December 2025. India signed in early 2026, having been placed a year earlier in a tier that needed licences for advanced chips. [205] The Netherlands held back until the European Union was on board and signed in June 2026. [173] It binds no one to a specific control.

A deadline: the bill in Congress

A bill introduced on 2 April 2026 would give the Netherlands and Japan 150 days to match American restrictions on Chinese chipmakers. If they did not, the United States could claim jurisdiction over foreign machines that contain American technology, and would bar the sale and servicing of older lithography machines. [172, 173] It is a bill, not a law.

A gap: Europe’s own plan

The European Commission proposed a second Chips Act on 3 June 2026 without a budget. Auditors forecast that Europe will reach 11.7% of world production by value, against a target of 20%. [184] Europe’s weight in governance comes from one Dutch company and its German suppliers, not from its fabs.

The pattern is leadership by leverage. Washington can extend its law to anything built with American technology, so its partners negotiate under the knowledge that the alternative to agreeing is being overruled. That has produced alignment on the newest technology and resentment on everything else. The Dutch minister’s phrase for it was cooperation by force. [173] A system held together this way is strong while the leader’s line is steady, and the line on what may be sold to China has moved six times.

No treaty for chips

There is no working multilateral regime for chips, so the rules are made by small groups of allies acting on their own lists

42Members of the Wassenaar Arrangement, all of whom must agree before a control is added, as described in November 2024

1Plenary meeting a year, which is why adding a technology to the list can take years

2022Year from which Russia has blocked major additions to the Wassenaar lists, per a June 2026 review

11Like-minded countries counted with similar national chip and quantum controls by late 2024: nine European, plus Japan and Australia

12 Dec 2022Date China requested WTO consultations over US chip export controls, case DS615

0Panel requests listed in the WTO summary of that case, current as of 12 February 2025

The one standing forum for controlling dual-use technology cannot agree on anything new. The Wassenaar Arrangement, founded in 1996, covers exports of conventional arms and of dual-use items, meaning goods with both civil and military uses. [543] It has 42 members, decides by unanimity and holds only one plenary meeting a year. [542] Russia is a member and has used its position to veto new control-list items. [543] Since 2022 the Arrangement has failed to adopt several major proposals to add items to its lists. [543] There is no mechanism to expel a member, and any expulsion would itself need unanimity. [542]

Members did not wait. Through 2024 a run of governments wrote the stalled chip and quantum controls into their own national lists, and the European Union (EU) updated its dual-use list on 5 September 2024. [542] The World Trade Organization (WTO) offers no referee either. China filed a complaint against the US chip rules on 12 December 2022, and the WTO’s own summary still lists the case as in consultations, with no panel request recorded. [544] The US position is that national security is not a matter WTO dispute settlement can review. [545]

The forums and workarounds that stand in for a chip treaty, and how well each one holds.

Forum or route	How it decides	What it has done on chips	Assessment
Wassenaar Arrangement	Unanimity among 42 members, one plenary a year. [542]	Served as the place where chip, quantum and additive manufacturing controls were discussed, but could not adopt them. [543]	blocked by veto Several major list proposals have failed since 2022. [543]
National lists of like-minded states	Each government acts under its own law.	France (2 February 2024), the UK (11 March), Canada (19 June), Italy (1 July), the US (6 September), the Netherlands (7 September) and Japan (8 September) added chip or quantum controls. [542]	works in practice Eleven like-minded countries were counted with similar controls. [542]
EU dual-use list	EU law built on the regimes’ control lists. [543]	The EU updated its list on 5 September 2024 and discussed a legal route to adopt Wassenaar-agreed controls even when Russia vetoes them. [542]	holds inside Europe It binds EU members only.
US licence exception for equivalent controls	The US Bureau of Industry and Security eases licensing for countries with matching rules. [542]	Analysts describe it as a flexible, de facto multilateral system. [542]	depends on partners Without partner adoption the US may fall back on unilateral long-arm measures. [542]
Mini-regimes	Small groups on a Group of Seven model, adding South Korea, Australia and the Netherlands. [542]	Proposed mainly as a way to share information. [542]	proposal stage No treaty text or secretariat.
A new regime without Russia	Would replace Wassenaar with a fresh body. [542]	Not created. Experts call it impractical for most governments, and dissolving Wassenaar could weaken domestic legal frameworks. [542]	not practical
Partner alignment through US law	The MATCH Act bill would work with partner states to apply US restrictions to their exports of chipmaking equipment. [543]	Reviewers judge it likely to fail without renewed US engagement in bilateral or plurilateral talks. [543]	needs diplomacy In March 2025 the US Commerce Department reportedly restricted staff travel to Wassenaar meetings. [543]
WTO dispute settlement	Consultations first, then a panel if the complainant asks for one.	China’s case DS615 was revised on 9 February 2023 and supplemented on 15 September 2023 and 19 December 2024. [544]	no ruling Still listed as in consultations. [544]

Why Wassenaar cannot move

The Arrangement needs all 42 members to agree, and Russia is one of them. [542] Russia uses its veto against proposals that could harm its economic or security interests. [542] There is no way to expel it, because expulsion would also need Russia’s vote. [542] The result is a forum that still meets and still talks about chips, but cannot turn the talk into a shared list. [543]

The workaround: Wassenaar minus one

Members adopted the blocked controls nationally instead. Analysts call this a consensus minus one approach. [542] In 2024 France, the UK, Canada, Italy, Spain, Australia, the US, the Netherlands, Japan, Finland and Norway all tightened their lists within months of each other. [542] Norway explained that such controls depend on as many countries as possible introducing the same rules, to avoid circumvention. [542]

The WTO case that does not advance

China asked for consultations on 12 December 2022 over US measures on advanced chips, supercomputer items and chipmaking equipment. [544] Russia asked to join and the US refused. Chinese Taipei asked and was accepted. [544] In a letter dated 27 December 2024 the US said issues of national security are political matters not susceptible to review by WTO dispute settlement, yet agreed to consult. [545]

The absence of a treaty changes how allies behave. Each control has to be negotiated capital by capital, then written into a separate national law, so coverage is uneven and timing differs by months. [542] Fewer than 40 countries enforce stringent export controls, while nearly 150 operate in a grey zone with weak oversight. [542] That leaves room for goods to move through third countries, and it explains why the US leans on its own long-arm rules when partners do not follow. [542]

It also means there is no neutral place to settle the argument. The US states that every WTO member decides for itself what its essential security requires, citing Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. [545] European allies, for their part, worry that controls aimed openly at China could strain their trade ties. [542] The working system in 2026 is therefore a set of aligned national lists held together by diplomacy, and it is only as strong as the engagement of the governments behind it. [543]

Limits. The WTO status comes from the WTO’s own case summary, which says it is current as of 12 February 2025; later searches found no panel request, but this is absence of evidence and the docket should be rechecked. A figure that the US controls about 1,100 items outside the international lists appeared only in a search summary of China’s December 2024 addendum and is not used. A report that the European Commission expanded its dual-use list in 2025 to include items Russia had blocked was seen only in a search summary and a paywalled WorldECR excerpt of 23 October 2025, so the text relies on the 2024 update instead. Evidence for national lists is strongest for 2024; the 2025 and 2026 picture rests on SIPRI’s general statement. That the national-security exception has rarely been tested by panels, and the wider history of the Russia transit ruling, are general knowledge and are not cited. The US travel restriction is described by SIPRI as reported, not confirmed.

Part 2

The instruments

The record since 2018, then each tool in turn: the limit on chips, tariffs, rules on older chips, on money, on mergers, on ownership, on minerals, on design and on computing power.

Who uses what

Nine governments, six instruments: the whole toolkit on one grid

The sections that follow take the instruments one at a time. This grid shows them together. Dark amber marks a main tool of that government, light amber one it uses in part, grey one it does not use or that this site did not find. Select a column heading to go to that instrument.

Which government uses which instrument, November 2026. A reading of the sections on this page, not a measurement.

	Export controls	Tariffs and trade terms	Investment and merger review	State ownership and aid	Law on people and secrets	Minerals	In a sentence
United States	Main tool	Main tool	Main tool	Main tool	In part	In part	Uses every tool. The only state whose export rules reach goods made abroad.
China	Main tool	In part	Main tool	Main tool	Main tool	Main tool	The mirror image: metals where America has chips, and a merger veto over foreign deals.
Netherlands	Main tool	—	Main tool	In part	In part	—	One machine, licensed nationally, and a 1952 law used once.
Japan	Main tool	—	In part	Main tool	In part	In part	Controls on machines and materials, and a state stake in one company.
Taiwan	Main tool	—	Main tool	In part	Main tool	—	Keeps the newest process and the people who know it at home.
South Korea	In part	—	In part	In part	Main tool	—	Strongest on technology leaks. On exports it follows rules written elsewhere.
European Union	In part	—	In part	Main tool	—	In part	Money and state-aid approval. Controls stay with member states.
Singapore	In part	—	—	In part	—	—	Enforces through fraud law and customs declarations.
Malaysia	In part	—	—	In part	—	—	A permit for chips in transit, and a state-backed design plan.

Two rows are almost full, and they are the two rivals. Every ally uses fewer tools than either, and none uses tariffs on chips at all. The allies govern what they are good at making. Only the United States and China try to govern the whole chain. That is also why the pressure inside the alliance runs one way: Washington asks its partners to add tools they have chosen not to use.

Timeline

From one company’s punishment to a managed stand-off, 2018 to 2026

The colour shows who acted. “Deal” marks steps where controls were traded or eased by agreement. [6] [5] [8] [9] [20] [21] [22] [12] [18] Events before 2025 are written from memory.

United StatesChinaAlliesIndustryDeal

2018

United StatesApril
The United States bans its firms from selling to ZTE, a Chinese telecoms maker that had broken sanctions on Iran. ZTE stops operating within weeks. The ban is lifted in July after a fine. Beijing sees how far its largest firms depend on American parts.
United StatesOctober
Fujian Jinhua, a state-backed memory maker accused of using stolen designs, is cut off from American machines and stops development.

2019

United StatesMay
Huawei is placed on the Entity List, the Commerce Department’s list of firms that need a licence to buy American technology.
AlliesDuring the year
The Netherlands declines to license the export of an EUV machine that SMIC had ordered. No EUV machine has been shipped to China since.

2020

United StatesMay to September
A new rule applies American law to chips made anywhere with American machines. TSMC stops making Huawei’s chips in September.
United StatesDecember
SMIC, China’s largest chipmaker, is placed on the Entity List.

2022

United StatesAugust
The CHIPS and Science Act becomes law, with $52.7 billion for chip plants and research in the United States.
United States7 October
The largest step. Washington restricts the sale to China of advanced accelerators, the machines for making advanced chips, and the work of American citizens in Chinese plants. The stated aim changes from staying a few generations ahead to holding as large a lead as possible.

2023

AlliesJuly and September
Japan and then the Netherlands bring in their own controls on chipmaking machines, after talks with Washington.
ChinaAugust
China requires licences to export gallium and germanium, two metals used in chips and radar.
IndustryAugust
Huawei releases a phone with a 7nm processor made by SMIC, during a visit to Beijing by the American commerce secretary. The chip was made with older lithography machines used several times over.
United StatesOctober
Washington tightens the 2022 rules after Nvidia designed chips just under the limit.

2024

ChinaMay
China launches the third phase of its national chip fund, with ¥344 billion.
United StatesDecember
New American controls cover high-bandwidth memory and 140 more Chinese firms.
ChinaDecember
A day later China bans exports of gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States.

2025

United StatesJanuary to May
A rule sorting every country into three tiers for access to accelerators is issued in January and withdrawn in May.
United StatesApril
Washington requires a licence for Nvidia’s H20, a chip built to fit the earlier limits. In effect it is a ban.
ChinaApril
China places seven rare earths under export licensing. Car and defence suppliers in America, Europe and Japan report shortages within weeks.
DealAugust
H20 sales are licensed again, with Nvidia and AMD paying 15% of the revenue to the United States government. Chinese regulators then discourage firms from buying.
United StatesSeptember
A rule extends the Entity List to any company at least half-owned by a listed firm.
AlliesOctober
The Dutch government takes control of Nexperia, a Dutch chipmaker with a Chinese owner. China blocks exports from Nexperia’s Chinese plants, and European carmakers warn of stoppages.
ChinaOctober
China announces rare-earth rules that would reach products made abroad with Chinese material, copying the American method.
Deal30 October
The American and Chinese presidents meet in South Korea. Each side suspends its newest measures for a year. China’s ban on gallium, germanium and antimony exports to the United States is suspended until 27 November 2026; the ban on sales to military users stays.
DealDecember
The American president says Nvidia may sell the more powerful H200 to approved Chinese customers.
IndustryDecember
A news agency reports that a Chinese laboratory in Shenzhen has built a prototype EUV light source from parts of older machines. It has not printed a chip.

2026

United States14 January
A Commerce Department rule moves the H200 and AMD’s equivalent from near-certain refusal to case-by-case review, with security conditions and a 25% charge. The newer Blackwell and Rubin chips stay barred.
ChinaFebruary
China is reported to be aiming for a fivefold rise in 7nm and 5nm-class output, and for 70% home-made machines on mature production lines by 2027.
United StatesMarch
American prosecutors charge several people with diverting servers holding Nvidia chips to China. One indictment puts the value at $2.5 billion. The charges are allegations.
United StatesApril
Members of Congress propose restricting sales of immersion DUV machines, the older lithography tools that China’s advanced lines depend on.
United States31 May
The Commerce Department states that licence rules apply to Chinese-headquartered firms wherever they operate, closing a route through overseas subsidiaries.
DealJuly
A Commerce official tells Congress that H200 shipments to China remain trivial. Nvidia’s annual filing reports no revenue from them. Chinese customs is reported to be turning the chips away.
IndustrySeptember
TSMC’s share of contract chipmaking reaches a record 72.5%. Reports say a Chinese state-backed firm has begun making immersion DUV machines, with about five planned for 2026.
Deal27 November
The date on which China’s suspension of its metals ban runs out. No extension had been found in the sources read for this page.

The line that moved

What Nvidia could legally sell to China, year by year

The limit has been redrawn six times in four years. Each row is the most capable Nvidia data-centre chip open to Chinese buyers at that date. [6] [5] [9] [10]

From	Best Nvidia chip open to China	Terms	Status
October 2022	A800	A100 slowed to fit the first limit	Legal without a licence
October 2023	None of the A800 class	Limit redrawn to catch it	Barred
2024	H20	Built to fit the redrawn limit	Legal without a licence
April 2025	None	H20 needs a licence that is not granted	Barred
August 2025	H20	Licensed; 15% of revenue to the United States government	Allowed; China discourages buying
January 2026	H200	Case-by-case licence; security conditions; 25% charge	Allowed; few shipped
November 2026	H200	Blackwell and Rubin barred	Allowed; few shipped

The H200 is the top chip of the generation before Blackwell. An analysis in March 2026 noted that the permitted level has risen with each round of talks. [7]

The table shows three phases. From 2022 to 2024 the government drew a technical line and the company designed up to it, twice. In April 2025 the government stopped drawing lines and required licences. From August 2025 the licences were granted in exchange for a share of revenue, and the permitted chip grew more capable as trade talks went on.

Then something the designers of the policy had not planned for happened. China stopped wanting the chips. Regulators told large firms to avoid them, customs is reported to have turned them back, and Nvidia’s own annual report says it has earned nothing under the H200 programme. [10] [9] Having been cut off once, Beijing decided that dependence on a supplier who could be switched off was a larger risk than slower chips. The permission arrived after the demand had been redirected to Huawei.

Tariffs

The second arm: trade terms that decide where chips are made

Export controls say who may buy. Tariffs and trade deals say where it pays to build. Since January 2026 the United States has used both on the same product. A proclamation of 14 January put a 25% duty on a narrow band of advanced computing chips, with exemptions for uses such as American data centres, and said the President may consider much broader chip tariffs with an offset for firms that build in the United States. [162, 228] The tariff is less a tax than a standing offer: build here and be exempt.

Chip terms in the trade deals, as far as they could be traced. The last column is this site’s reading.

Partner	Terms	What was given for them	Reading
Taiwan	A 15% general rate and the most favourable treatment on chips under the January 2026 agreement. [148]	Investment in American fabs. A request to move half of production was refused. [56]	Best terms, highest price
South Korea	Several tariffs capped at 15% in November 2025, with a promise of chip terms no worse than others receive. The chip terms were still being negotiated in September 2026. [89]	A pledge of $350 billion of investment in the United States. [89]	Promised, not fixed
Malaysia	Rates of up to 47% in April 2025, cut to 19% by an agreement in October 2025 whose legal basis a court removed in February 2026. Chips were still exempt on 13 October 2026. [214, 213]	A permit rule for American SI chips passing through the country. [210]	Exempt by favour
Singapore	A 12.5% tariff from July 2026 that leaves chips out. [229]	Prosecutions and tighter declarations for re-exported servers. [226]	Exempt by favour

Read the third column. In every case the chip exemption sits beside something the partner did on investment or enforcement. Trade terms have become the payment system for the control regime: allies that host production or police the trade keep their access, on terms that can be reopened. The licences for sales to China work the same way from the other side, granted for a share of the revenue.

Taiwan · the January 2026 tariff agreement with the United States

Taiwan bought the best available treatment under America’s chip tariff in January 2026 with $250 billion of company investment and $250 billion of state-guaranteed credit

15%Tariff on Taiwanese goods, not stacked on existing duties

$250bnInvestment in the United States by Taiwanese companies

$250bnCeiling on bank credit backed by Taiwanese government guarantees

$6.25bn to $10bnPublic funds the guarantee scheme is expected to need

15 to 20 timesPlanned ratio of guaranteed lending to the funds set aside

16 January 2026Date the outcome was announced in Taipei

When the United States prepared a tariff on imported semiconductors under its national-security trade law, Taiwan had the most to lose. On 16 January 2026 Taiwan’s vice-premier, who led the talks, announced the outcome. The general “reciprocal” tariff on Taiwanese goods falls to 15%, not added on top of existing duties, and semiconductors and products containing them receive the most favourable treatment available under the chip tariff. [583]

The price has two parts, which the premier insisted must not be added together. Taiwanese companies will invest $250 billion in the United States by their own decision, in semiconductors, SI applications and energy. Separately, the government will back up to $250 billion of bank credit for firms investing there, through credit guarantees. [583] The cabinet estimates the public money actually required for the guarantees at $6.25 billion to $10 billion. [583]

The two governments described the total differently. The American commerce secretary, asked about a figure of $500 billion, did not reject it. The premier called that description “absolutely wrong”. [584]

The January 2026 Taiwan and United States tariff agreement, as Taiwan’s cabinet described it, from Taiwanese press reports.

Element	Taiwan’s account	Point of dispute	Reading
General tariff	15%, not stacked. [583]	None reported.	parity with others The rate Japan and South Korea obtained.
Chip tariff	Most favourable treatment for semiconductors and their derivatives. [583, 584]	The terms are in an agreement not yet signed when announced.	the object Protection for Taiwan’s main export.
Company investment	$250 billion, decided by companies, including projects already under way. [583, 584]	The American side says the leading chipmaker’s earlier $100 billion is counted inside it. [584]	mostly one firm The headline rests on TSMC’s plans.
Credit guarantees	Up to $250 billion of lending backed by the national development fund and public and private banks. More flexible terms for high technology. [583]	The American side presents it as a second $250 billion. [584]	a ceiling, not a payment
How it differs from Japan and South Korea	No clause to make up a shortfall and no profit-sharing. “They put money into the United States. Ours is to build a supply chain together.” [584]	Taiwan’s own contrast.	firms decide The state guarantees and does not invest.
Procedure	A trade agreement to be signed within weeks and sent to the legislature with an impact assessment. [583]	Opposition parties questioned the cost.	not yet law When announced.

The argument at home

The cabinet’s case was that the supply chain “has not moved out”. The vice-premier said TSMC’s investment in advanced processes and packaging in Taiwan still far exceeds what it invests anywhere else. [583] China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spent the same months saying the ruling party was “hollowing out” the island’s industry. The deal is defended in Taipei against exactly that charge, by pointing to the rule that the newest process stays at home.

A tariff answered with capital

The American tariff on chips is described in the section on tariffs. Taiwan’s response shows what it is for. The exemption is earned by building in the United States, and a government whose firms cannot or will not fund that alone lends its credit. The guarantee scheme is designed so that $6 billion to $10 billion of public money supports up to $250 billion of lending. [583] The cost to Taiwan’s budget is small beside the headline. The cost in capacity built abroad is the real payment.

What it means for the controls

A larger share of advanced chipmaking in the United States would reduce the weight of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, which is the American aim. It would also, in time, reduce the leverage that the section on Taiwan’s list describes: the fact that the chips are made on the island and Taiwan’s customs decide whether they leave. Taiwan has traded some of its future position as the indispensable source for present security against a tariff. Its rule keeping the newest process at home is the hedge.

The agreement is the clearest case on this page of a tariff working as an investment policy. No Taiwanese chip was barred. The threat of a duty moved a quarter of a trillion dollars of planned investment, and as much again in state-backed credit, toward American soil. [583, 584]

What was announced in January 2026 was an outcome of talks and a memorandum. Whether the trade agreement was signed and passed by Taiwan’s legislature, and on what final terms, was not established here, and the two governments’ different accounts of the total suggest the terms were still being read differently when it was announced.

Limits. This section gives Taiwan’s account, from two Taiwanese news outlets’ reports of cabinet press conferences; the agreement and memorandum were not read, and the American text was not consulted. Whether the agreement has since been signed and ratified, and any later change in terms, was not checked. The comparison with Japan’s and South Korea’s tariff rates and the description of the American chip tariff are from general knowledge and other sections of this site. The remark about China’s Taiwan Affairs Office rests on Chinese press reports seen during research and not cited. The assessment of what Taiwan traded is this site’s.

China · the response at home

At home the answer came through trade bodies, customs rules and the plan: buy fewer American chips, count origin at the fab, and treat chips as an emergency

4Chinese trade associations that on 3 December 2024 called American chips no longer safe and no longer reliable

11 Apr 2025Date the chip industry association told importers to declare a chip’s origin as the place its wafer was made

¥835.73 billionForecast 2025 sales of China’s chip design industry, up 29.4%, given at the industry’s annual conference in November 2025

831Chinese design firms with sales above ¥100 million in 2025, up from 731. They account for 84% of the industry’s sales

7.7%Share of computer chips in China’s design sales, against about 25% worldwide, as given at the same conference

40 nm and aboveProcess range of the American analogue chips on which China opened an anti-dumping case on 13 September 2025

Much of China’s response to the controls was not issued by the government at all. On 3 December 2024, the day after Washington’s December rules, four trade associations covering chips, the internet, cars and telecoms operators each published a statement saying American chips were no longer safe and no longer reliable, and urging Chinese companies to be cautious about buying them. [364] On 11 April 2025 the China Semiconductor Industry Association sent members an urgent notice on origin: under customs rules a chip’s origin is where the wafer was fabricated, and importers should declare it that way whether the chip is packaged or not. [365] Origin had previously followed the packaging plant.

The party’s own text is blunter. The proposal for the fifteenth five-year plan, published on 28 October 2025, calls for improving the new whole-nation system and taking extraordinary measures to push the whole chain of integrated circuits, machine tools, high-end instruments, basic software, advanced materials and biomanufacturing to decisive breakthroughs in core technologies. [366] Integrated circuits come first in that list. Meanwhile the design industry grew: its association put 2025 sales at 835.73 billion yuan, about $118 billion, up 29.4% and above $100 billion for the first time. [367]

Six Chinese documents from 2024 and 2025 that shaped the home market for chips. The last column is this site’s reading of what each does.

Document	Who issued it	What it says	Effect
Statements on American chips, 3 December 2024	Four trade associations: semiconductors, internet, carmakers, telecoms operators. [364]	American chips are no longer safe or reliable. Buy with caution, work with chipmakers from other countries and support Chinese ones. [364]	guidance, not law A signal to buyers that needs no licence or ban.
Urgent notice on origin, 11 April 2025	China Semiconductor Industry Association, citing customs rules. [365]	A chip’s origin is the place of wafer fabrication, under the test of a change in four-digit tariff heading. Declare the fab’s location at import. [365]	redirects orders Chips made in American fabs took China’s retaliatory tariffs. American designs made in Taiwan did not.
Summons of Nvidia, 31 July 2025	Cyberspace Administration of China. [368]	Nvidia is asked to explain the risk of loopholes and back doors in the H20 chips it sells in China and to submit supporting material, under the cybersecurity, data security and personal information laws. [368]	a regulator’s question It followed American proposals to add tracking to exported chips. [368]
Anti-dumping case, Announcement 27 of 13 September 2025	Ministry of Commerce, on an application from the Jiangsu semiconductor industry association received on 23 July 2025. [369]	Investigates American interface chips and gate driver chips made at 40 nanometres and above. Dumping period 2024, injury period 2022 to 2024, to finish by 13 September 2026 unless extended six months. [369]	pending Aims at the mature chips where American firms still lead in China.
Proposal for the fifteenth five-year plan, 28 October 2025	Central Committee of the Communist Party. [366]	Extraordinary measures and a whole-nation effort for decisive breakthroughs across the chip chain. [366]	sets priority The wording ministries and provinces must now follow.
Design industry report, 20 to 21 November 2025	Wei Shaojun, head of the design branch of the industry association. [367]	Sales of ¥835.73 billion, growth of 29.4%, and an average of 19.6% a year from 2006 to 2025. Small, scattered and weak firms remain the industry’s basic condition. [367]	growth without concentration

Rules without a rule-maker

Two of the six documents came from trade associations, and both moved markets. Chinese press reports in April 2025 said distributors stopped quoting new orders for some American chips after the origin notice. Neither document is a law, and neither can be challenged as one. This is how the government buying lists and data-centre orders described under China at home also work: the instruction arrives as advice from a body that everyone understands to be speaking for the state.

What the industry says about itself

The design association’s own account is less triumphant than the headline. Of sales by the larger firms, communications and consumer chips make up 66.48% and computer chips 7.7%, against about a quarter worldwide. [367] The Yangtze delta holds 418 of the 831 larger firms. [367] Its head told the conference that concentration had not improved and that cutting costs could not wait. [367] China’s design sector is large, and it is large in the cheaper kinds of chip.

Extraordinary measures

The plan proposal’s wording is strong. It asks for extraordinary measures along the whole chain and for a decisive breakthrough, and puts integrated circuits at the head of the list. [366] In Chinese policy writing that wording authorises spending and administrative shortcuts outside normal rules. It is the party’s answer to the question the controls put: whether to wait for supply to resume or to build without it.

Read together, the Chinese documents show a response on three levels that foreign coverage tends to merge. Trade bodies steer buyers away from American chips. [364, 365] Regulators open cases against American firms on security and pricing grounds. [368, 369] The party sets the goal and licenses unusual means. [366] None of the three needs an export control, and together they do to American chip sales in China what the Entity List does to Chinese purchases in America.

The industry’s own figures set the limit of that response. Sales are rising by a quarter or more a year, but the firms are small, concentrated in consumer and communications chips, and thin in the computing chips the contest is about. [367] The home market is being cleared for Chinese suppliers faster than those suppliers are able to fill it.

Limits. All six documents were read, but four through news reports and not the issuer’s own page: the four associations’ statements through a Jiemian digest that gives their common points and not each text; the origin notice through a Cailian report (the notice itself is an image); the Nvidia summons through The Paper’s report of the regulator’s public account; and the design industry figures through a Cailian report of the speech. The design association gave a different 2025 figure in June 2026 (¥826.11 billion, up 24.8%) according to a search summary; this page uses the November 2025 forecast. The plan proposal’s sentence was read in a Xinhua article carried on the government’s site that quotes it, not in the full text. The statement that origin previously followed the packaging plant, the effect on tariffs, the report about distributors, and the readings in the last column and the cards are this site’s, from Chinese press reports and general knowledge. Customs and statistics bureau figures for 2025 chip imports and output could not be confirmed and are left out.

Mature chips

On older chips China holds the capacity, and the West has answered with tariffs and purchase bans that mostly start in 2027

50%US Section 301 tariff on Chinese semiconductors since 1 January 2025, up from 25%

0%Additional US tariff from the mature-chip case, held at zero until 23 June 2027

33% to 45%China’s share of mature chip capacity, 2024 to 2027, as forecast by TrendForce in May 2024

23 Dec 2027Start of the US federal ban on buying products with chips from SMIC, CXMT and YMTC

2027 / 2030Model years when the US connected vehicle rule starts for software and for hardware

88%Mature chips as a share of all chips sold by volume in 2023

Mature chips are the older designs, usually made at 28 nanometres or above, that run cars, household appliances and factory equipment. [506] They are the bulk of the trade: 88% of chips sold by volume in 2023 and 40% by value. [500] Here China is the stronger party, so the rules run the other way: the West is trying to limit what it buys, not what it sells. China made 34% of the world’s mature chips in 2024, according to TrendForce figures cited by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the research arm of the US Congress. [500]

The American response has four parts, and most of it has not yet started to bite. A 50% tariff on Chinese semiconductors has applied since 1 January 2025. [502] A second tariff, from a trade investigation that closed in December 2025, was set at 0% until 23 June 2027. [502] A ban on federal purchases of products containing chips from three named Chinese makers starts on 23 December 2027. [503] Rules on connected cars apply from model year 2027 for software and model year 2030 for hardware. [504] Europe has surveyed its firms and drafted a new law, but this research found no European trade measure. [506, 507]

The main instruments aimed at Chinese mature chips and where each one stood in November 2026.

Instrument	What it does	Key date	Standing
US Section 301 tariff, 2018 technology transfer case	Duty on Chinese semiconductors raised from 25% to 50% across 18 tariff lines. [502]	1 January 2025 [502]	In force The only measure here that already costs importers money.
US Section 301 tariff, mature-chip case	Found China’s chip policies actionable and added a second duty on the same 18 tariff lines, set at 0%. [500, 502]	Rises on 23 June 2027. The rate is due by 24 May 2027. [502]	Rate still unknown It will not apply to finished goods that contain the chips, such as consumer electronics. [502]
Section 5949 of the 2023 defence act	Bars federal agencies from buying electronic products or services that include chips from SMIC, CXMT or YMTC and their affiliates. [503]	23 December 2027 [503]	Rule only proposed The draft rule came out on 17 February 2026 and comments closed on 20 April 2026. [503]
US connected vehicle rule, software	Bans the import and sale of vehicles with connectivity or automated driving software linked to China or Russia. [504]	Model year 2027 [504]	Final rule Announced on 14 January 2025, in effect from 17 March 2025. [504]
US connected vehicle rule, hardware	Bans the import of vehicle connectivity hardware, and vehicles containing it, linked to China or Russia. [504]	Model year 2030, or 1 January 2029 for units without a model year [504]	Final rule The long lead time gives suppliers years to change sources.
European Commission surveys	Two voluntary surveys, one for chip makers and one for chip users, on sourcing and pricing of mature chips. [506]	Replies due in September 2024 [506]	No measure found The Commission did not say what measures it might take. [506]
EU Chips Act 2.0 proposal	Adds tighter supply chain monitoring and about €70 million for a business-to-business supply chain platform. [507]	Adopted by the Commission on 3 June 2026. Talks are targeted to finish in the second quarter of 2027. [507]	Not yet law It was still in the preparatory phase on 7 August 2026. [507]
General Motors supplier directive	Told thousands of suppliers to stop using Chinese-sourced parts, including lighting and electronics. [508]	Aims to finish by 2027 [508]	Private and voluntary It mainly covers parts for vehicles built in North America. [508]

A tariff set at zero

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) opened the mature-chip case in late 2024 and found China’s policies actionable in December 2025. [500] It then set the duty at 0%. [502] Lawyers at Sheppard Mullin read this as a way to avoid disrupting the one-year trade truce agreed on 1 November 2025, while keeping a rate in reserve for later talks. [502]

The chip inside the product

A tariff on chips misses most Chinese mature chips, because they arrive inside finished goods. The new duty will not apply to such goods. [502] The purchase ban and the vehicle rule try to close that gap by reaching into the product. [503, 504] Even so, the purchase ban is not retroactive: agencies need not remove equipment bought before 23 December 2027. [503]

What buyers have done

Companies have moved faster than governments. General Motors told thousands of suppliers to drop Chinese-sourced parts, aiming to finish by 2027. [508] During the Nexperia stoppage, carmakers bought wafers directly from the firm’s European arm and shipped them to its Chinese unit themselves. [509] Honda warned that the shortage could cost it about 110,000 vehicles of North American output. [509]

The measures share one feature, which is delay. The second tariff stays at zero until mid 2027, the purchase ban waits until the end of 2027, and the hardware rule for cars waits until model year 2030. [502, 503, 504] Capacity keeps moving in the meantime. TrendForce forecast in May 2024 that China’s share of mature capacity would rise from 33% in 2024 to 45% in 2027. [505] CRS cites a more cautious projection of over 38% of mature chip output by 2030. [500] The forecasts differ in size, but they point the same way.

In November 2026 the governance of mature chips is therefore mostly a set of dates that have not yet arrived. The 50% tariff is the one measure in force that changes prices today. [502] Europe has gone no further than fact-finding and a draft law. [506, 507] The clearest shift has come from buyers who decided after the Nexperia stoppage that a cheap chip from a single source is a risk. [508, 509] The next test is the rate that USTR must name by 24 May 2027. [502]

Limits. Only search summaries, not the pages themselves, supported these points, so they are left out of the cited text or kept general: the exact launch day of the Section 301 case (CRS says only late 2024, a KPMG note says December 2024); whether the final purchase-ban rule has been issued (none was found, and the law firm notes date from February and March 2026); and reports that some European and American carmakers are pressing suppliers for permanent alternatives to Chinese chips. One law firm summary (Mayer Brown) appeared to say the draft rule does not itself designate CXMT and YMTC, which conflicts with the Crowell note used here; this was not resolved. No source was found on whether the US and China extended their trade truce beyond 10 November 2026, or on any result of the European surveys, so the absence of European action is a finding of this search and not a confirmed fact. Share figures conflict: TrendForce’s 2024 forecast (45% of capacity by 2027) is far higher than the projection CRS cites (over 38% of output by 2030), and earlier TrendForce forecasts for 2027 gave 33% and 39%; they measure different things at different dates. Reports of mature-chip prices rising about 10% at Chinese foundries in 2026 were seen only in summaries and are not used. The General Motors directive rests on a trade press summary of a Reuters report. The full names of SMIC, CXMT and YMTC, and the statement that most Chinese mature chips reach the West inside finished goods, are general knowledge.

China · certification standards for automotive chips, 2026

From October 2026 China has national standards for who may test and certify a car chip, built to end the practice of every carmaker re-testing every domestic chip

11.9%Share of domestic chips in Chinese cars, first quarter of 2026, carmakers’ association figure

4.7%The same share in 2022

5Standards issued: one general, four for design houses, certifiers, test laboratories and computing-chip testing

1 Oct 2026Date the standards took effect

11 monthsAverage time to complete reliability and functional-safety certification for a high-safety car chip, as an industry researcher estimates

$1.8m+Certification cost of one complex chip, from the same estimate

The section on older chips describes the American and European worry about Chinese capacity in mature chips. Cars are a large user of those chips, and China’s own problem there has been different: its chips exist, and its carmakers have been slow to use them. The carmakers’ association puts the share of domestic chips in Chinese cars at 11.9% in the first quarter of 2026, up from 4.7% in 2022. [311]

On 17 August 2026 the market regulator announced five industry standards on certification of automotive chips, in force from 1 October 2026. [310, 311] They do not set requirements for chips. They set requirements for the bodies that design, test and certify them. The regulator calls it the first national system in the world for assessing the competence of organisations along the whole car-chip chain. [310]

The reason is cost and time. A domestic chip has typically needed two to three years to go from design to a production car, and each carmaker ran its own validation: a chip accepted by one was tested again from the start by the next. [311]

China’s 2026 certification standards for automotive chips and the system around them, from the regulator’s announcement and Chinese press reports.

Element	What it is	Source	Effect
General standard	Common requirements for certification review of car-chip organisations. [310, 311]	Regulator’s announcement	one yardstick A report from a qualified body can be accepted across the industry.
Four specific standards	Competence of chip design houses, of certification bodies, of general test laboratories, and of laboratories testing in-vehicle computing chips. [311]	Press report citing the regulator’s notice No. 15 of 2026	whole chain Covers who designs as well as who tests.
Review system, version 2	Issued November 2025: 9 modules and 60 indicators, covering 5 vehicle domains and 10 classes of chip, with an expert pool and a digital platform. [311]	Press report	the technical base The standards formalise it.
What it does not do	A carmaker still validates at system and vehicle level. A laboratory report does not bring automatic acceptance. [311]	Press report	limit Removes repeated component tests, not all testing.
Where domestic chips are used	Cockpit, body control and power devices. Low in driving processors, high-end microcontrollers and automotive memory. [311]	Analyst quoted in the press	uneven Volume parts first, safety-critical parts last.
Stated aim	A quality system “under our own control” and a car-chip industry worth a trillion yuan. [310]	Regulator	industrial policy by standard

Two figures for the same share

The science ministry’s newspaper, reporting the same announcement, says domestic car chips ship in the billions a year and that the domestic share “has passed 25%”. [312] The carmakers’ association figure is 11.9%. [311] Neither report defines its measure. One may count chips by number and the other by value, since Chinese chips are concentrated in cheap parts. The gap between the two is itself the finding: China supplies many of the chips in its cars and little of their value.

Standards as a substitute for mandates

Foreign press has reported informal targets for domestic chip content in Chinese cars. No such mandate was found in a Chinese document. What the documents show is a different method: make domestic chips cheaper to adopt by removing the repeated testing that favoured established foreign suppliers, whose parts every carmaker had already validated. [310, 311] An official said in November 2025 that carmakers’ entry requirements were set “each for itself” and that China lacked a test platform covering chip, system and vehicle. [311]

A claim on international standards

An expert quoted by the state news agency says that in new fields China leads in, such as connected vehicles, and in fields where everyone is at the start, such as RISC-V and chiplets, standards accepted worldwide would carry great weight. [310] The car-chip standards are presented as a first step. The section on standards describes why design rules matter in this contest. Here China writes the rules for certifying a product in the market where it is the largest producer and buyer.

Car chips are the part of the contest where controls matter least and habit matters most. No American rule stops a Chinese carmaker from buying a Chinese microcontroller. What stopped it was the cost and risk of qualifying a new part. China’s answer is a certification system that moves that cost from each carmaker to a national scheme. [310, 311]

The Nexperia dispute described earlier gave the policy urgency: in late 2025 carmakers in China ran short of the simplest chips because of a quarrel over a foreign-controlled supplier. A domestic part with a recognised certificate is the remedy the standards are designed to make routine.

Limits. The five standards were not read; their content is taken from the regulator’s announcement as reported by a state newspaper and from a Chinese business newspaper’s detailed report. The two figures for the domestic share come from different sources that do not define them, and the suggested explanation for the gap is this site’s. The certification time and cost are one research firm’s estimates as quoted in the press. The statement about informal content targets reported abroad is from general knowledge, and the absence of a mandate means only that none was found in the Chinese sources searched. The industry ministry’s 2026 standards work plan for vehicles was seen in a search summary and not read.

China · silicon carbide substrates, 2025 and 2026

A Chinese firm now makes more than half the world’s eight-inch silicon carbide wafers; the American leader filed for bankruptcy protection in 2025 and a South Korean maker left the business in 2026

27.6%SICC’s share of the world market for conductive silicon carbide substrates in 2025, up from 12% in 2023

51.3%Its share of eight-inch substrates in 2025

June 2025Month the American market leader applied for bankruptcy protection

July 2026Month a South Korean maker announced its exit from silicon carbide

2 years+Length of the price war in six-inch substrates

+103%Rise in SICC’s revenue in the third quarter of 2026 on a year earlier

The section on older chips describes the fear that Chinese capacity will drive Western makers out of mature products. Silicon carbide is the case where it has already happened. Silicon carbide wafers are the base for the power chips in electric cars, chargers and power supplies for data centres. Until recently an American company led the market.

A Japanese market researcher’s figures, reported in the Chinese press, show the change. SICC, of Shandong, held 12% of the world market for conductive silicon carbide substrates in 2023 and 27.6% in 2025, passing the American firm Wolfspeed. [343] In eight-inch wafers, the size the industry is moving to, its share was 51.3%. [343]

The incumbents did not survive the price fall that came with it. Wolfspeed applied for bankruptcy protection in June 2025, and in July 2026 the South Korean maker SK Siltron announced it was leaving silicon carbide. [344] A Chinese newspaper’s research arm describes a price war in six-inch wafers lasting more than two years that pushed prices below most makers’ cash costs. [344]

The silicon carbide substrate market in 2025 and 2026, from Chinese press reports of market research and of one company’s results.

Item	Figure	Source	Reading
World share, conductive substrates	SICC 27.6% in 2025, from 12% in 2023, first in the world. [343]	Japanese market research, as reported	leadership changed In two years.
Six-inch substrates	SICC 27.5%, ahead of Wolfspeed for the first time. [343]	Same	the volume product
Eight-inch substrates	SICC 51.3%. [343]	Same	the next size More than half the market.
Twelve-inch substrates	SICC showed the first in 2024 and reports volume supply to main customers. [343]	Company account, as reported	ahead on size A claim by the company.
Prices	A price war in six-inch substrates for over two years. Prices fell through most makers’ cash costs. Weak capacity was cleared in 2024 and 2025. [344]	Newspaper research arm	how share was won
Exits	Wolfspeed sought bankruptcy protection in June 2025. SK Siltron announced its exit in July 2026. [344]	Same	incumbents gone or weakened
The winner’s accounts	Third-quarter 2026 revenue of 646 million yuan, up 102.9%. Gross margin 27.5%, rising three quarters running. Eight-inch products over half of revenue. Back in profit before one-off items. [344]	Company’s third-quarter report, as reported	thin A market leader with under 30% margin.

No control stood in the way

Silicon carbide substrate is a material, grown in furnaces, and its production needs neither advanced lithography nor any tool the United States restricts. China had the furnaces, the electricity and a large home market in electric cars, where the move to 800-volt systems made silicon carbide a standard part. [343] The American tariff increase on Chinese chips, and the investigation of older Chinese chips described in the section on mature capacity, came after the share had moved. That sequence is from the other sections of this page.

What subsidy bought in America

Wolfspeed was to receive support under the American chip subsidy law for a new plant, a matter of general knowledge and not in the Chinese reports. It sought bankruptcy protection before most of that money was paid. The section on what subsidies bought gives the evidence for the United States as a whole. Silicon carbide is the sharpest single example: public money was committed to a domestic leader in a product whose price a foreign rival was cutting.

Leadership at a low margin

The Chinese leader’s own results show the cost of the method. With more than half of the newest segment, its gross margin in the third quarter of 2026 was about 27%, and it had only just returned to profit before one-off items. [344] The price war cleared out Chinese rivals as well as foreign ones. [344] The state news service’s headline calls the outcome “independent leadership” of the industry. [343] It was reached by selling at prices few could match, and it leaves the product cheap for the car and power industries that use it.

This is the outcome that the debate about older chips anticipates. A Chinese producer, in a product outside every control, expanded faster than demand, prices fell below competitors’ costs, and within two years the foreign leader was in bankruptcy proceedings and another had left. [343, 344] Dependence then runs the other way: the West’s electric cars and data-centre power supplies now rely on a Chinese material.

The lesson for governance is about timing and instruments. Export controls have no bearing on a product China makes itself. Tariffs arrived after the market had turned. Subsidy to the incumbent did not save it. The tools described on this page are built to deny China what it lacks, and silicon carbide shows they have little to say about what China has in excess.

Limits. The market shares are a Japanese research firm’s, as reported by a Chinese news service in an article favourable to the company; another research firm’s figure for eight-inch share, seen in a search summary, is 60%. The research reports were not read. The account of the price war and the exits is from a Chinese newspaper’s research arm writing about the company’s results. Figures for the other large Chinese maker were not found. What silicon carbide is used for, the absence of export controls on its production, and Wolfspeed’s subsidy award are from general knowledge. The reading of the episode as a test of the instruments is this site’s.

Capital and ownership

Governments now police who funds and who owns chip companies, and those rules are hardening faster than the rules on goods

2 Jan 2025Date the US outbound investment rule on Chinese chips, SI and quantum took effect

18 Dec 2025Date the COINS Act became law inside the 2026 defence authorisation bill

450 daysTime Congress gave the Treasury, from enactment, to issue new or amended outbound rules

7 Dec 2026Deadline for comments on the Treasury’s proposed rules of 22 October 2026

180 daysTime HieFo was given to divest EMCORE’s chip assets under the order of 2 January 2026

30 Jun 2026Date by which EU member states were asked to report on outbound investment in chips, SI and quantum

Export controls stop a machine at the border. Investment rules stop the money and the ownership behind it. The US Outbound Investment Security Program, set up under Executive Order 14105 and Treasury regulations, took effect on 2 January 2025 and restricts US investment in Chinese semiconductors, SI and quantum technology. [546] Congress then wrote it into statute. On 18 December 2025 the president signed a defence bill containing the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act, which gives the program its own legal basis and widens it. [546] On 22 October 2026 the Treasury proposed the rules to implement it. [547]

The inbound side is older and has more cases. Britain ordered a Chinese-owned firm to sell a Welsh wafer plant in November 2022. [551] Germany vetoed two chip deals on one day that same month. [552] Italy blocked chip equipment deals twice in 2021. [553] In January 2026 a US presidential order forced a Chinese-controlled buyer to give up chip assets it already owned. [550] Japan created a screening commission in June 2026. [554] Europe has so far asked only for a review of outbound money, not a ban. [548]

The main investment and ownership controls that touch chip companies, with the case or status that shows how each is used.

Jurisdiction	Instrument	What it does	Chip case or status
United States, outbound	Outbound Investment Security Program, then the COINS Act. [546]	Covers semiconductors and microelectronics, SI and quantum, and adds high-performance computing and hypersonic systems. Countries now include Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela as well as China. [546]	now in statute Civil penalties of up to $377,700 or twice the transaction value, plus forced divestment. The Act expires after seven years unless renewed. [546]
United States, proposed rules	Treasury notice of 22 October 2026, to replace the current regulations. [547]	Keeps bans on chip design software, front-end fabrication equipment, advanced packaging and specified advanced chips, and adds high-bandwidth memory. [547]	not yet final The existing rule stays in force until the new one takes effect. [547]
United States, inbound	Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and presidential orders. [550]	Can review completed deals that were never notified and order them undone. [550]	used in 2026 HieFo was ordered on 2 January 2026 to divest EMCORE’s digital chips business within 180 days. [550]
United Kingdom	National Security and Investment Act 2021. [551]	Allows retrospective review of deals closed before the law took effect. [551]	deal unwound On 16 November 2022 Nexperia was ordered to cut its Newport Wafer Fab stake from 100 percent to 14 percent. [551]
Germany	Federal investment screening veto.	Blocks non-EU investors where security is at risk.	two vetoes On 9 November 2022 Berlin blocked the sale of Elmos’s chip factory to Silex, a Swedish unit of China’s Sai Microelectronics, and an investment in ERS Electronic. [552]
Italy	Golden power, the government’s special veto over strategic assets. [553]	Lets the cabinet stop foreign bids.	rarely used Used five times since 2012, four against Chinese bids, including a chip equipment venture vetoed on 18 November 2021. [553]
Japan	Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, amended by Act No. 30 of 5 June 2026. [554]	Adds interagency consultation, post-closing review for up to five years and reach over some foreign-to-foreign deals. [554]	rules still coming The Japan Foreign Investment Commission was formed on 29 June 2026. Most changes start within a year by Cabinet Order. [554]
Netherlands	Goods Availability Act. [555]	Barred Nexperia from moving parts of the business, dismissing executives or taking major strategic decisions without approval, for up to one year. [555]	order suspended The government stepped back in November 2025 after talks with China. Court measures on the shares remain. [555]
European Union, outbound	Commission recommendation of 15 January 2025. [548]	Asks member states to review outbound deals in chips, SI and quantum completed since 1 January 2021. [548]	non-binding Reports were due by 30 June 2026. No screening law exists. [548]

From executive order to statute

The US outbound rule began as an executive order and could have been withdrawn by a later president. The COINS Act changes that by giving the program independent statutory authority. [546] It also adds exceptions, including for publicly traded securities and de minimis transactions, and tells the Treasury to set up a confidential feedback process for investors. [546] The Treasury’s October 2026 proposal goes beyond the statute by adding biotechnology. [547]

Deals can be undone after closing

Screening no longer ends when a deal closes. Britain’s Newport order was the first time it used retrospective powers to force divestment of a completed acquisition, one made in July 2021. [551] In the HieFo case the buyer did not notify CFIUS until the committee’s non-notified team had begun investigating. [550] Japan’s 2026 amendment lets authorities request reports for up to five years after a transaction. [554]

Strings attached to subsidies

Subsidy money carries its own ownership-style limits. Under the final guardrails for the US CHIPS and Science Act, reported in September 2023, recipients may not materially expand advanced chip capacity in foreign countries of concern for 10 years from the award. [549] Material means more than 5 percent of a facility’s capacity. Older, legacy facilities face a 10 percent cap. [549] A proposed $100,000 investment limit was dropped after chipmakers objected. [549]

The direction is the same everywhere, but the strength differs. The US has moved furthest: a statute, penalties, a forced divestment in 2026 and a proposal that reaches new technologies and new countries. [546, 547, 550] Europe screens inbound deals country by country and has only a non-binding request on outbound money. [548] That gap matters because capital can route through the least strict jurisdiction, just as goods can.

For chip companies the practical lesson is that ownership is now a regulated fact, not a private one. A purchase cleared years ago can be reopened, as Newport and HieFo show. [550, 551] A state can also step into the running of a firm and then step back when diplomacy requires, as the Netherlands did with Nexperia. [555] Until the Treasury finalises its rules and the EU decides what to do with its member state reports, investors face rules that are still being written. [547, 548]

Limits. Not confirmed: whether EU member states filed their reports by 30 June 2026 or what the Commission did next; whether HieFo completed its divestment; and the detailed semiconductor thresholds in the original January 2025 rule, which the sources describe only in general terms. The 450-day deadline was computed in search summaries as 13 March 2027 but is not stated as a date in the fetched source. Sources conflict on the HieFo deal: search summaries gave April 2024 and about $2.9 million, while the fetched advisory says the deal closed in September 2024 and gives no price, so neither is used. Sources also conflict on the Dutch order: search summaries date it 30 September 2025 and its suspension 19 November 2025, while the fetched article says only that the Act was applied in October 2025. One law firm dates the Treasury proposal 26 October 2026 against 22 October elsewhere. The name of the Italian firm in the April 2021 veto (LPE) and the 85 million euro Elmos price were seen only in search summaries. The Japan source does not mention semiconductors specifically. The German screening law’s name and mechanics, and the point that capital routes through lenient jurisdictions, are general knowledge. The fetched summary of the Treasury proposal rendered the term for artificial intelligence oddly, so wording of that control should be checked against the Federal Register.

Taiwan · prior approval for investment abroad

Since a 2025 amendment, a Taiwanese company needs government approval in advance to invest abroad in named countries, industries or technologies, whatever the amount

18 April 2025Date the legislature passed the amendment to Article 22

NT$1.5bnOld threshold above which foreign investment needed approval

3New triggers besides size: specific countries, specific industries, specific technologies

NT$10mMaximum cumulative fine for investing without approval and failing to correct it

N-2Rule stated by the science council in December 2025: technology taken abroad must be two generations behind the newest at home

Not setEffective date, left to the cabinet

Taiwan has long required approval for large investments abroad: under Article 22 of the Statute for Industrial Innovation, any foreign investment above 1.5 billion Taiwan dollars had to be approved before it was made. On 18 April 2025 the legislature passed an amendment that changes the test. [590]

The cabinet’s own summary puts it under the heading “protecting key technology”. Besides investments above a set amount, investments “in specific countries or regions, or in specific industries or technologies” must also apply for approval in advance, and the ministry gains matching powers of management and new penalties. [590] The purpose stated is “to avoid the outflow of key technology”. [590]

By press and legal summaries of the amended text, approval may be refused in whole or in part where the investment would affect national security or harm economic development, and investing without approval carries a fine of 50,000 to 1 million Taiwan dollars, repeatable up to 10 million if not corrected. [591] The date it takes effect is to be set by the cabinet once the detailed rules are ready. [591]

Taiwan’s rules on taking chip technology and capital abroad, from the cabinet’s policy summary and press and legal summaries.

Rule	What it requires	Source	Reading
Article 22, before 2025	Approval in advance for foreign investment above NT$1.5 billion. [591]	Press summary of the statute	by size
Article 22, amended	Approval in advance also for investment in specific countries or regions, industries or technologies. [590]	Cabinet policy summary	by destination and content A small investment can now be caught.
Grounds for refusal	National security, or harm to economic development. Refusal may be partial. [591]	Press and legal summaries	wide discretion
Penalty	NT$50,000 to 1 million, repeatable to 10 million. [591]	Same	light Small beside the investments concerned. The real sanction is refusal.
The ministry’s assurance	Before and after the amendment, TSMC’s most advanced process “will certainly stay in Taiwan”. [591]	Economics ministry, April 2025	the purpose
The two-generation rule	National core key technologies follow an N-2 principle for use abroad. [592]	Science council, December 2025	a fixed gap Overseas plants trail home by two generations.
Criminal backstop	Taking core technology abroad for a foreign party is punishable by up to twelve years. [576]	National Security Act	prison Applied in the 2-nanometre case.

An outbound screen in the American mould

The section on investment describes the American rule of 2025 that screens its own firms’ investments in Chinese chips, SI and quantum technology. Taiwan’s amendment is the same kind of instrument: the state reviews its own companies’ capital going out, by destination and technology. Taiwan’s is broader in one respect, since it is not limited to one country of concern, and narrower in another, since its penalties are administrative and small.

How it meets the American deal

In January 2026 Taiwan agreed that its firms would invest $250 billion in the United States. Under the amended article, an investment in advanced chipmaking abroad is exactly the kind that needs approval. The two fit together through the two-generation rule: the government can approve the plants while holding the newest process at home. [592] The cabinet’s defence of the American deal, that the supply chain “has not moved out”, rests on this mechanism.

Still waiting for a date

The amendment was passed in April 2025, and by the reports read its effective date depended on detailed rules that the economics ministry had still to complete. [591] A further amendment to the statute in 2026 dealt with other articles. Whether Article 22’s new test is now in force, and which countries, industries and technologies the ministry has named, was not established here. Until those lists are published the rule is a power in reserve.

With this rule Taiwan’s system is complete in outline. Its customs can stop a chip leaving. Its prosecutors can jail an engineer who takes a secret. Its economics ministry can refuse a company permission to invest abroad, and its science council fixes how far behind an overseas plant must stay. [590, 592]

Taken together, the Taiwanese sections show a government that for years followed others’ controls building instruments of its own between 2022 and 2026. They are aimed first at keeping the leading edge on the island, which is Taiwan’s security as well as its industry.

Limits. The cabinet’s policy summary was read on the Executive Yuan’s site and states the change in general terms. The amended article’s wording, grounds for refusal, fines, and the economics ministry’s April 2025 statement are from a search summary of press and law-firm accounts, not from the statute; one of those accounts could not be opened. The effective date and the lists of countries, industries and technologies were not found. The N-2 statement is a news agency report already cited elsewhere on this site, read through a search summary. The comparison with the American outbound investment rule is from that section of this site and general knowledge.

Merger control

A chip merger needs consent in every large market, so one regulator can stop a deal between two foreign firms

$5.4bnIntel’s offer for Tower, ended on 16 August 2023 without Chinese approval

$353mTermination fee Intel paid Tower in August 2023

$40bnNvidia’s offer for Arm, abandoned in February 2022 after the FTC sued

$35bnSynopsys’s purchase of Ansys, cleared by China with conditions in July 2025

$6.9bnNvidia’s 2020 purchase of Mellanox, found in breach of its conditions in September 2025

Q1 2027New closing target for Axcelis and Veeco, still waiting for China on 4 November 2026

A large chip company sells in every major market, so a merger between two of them needs clearance from the competition authority in each one. That gives each authority a veto. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has used that position most visibly, including against deals where neither company is Chinese. In August 2023 Intel, an American firm, dropped its $5.4 billion purchase of Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli chipmaker, after Chinese approval did not arrive by the deadline. [510] Intel paid Tower a termination fee of $353 million. [510]

The same power works after a deal has closed. SAMR approved Nvidia’s $6.9 billion purchase of Mellanox in 2020 with conditions, and on 15 September 2025 it issued a preliminary finding that Nvidia had not fully complied. [512] Western authorities use merger law on chips too. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued on 2 December 2021 to block Nvidia’s $40 billion purchase of Arm, and Nvidia abandoned the deal in February 2022. [513] In China the link to diplomacy is closer: lawyers at Skadden observe that ministerial talks with Washington tend to open a window for regulatory movement. [511]

Chip deals and competition cases in which one regulator’s consent decided the outcome or still does.

Case	Regulator	What happened	Standing
Nvidia and Arm, $40 billion	US Federal Trade Commission	The FTC voted on 2 December 2021 to sue. Nvidia gave up more than two months into the case. [513]	Deal abandoned The FTC called it the first abandonment of a litigated vertical merger in many years. [513]
Intel and Tower, $5.4 billion	SAMR, China	China’s regulator did not approve the deal by the deadline, and the firms ended it on 16 August 2023. [510]	Deal abandoned No refusal was needed, only silence. Intel paid $353 million. [510]
Synopsys and Ansys, $35 billion	SAMR, China	Cleared in July 2025 after SAMR called the deal in. The firms must keep supplying Chinese customers, keep products interoperable and not tie or bundle. [511]	Cleared with conditions The approval came within days of a US and China trade detente. [511]
Nvidia and Mellanox, $6.9 billion	SAMR, China	Approved with conditions in 2020. A probe opened in December 2024 and a preliminary finding of breach followed on 15 September 2025. [512]	Penalty pending Fortune reported possible fines of 1% to 5% of the previous year’s sales in China. [512]
Qualcomm and Autotalks	SAMR, China	Qualcomm completed the purchase in June 2025, and SAMR reportedly called the deal in afterwards. [511]	Under investigation No outcome was found by November 2026.
Axcelis and Veeco	SAMR, China	The all-stock merger of two chip equipment makers was still waiting for SAMR on 4 November 2026. [501]	Waiting on China Closing is now expected by the end of the first quarter of 2027, with no guarantee. [501]
Wuhan Yongtong and Shandong PKU Huatai	SAMR, China	On 23 July 2025 SAMR prohibited a deal that fell below the filing thresholds and had closed six years earlier, and ordered it unwound. [511]	Shows the reach Not a chip deal, but it shows SAMR can reopen a completed transaction. [511]

Delay is enough

Merger agreements carry a deadline, so a regulator does not have to say no. Intel and Tower ended their deal when Chinese approval had not come in time. [510] Axcelis and Veeco show the cost of waiting: their US clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) merger notification law is close to expiry, so they plan to file again in the United States while China’s review continues. [501]

Conditions that last

An approval with conditions keeps the regulator in the room for years. Synopsys and Ansys promised to honour contracts with Chinese customers, supply them reliably and avoid discrimination on price or service. [511] The Nvidia case shows what such promises can become. Conditions set in 2020 produced a finding of breach in 2025, with fines and ordered changes to business practice both possible. [512]

Timing follows the trade talks

China’s cases move with the wider dispute. SAMR opened its Nvidia probe in December 2024, days after the United States tightened export limits on memory chips and chipmaking equipment. [512] The finding of breach came in the week of trade talks in Madrid, and analysts read it as leverage. [512] The Synopsys approval followed a trade detente within days. [511]

Merger control was built to protect competition, and in chips it has also become a tool of state leverage. Any firm with large sales in China needs SAMR’s consent to merge, even when buyer and target are both foreign. Intel and Tower were American and Israeli, and China’s silence ended their deal. [510] The reach extends in time as well. SAMR can call in deals below its filing thresholds and has unwound one six years after closing. [511] Conditions attached to an approval can be enforced years later, as Nvidia found. [512]

Washington uses the same law, as the Arm case shows, though there the FTC argued its case in open litigation. [513] For chip companies the lesson is practical. A deal’s fate depends on its market shares and also on the state of relations between governments when the file reaches the regulator’s desk. In November 2026 three Chinese files remained open in this research: the penalty for Nvidia, the Qualcomm investigation, and clearance for Axcelis and Veeco. [511, 512, 501]

Limits. Seen only in search summaries and therefore left out or kept general: the exact date of China’s Synopsys approval (summaries give 14 July 2025, one Caixin digest implies 15 July); the content of the Mellanox conditions (reported as non-discriminatory supply and interoperability); the opening date of the Qualcomm probe (10 October 2025) and SAMR’s March 2024 warning to Qualcomm; the European Commission’s conditional approval of Synopsys and Ansys on 10 January 2025 and the FTC’s consent order with divestitures to Keysight; the British and European reviews of Nvidia and Arm and the $1.25 billion that SoftBank kept; the $4.4 billion value of the Axcelis and Veeco deal and SAMR’s request that they refile under the normal procedure; and reports that SAMR moved several 2026 cases, possibly including onsemi and Synaptics, from simplified to standard review. Fine ranges for Nvidia conflict: Fortune gives 1% to 5% of China sales, other outlets 1% to 10%. No report of a final Nvidia penalty or a Qualcomm outcome was found, but the search may have missed one. From general knowledge and not sourced here: that Autotalks is an Israeli company, that Axcelis and Veeco are both American, and that China’s failure to clear Qualcomm’s bid for NXP in 2018 was an earlier example of the same veto. The claim that Chinese reviews track diplomacy rests on analysts and law firm commentary, not on any statement by SAMR.

China · reviews and investigations

Four Chinese agencies have opened cases on American chip firms and rules, each under a different law and none yet with a published penalty

21 May 2023Date Micron’s products failed China’s cybersecurity review and critical infrastructure operators were told to stop buying them

15 Sep 2025Date the market regulator said Nvidia had violated the Anti-Monopoly Law, by its preliminary finding

No. 50Commerce ministry announcement of 13 September 2025 opening an anti-discrimination investigation of American chip measures

3 monthsNormal length of that investigation, with extension allowed in special circumstances

4Groups of American measures named: tariffs since 2018, export rules since 2022, CHIPS Act restrictions, and the May 2025 guidance on Huawei’s Ascend chips

Level IIHighest grade in China’s security assessment of processors, given to Loongson’s 3B6000M in September 2025

Besides export controls, Beijing has a second set of tools that work on foreign chip companies inside China. The first use was against Micron. On 21 May 2023 the Cybersecurity Review Office announced that Micron’s products sold in China had not passed review: they had relatively serious security problems, posed a major risk to the supply chain of critical information infrastructure and affected national security. [379] Operators of critical information infrastructure in China were told to stop buying Micron products. [379] The notice gave no technical detail. [379]

Three more cases followed. The market regulator opened an antitrust case on Nvidia in December 2024 and on 15 September 2025 said that, after preliminary investigation, Nvidia had violated the Anti-Monopoly Law and the conditions attached in 2020 to its purchase of Mellanox, and that the investigation would go further. [380] On 13 September 2025 the commerce ministry opened two cases on the same evening: an anti-dumping case on American analogue chips and, under the Foreign Trade Law, an investigation of whether American measures against China’s chip industry are discriminatory. [369, 381]

Chinese cases against American chip firms and measures, from the Chinese announcements and reports of them. Status is as far as these sources go.

Case	Agency and law	What the Chinese text says	Outcome so far
Micron, 2023	Cybersecurity Review Office, under the Cybersecurity Law. [379]	Products did not pass review. Critical information infrastructure operators should stop purchases. China welcomes firms of all countries that obey its laws. [379]	purchase ban The only one of the four with a final decision.
Nvidia and Mellanox, 2024 to 2025	State Administration for Market Regulation, under the Anti-Monopoly Law and its 2020 conditional approval. [380]	The 2020 conditions barred forced bundling of Nvidia accelerators with Mellanox networking gear and required continued supply to China on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The preliminary finding is a violation. [380]	further investigation No penalty published in these sources.
Nvidia H20, 2025	Cyberspace Administration, under the cybersecurity, data security and personal information laws. [368]	Nvidia was asked to explain back-door risks and submit material. [368]	summons No published finding.
American analogue chips, 2025	Ministry of Commerce, anti-dumping rules. [369]	Interface and gate driver chips at 40 nanometres and above, on an application from a provincial industry association. [369]	pending Due by 13 September 2026 unless extended. [369]
American chip measures, 2025	Ministry of Commerce, Foreign Trade Law articles 7, 36 and 37. [381]	Preliminary evidence that American tariffs since 2018, export rules of October 2022, October 2023, December 2024 and January 2025, CHIPS Act restrictions and the May 2025 guidance on Ascend chips are discriminatory. Questionnaires, hearings and on-site checks may be used. [381]	pending The United States was given 30 days to request consultations. [381]
Security assessment of processors	China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center. [382]	Results are published in numbered notices. Notice No. 3 of 2025, issued 12 September, gave Loongson’s 3B6000M the highest grade, Level II. [382]	a buying list in practice Chinese reports link the grade to use in government, finance and energy. [382]

Four laws, one target

Each case uses a different statute: cybersecurity review, merger conditions, anti-dumping and the Foreign Trade Law’s clause on discriminatory measures. [379, 380, 381] None is an export control. That matters because each has its own procedure and its own remedy, from a purchase ban to a duty to a fine, and each can be opened or left pending independently. A foreign chip firm in China now faces several regulators, any of which can act when relations worsen.

Turning the complaint into a case file

The anti-discrimination investigation is the most ambitious of the four. It lists the American export rules by date and treats them as possible grounds for countermeasures under Chinese trade law. [381] Article 7 of that law allows China to respond to discriminatory trade measures by another country. [381] The investigation builds a formal record, with hearings and questionnaires, for retaliation that Beijing could otherwise take by announcement.

Timing

The dates cluster. The Micron review was announced on 31 March 2023 and decided seven weeks later. The Nvidia antitrust case opened a week after the American rules of December 2024, and its preliminary finding came two days after the two commerce ministry cases of September 2025. [380, 369, 381] The texts never link a case to a negotiation. The calendar does.

The record shows a preference for open cases over closed ones. Of the cases read here, only Micron’s has ended in a decision, and that decision named no defect. [379] A pending investigation gives Beijing a lever at every meeting without the cost of a ruling that would have to be defended. It is the regulatory equivalent of the suspended rare-earth rules.

For the firms the effect is real whatever the outcome. A purchase ban covering critical infrastructure removed Micron from a large part of the Chinese server market, and Chinese buyers read a summons or a preliminary finding as advice about whom to buy from. The security assessment list works the same way from the other side, by telling state buyers which home-made processors are approved. [382]

Limits. The Micron notice was read in a Chinese state newspaper’s report, and the Nvidia finding in a Chinese business site’s report that gives the regulator’s statement in summary; neither regulator’s own page was read. The anti-discrimination announcement was read in a Chinese business newspaper’s reproduction. The security assessment is described from one technology news report about one product; the full notices and the rules on how grades are used were not read, and the statement that the list guides state purchasing is from that report and general knowledge. The date of the Micron review’s opening, the remark on Micron’s loss of market, and the readings on timing are from search summaries and general knowledge. Whether any of the pending cases has been decided since these reports was not established; the cases are also covered, from English-language sources, under China’s toolkit.

State as owner

Governments are no longer only referees. They hold shares.

The oldest tool of chip governance was the subsidy. The newer one is ownership or direct command over a company. It gives the state more control than a rule does, and it changes whose interests the rules protect.

Where the state has become an owner or has taken direct powers over a chip company.

State	What it did	What it shows
United States	Converted $5.7 billion of unpaid grants and $3.2 billion of secure-production money into a 9.9% stake in Intel in August 2025. [161] Auditors report that the Commerce Department now weighs whether a company will give equity when it sets an award, and that awards to 14 companies were amended. [160]	The grant programme is turning into a shareholding. The regulator of the industry now owns part of one competitor.
Netherlands	Used a 1952 law, never used before, to take powers over the Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia in September 2025. China halted deliveries of the company’s chips. The order was suspended on 19 November 2025, with the power to reinstate it kept. [175, 176] The company and its owner were suing each other a year later. [177]	Intervention works once. The reprisal reached European carmakers within weeks, and the company is still split.
Japan	Became the largest shareholder in Rapidus, alongside 32 private firms. [62]	A state bet on one company to return to the leading edge.
China	A third national chip fund, now placing its money through sub-funds. [136]	Ownership as the normal instrument, used at every stage of the chain.
Germany	€5 billion of federal aid toward the €10 billion TSMC joint venture in Dresden. [183] Intel cancelled its Magdeburg fab in 2025 despite €6.8 billion of promised incentives. [185]	Money buys a plant only when the company already wants one.

What ownership adds

A shareholder can direct where a company builds and whom it serves without writing a rule. That is faster than regulation and harder for a rival state to challenge.

What it costs

A state that owns a chipmaker has a reason to write export rules, tariffs and procurement rules in that company’s favour. Its allies’ firms, which compete with it, will notice.

What it invites

The Nexperia case is the template for reprisal. Any state that takes control of a foreign-owned plant should expect the parts that plant depends on to stop arriving. [175]

China · the Nexperia dispute in Chinese sources, 2025 to 2026

Thirteen months after the Dutch state took control of Nexperia, the firm is splitting in two along the border, with courts in Amsterdam and Dongguan ruling against each other

99%Share of Nexperia’s stock placed in trust by the Dutch court, as China’s commerce ministry describes it

$2bnClaim by Nexperia’s Dutch company against Wingtech and its controlling shareholder, filed in Amsterdam

8bn yuanWingtech’s claim in the Dongguan Intermediate Court

2.139bn yuanAssets of two Nexperia companies frozen by the Dongguan court

9 to 13.5bn yuanWingtech’s forecast net loss for 2025

16,000Nexperia part numbers, sold to more than 25,000 customers

Nexperia makes plain chips: diodes, transistors and power devices, about 16,000 part numbers sold to more than 25,000 customers, many of them carmakers. [422] It was bought by Wingtech, a Chinese listed company. On 30 September 2025 the Dutch economy minister issued an order over the firm under a law on the availability of goods, and on 8 October the Enterprise Chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal placed almost all of its shares in trust. [419] China’s commerce ministry answered by stopping exports from Nexperia’s Chinese plant, which packages most of its output. Carmakers on three continents ran short.

The ministry’s statements give Beijing’s account. It says the Dutch state “improperly intervened” in a private company and took into trust “99% of the shares of a wholly owned subsidiary”, using a Cold War statute that had never been applied. [419] After two rounds of talks in Beijing on 18 and 19 November 2025 the Dutch side suspended the minister’s order. The ministry welcomed this as “a first step” and said the root of the problem, the court’s ruling, remained. [420]

It still remains. On 11 February 2026 the Enterprise Chamber ordered a full investigation and kept every interim measure in place. [422] By November 2026 Nexperia’s Dutch company was suing Wingtech for $2 billion, Wingtech was suing in Dongguan for 8 billion yuan, and a court-appointed administrator had proposed dividing the firm. [423]

The Nexperia dispute as recorded in Chinese ministry statements, company announcements and press reports.

Date	Event	Source	What it shows
30 Sep 2025	Dutch economy minister issues an order over Nexperia under the Goods Availability Act. [419]	Ministry statement, 14 November 2025	state as owner A security power used on a firm, not on a product.
8 Oct 2025	Enterprise Chamber ruling. Almost all shares go into trust, and Wingtech loses control. [419, 420]	Ministry statements	court, not minister The measure that lasts is judicial.
Oct to Nov 2025	China restricts exports from Nexperia’s Chinese plant, then exempts “compliant exports for civilian use”. [419, 421]	Ministry statements	counter-leverage Packaging in China was the chokepoint.
14 Nov 2025	Ministry says Nexperia’s Dutch company is refusing to supply wafers to the Chinese plant and sending lawyers’ letters to Chinese contract makers. [419]	Ministry statement	both sides withhold Wafers one way, finished parts the other.
18 to 19 Nov 2025	Two rounds of government talks in Beijing. The Dutch side suspends the order. China asks for it to be revoked. [420]	Ministry statement	partial The order goes, the ruling stays.
22 Dec 2025	Wafer stocks at the Dongguan plant are low and carmakers in China face shortages. First talks between Wingtech and Nexperia’s Dutch management. [421]	Ministry statement	cost at home The stoppage also hurt Chinese carmakers.
11 Feb 2026	Enterprise Chamber orders a formal investigation, extends it to local management, keeps all interim measures and bars the trustee from selling the shares. [422]	Wingtech announcement, press report	frozen A second, long phase.
3 Nov 2026	Nexperia’s Dutch company sues for $2 billion, alleging the Chinese units built their own supply chain. The administrator proposes that Wingtech keep China and an outside investor take the rest. [423]	Wingtech announcements, press report	split One firm becomes two.

Beijing’s lesson from the case

The ministry stated its conclusion directly: the crisis “teaches the whole world” that governments must not use administrative means to interfere in the running of a company, and before the Dutch order “the global semiconductor supply chain was stable and secure”. [419] It is the mirror image of the Dutch reading, that a strategic supplier under foreign control was at risk. Each side now cites the same shortage as proof.

The “two circles” proposal

The administrator’s plan, as Wingtech reported it, would leave Wingtech owning and controlling Nexperia’s Chinese business while an outside investor takes control of the business elsewhere, with Wingtech holding a minority. [423] Wingtech says it will negotiate but will not accept a plan led by the administrator alone. The Dutch company’s claim alleges that the Chinese units have already set up a separate supply chain and compete with it. [423] In practice the split has happened. The dispute is over who owns which half.

Two legal systems, opposite orders

The Dongguan court has frozen about 2.139 billion yuan of Nexperia assets and ordered six parties not to sell or transfer Nexperia shares, intellectual property or assets inside or outside China. The Dutch company has asked the Enterprise Chamber for further measures to limit Wingtech’s influence over it. [423] Neither court’s orders run in the other’s territory, so each side controls what lies on its own soil.

Nexperia matters to this page because it is the first case in which a Western government and China each used a control on the same ordinary chipmaker, and both worked. The Dutch measure removed a Chinese owner from the European plants. The Chinese measure stopped the finished parts. The result was not a victory for either: it was a company cut along the line where wafer-making ends and packaging begins.

The cost fell on the owner and on customers. Wingtech forecast a loss of 9 to 13.5 billion yuan for 2025, had its credit rating cut and has a convertible bond of about 8.6 billion yuan falling due in July 2027. [422] The plan for 2026 to 2030, described in the last part of this page, calls for stronger work against “long-arm jurisdiction”, and Wingtech’s suit at home is one form that takes.

Limits. The ministry’s statements of 14 November, 19 November and 22 December 2025 were read in Chinese outlets that carry them in full. The ministry’s original export restriction of October 2025 was not found as a document; its existence and the later exemption are taken from the ministry’s own statements and press reports. Events of 2026 rest on two Chinese press reports of Wingtech’s stock exchange announcements, not on the announcements or the Dutch rulings themselves, and Wingtech is a party to the case. This section gives the Chinese account; the Dutch government’s reasons are described on the Netherlands page. The statement that carmakers on three continents ran short is from press coverage at the time and general knowledge.

Minerals and magnets

The allies are paying to rebuild a minerals chain outside China, but the rules arrive before the plants do

$110/kgTen-year floor price the Defense Department guaranteed MP Materials for neodymium-praseodymium, the main magnet feedstock, July 2025 [514]

15%Stake in MP Materials the Defense Department’s $400 million of preferred stock and warrant represent, making it the largest shareholder, July 2025 [514]

$10bnCeiling of the Export-Import Bank loan approved for Project Vault, a commercial critical minerals reserve, 2 February 2026 [519]

1 Jan 2027Date from which routine waivers for covered Chinese materials in defence contracts are to stop, under an executive order of 20 July 2026 [515]

2028Year commissioning is due to begin at both the MP Materials 10X plant and the USA Rare Earth plant in South Carolina [514, 521]

Below 60%G7 target for dependence on any single outside supplier of rare earths and magnets by 2030, set June 2026 [520]

Washington has stopped waiting for the market to fix its dependence on Chinese metals. Since July 2025 it has bought shares in a mine, guaranteed a price, promised to find buyers for magnets and lent money for a commercial stockpile. [514, 519] It has signed minerals frameworks with allies, starting with Australia in October 2025, and joined a refinery venture in Saudi Arabia a month later. [517, 518] The method is the same each time: the state takes the price risk that private investors refused to carry. The Group of Seven (G7) rich democracies added a joint alliance in June 2026. [520]

The weak point is timing. From 1 January 2027 the Pentagon is told to stop granting routine waivers for Chinese rare earth magnets and other covered materials in American weapons. [515] The large new American magnet plants are due to begin commissioning in 2028. [514, 521] The International Energy Agency (IEA) put China’s share of sintered permanent magnet manufacturing at 94 percent in 2024. [521] Defence contractors asked in 2026 for the deadline to be pushed back. [516] None of the sources read for this page shows that a delay was granted.

The main instruments the United States and its allies have put in place since mid-2025, and how far each has got by November 2026.

Instrument	What it does	Date	State of play
MP Materials partnership	The Defense Department buys $400 million of preferred stock, sets a ten-year floor of $110 a kilogram and guarantees buyers for all magnets from a new plant for ten years. [514]	10 July 2025 [514]	Signed, plant pending The 10X magnet plant is due to begin commissioning in 2028. [514]
Magnet rule for weapons	A defence contracting clause bars samarium-cobalt and neodymium-iron-boron magnets if any stage from mine to finished magnet took place in China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. [516]	Enforced from 1 January 2027 [516]	Supply not ready Contractors lobbied for a delay in 2026; the date had already slipped a year. [516]
Waiver cut-off	Executive Order 14415 tells the Pentagon to cease routine waivers; after the date a waiver needs an accepted plan to remove the material. [515]	Signed 20 July 2026 [515]	Tightened on paper The waiver power is not repealed, so discretion remains. [515]
Project Vault	A public-private reserve that stores raw materials for manufacturers, financed by a direct loan of up to $10 billion. [519]	2 February 2026 [519]	Funded, contents unknown The announcement names member firms but no minerals or tonnages. [519]
United States-Australia framework	Both governments pledge at least $1 billion for projects within six months; the Export-Import Bank plans letters of interest worth $2.2 billion. [517]	20 October 2025 [517]	Projects named It backs a 100-tonne-a-year gallium refinery at an Alcoa site, with Japan as third partner. [517]
Saudi refinery venture	MP Materials and the Pentagon target 49 percent of a rare earth refinery; Maaden, the Saudi state miner, holds at least 51 percent. [518]	19 November 2025 [518]	No timetable The announcement gives no construction or start date. [518]
G7 minerals alliance	Members agree to build stockpiles, share data and cut reliance on any single outside supplier below 60 percent by 2030. [520]	June 2026 [520]	No common floor Price floors and joint buying are being explored, not adopted. [520]
New American magnet plants	USA Rare Earth commissioned its first line in Oklahoma and is building a 6,400-tonne-a-year plant in South Carolina. [521]	March 2026 and 2028 [521]	One line running The company expects 10,000 tonnes a year across its two sites once both are built. [521]

The state as buyer of last resort

The MP Materials deal is the template. The Defense Department took a 15 percent stake, lent $150 million for heavy rare earth separation and promised a floor of $110 a kilogram for ten years. [514] It also undertook that every magnet from the new plant would find a buyer for a decade. [514] Private banks then committed $1 billion to build it. [514] The guarantee came first and the private money followed.

A deadline that outruns supply

The magnet rule is strict by design. It covers every stage from mining to the finished magnet. [516] Its start had already moved one year, to 1 January 2027, and contractors argued in 2026 that no Western supplier had reached the needed volume. [516] The July 2026 order closes routine waivers but leaves a route for firms that file a removal plan with a timeline. [515] That route is likely to be busy.

Gallium is the easier gap

Gallium volumes are small, so one plant can matter. The refinery planned at Alcoa’s site in Western Australia is sized at 100 tonnes a year, against American consumption of 21 tonnes in 2024. [517] The Pentagon has also paid $29.9 million toward recovering gallium and scandium from industrial waste in the United States. [526] Rare earth magnets are harder: they need mines, separation, metal making and magnet lines, all in sequence.

The state of play in November 2026 is a chain of signed contracts and building sites. One American commercial magnet line has been running since March 2026. [521] The two large plants are due to begin commissioning in 2028, the Saudi refinery has no published timetable, and the G7 has a target for 2030 without an agreed price mechanism. [514, 518, 520, 521] The governance has moved faster than the factories. The rules now assume a non-Chinese supply that mostly does not exist yet.

That leaves a gap of at least a year between the waiver cut-off and the first large output. [515, 514] How it is managed depends on choices this page cannot predict: how freely the Pentagon accepts removal plans, and whether China’s suspended metals ban returns. The plants announced so far would give the United States roughly 20,000 tonnes a year of magnet capacity on the companies’ own figures. [514, 521] Those are plans. They are measured against a Chinese share of 94 percent of world magnet output in 2024. [521]

Limits. The MP Materials and Maaden terms come from the company’s own press releases, which were opened and read; binding contract terms may differ. The magnet rule and executive order are described from a law firm note and a trade analyst’s report, not from the legal texts, and the delay request rests on that analyst’s account of a Financial Times report that was not opened. Seen only in search summaries and therefore left out of cited claims: a $12 billion total for Project Vault with $1.67 billion to $2 billion of private money, the $8.5 billion project pipeline in the Australia deal, the July 2026 final investment decision and August 2026 groundbreaking for the Alcoa gallium plant with a United States contribution reported variously as $93 million and $174 million, a second United States-Japan framework signed on 28 October 2025 (its text was opened but is not among the references), Pentagon loans of $725 million and $500 million to Energy Fuels and Phoenix Tailings, and a projected American magnet demand of 20,000 to 25,000 tonnes by 2030. The 20,000-tonne capacity sum simply adds two company targets, neither of which is built; one source gives MP Materials’ expansion as 7,000 tonnes and the total as 10,000. No source gave what Project Vault has actually bought, or a figure for how much of allied demand the new plants will cover. The renaming of the Defense Department as the Department of War, and the description of magnets as needing several processing stages, are general knowledge.

China · the rare-earth texts

The 2024 Rare Earth Regulation put the whole chain under state quota and tracing, and Announcement 62 then closed the export of the know-how

1 Oct 2024Date the Rare Earth Management Regulation took effect, in 32 articles

5 to 10 timesFine, as a multiple of illegal income, for mining or separating beyond quota, with confiscation of the product

¥1 to 5 millionFine for exceeding quota where illegal income is under ¥500,000 or absent

2New control codes in Announcement 62: one for process technology, one for building and servicing production lines

3 magnet typesSamarium-cobalt, neodymium-iron-boron and cerium magnets, whose manufacturing technology is controlled

9 Oct 2025Date Announcement 62 was issued and took effect. It was suspended with five others on 7 November 2025

China’s hold on rare earths is usually explained by geology and cost. Since 2024 it has also been a matter of law. The Rare Earth Management Regulation, State Council Order 785, was adopted on 26 April 2024 and took effect on 1 October 2024, in 32 articles. [377] It states that rare-earth resources belong to the state and that the state practises protective mining. [377] Mining and separation are under a national quota, and only the enterprises named by the industry ministry may do either. [377] Every enterprise in the chain must record where its product goes and enter it in a national tracing system run with the customs and tax authorities. [377]

A year later Beijing controlled the knowledge as well as the metal. Announcement No. 62 of 9 October 2025 requires an export licence for the technology of rare-earth mining, separation, metal smelting, magnet making and recycling, and for the technology to assemble, commission, maintain, repair and upgrade the production lines. [378] Its definition of export is wide. It covers handing the technology to a foreign person inside China as well as sending it abroad, and it names licensing, investment, joint research, employment, consulting, teaching and exhibitions as routes. [378] It took effect the day it was issued. [378]

How the two Chinese texts control rare earths, link by link along the chain.

Link in the chain	What the text provides	Source	Effect
Ownership	Rare-earth resources belong to the state. No organisation or individual may take or damage them. [377]	Regulation, article 4.	legal basis for everything below
Who may mine and separate	Only enterprises determined and published by the industry ministry with other departments. No one else may mine or separate. [377]	Regulation, article 8.	closed list of producers
How much	Total quantity control on mining and on separation, set by reserves, industry needs, environmental limits and market demand, and managed dynamically. [377]	Regulation, article 10.	state sets output
Tracing	A product tracing information system, and a duty on enterprises to record product flows and enter them. [377] Failure brings fines of ¥50,000 to ¥200,000, rising to ¥1 million and suspension. [377]	Regulation, articles 14 and 25.	every tonne has a record The data that make a 0.1% rule conceivable.
Illegal product	No one may buy, process, sell or export rare earths that were illegally mined or separated. Fines of five to ten times illegal income, and loss of business licence in serious cases. [377]	Regulation, articles 13 and 23.	aimed at the grey market
Trade	Imports and exports of rare-earth products, technology, processes and equipment follow trade law, and controlled items also follow export control law. [377]	Regulation, article 15.	the hook for the 2025 announcements
Reserves	Physical stockpiles combined with reserves left in the ground. Government and enterprises both hold physical stocks. [377]	Regulation, article 16.	a buffer for home users
Process technology	A licence to export technology for mining, separation, metal smelting, magnet making and recycling, including drawings, process specifications and parameters, machining programs and simulation data. [378]	Announcement 62, code 1E902.a.	stops plants being copied abroad
Production lines	A licence to export technology for assembling, commissioning, maintaining, repairing and upgrading production lines. [378]	Announcement 62, code 1E902.b.	control through servicing The same lever the West holds over lithography machines in China.
People	Chinese citizens and organisations may not give substantial help to rare-earth activities abroad without a licence. Carriers, customs brokers, payment firms and online platforms may not assist a breach. [378]	Announcement 62.	mirrors the American rule on its own citizens

From cartel to statute

Before 2024 China managed rare earths through quotas issued by ministries and through state-owned groups. The regulation gives that system the force of law and adds tracing and heavy penalties. [377] An enterprise that exceeds its quota loses the product and pays five to ten times its illegal income. [377] The effect is that output, and therefore world supply, is set by an administrative decision that the law now protects.

A copy of the 2022 American rule

In October 2022 Washington barred its citizens from supporting advanced chipmaking in China. Announcement 62 does the same in reverse for rare earths: no Chinese citizen or organisation may give substantial help to mining, separation or magnet making abroad without a licence. [378] It also catches uncontrolled goods and services where the exporter knows they will serve such projects. [378] The engineers who could build a refinery in Malaysia, Australia or Texas are the item being controlled.

What is left open

The announcement excludes technology already in the public domain, basic scientific research and what is needed for an ordinary patent application. [378] It then warns that disclosing controlled, non-public technology to the public without a licence is itself punishable under the Export Control Law. [378] Papers and patents already published stay free. The operating knowledge of a working plant does not.

The two texts explain why the allies’ plans to rebuild refining outside China are slow. The metal can be bought, at a price and under licence. What Announcement 62 withholds is the process knowledge, the equipment servicing and the experienced staff, which are what a new plant lacks. [378] China is applying to rare earths the logic the Netherlands applies to lithography: the machine or the plant is only useful with its maker’s support.

The suspension of November 2025 covers Announcement 62 along with the others, so for now the technology rule is not applied. [362] The regulation is not suspended, and nor is the older catalogue of technologies barred or restricted from export, which Chinese reports say has included rare-earth technology since 2001. The domestic controls on who may produce and how much are permanent law.

Limits. The regulation was read on the environment ministry’s copy of the State Council order and Announcement 62 on China Daily’s Chinese site, both through a reading tool that summarises, so article numbers were checked but not every clause. The annual quota figures and the list of authorised enterprises are set by separate notices that were not read. The statement about the pre-2024 system, the comparison with the October 2022 American rule and with lithography, and the remark on the technology catalogue (from a Chinese press report seen in a search summary) are from general knowledge or secondary reports and are this site’s reading. Announcements 55 to 58, on equipment, further rare earths, superhard materials and battery materials, were not read.

China · how rare-earth export licences work in practice

A rare-earth export licence is issued one shipment and one recipe at a time and takes two to three months; since December 2025 a few exporters hold general licences

45 to 60Working days for review of a rare-earth dual-use export licence, as magnet makers describe it

1 batchWhat a single licence covers. It may not be used twice

6Magnet makers known to have received licences by 18 May 2025, six weeks after the control began

2 to 3 timesRise in European prices of dysprosium and terbium by late April 2025, as a Chinese metals analyst reported it

about 85%China’s share of world rare-earth refining capacity, from the same analyst

18 Dec 2025Date the ministry confirmed it had approved some general licences

The sections on the rare-earth law and the paused controls describe the rules. Chinese magnet makers have described what the rules are like to work under. When seven medium and heavy rare earths, among them dysprosium and terbium, went under export control in April 2025, every order for a product containing them had to be filed with the commerce ministry and approved before it could leave. [305]

Six weeks later at least six listed magnet makers had received their first licences, and several more were waiting. [305] The firms described the procedure to a Chinese financial news service. A licence covers one batch and cannot be reused. Each “recipe” needs its own application: if the rare-earth content of the product differs, the exporter starts again. [305] Review normally takes 45 to 60 working days, and longer if papers are sent back. [305]

In December 2025 the system gained a second track. The ministry’s spokesperson said that as exporters had gained compliance experience, some “have reached the basic requirements for a general licence”, and that applications had been received and approved. [306] The question had been put by a reporter citing European officials who said China had begun issuing longer licences to European firms. [306]

How China’s rare-earth export licensing works, from exporters’ accounts and the ministry’s statements.

Feature	In practice	Source	Effect on a foreign buyer
Scope	Only products containing the seven controlled elements. Magnets without them ship as before. [305]	A magnet maker	narrow High-temperature magnets for motors are the ones caught.
Unit of approval	One order, one batch, one licence. A new application for each composition. [305]	Three magnet makers	friction A buyer with many magnet grades needs many licences.
Time	45 to 60 working days, longer if documents are returned. [305]	Industry sources	delay Two to three months of stock must be held.
Who was first	The first approved batch at one firm went to a German carmaker. [305]	A magnet maker	priority Large civilian end users with clear use.
Revenue	Export orders that used to be booked quickly now wait for approval, which firms said would affect half-year results. [305]	Listed magnet makers	cost at home The control also costs Chinese exporters.
General licence	Approved for some exporters from late 2025, on the basis of compliance record. [306]	Ministry spokesperson	easing Repeat shipments to known buyers without a fresh review.
Who decides	The commerce ministry, case by case, under the dual-use regulation. [305, 306]	Both	discretion The pace of approval is itself a policy lever.

A valve, not a wall

These accounts explain how a control with no formal ban produced shortages abroad within weeks. Nothing was prohibited. Each shipment simply joined a queue of unknown length, and every change of product restarted it. [305] The ministry can lengthen or shorten that queue without issuing any new rule. In January 2026 Chinese reporting said the government was considering tighter licence review for Japan, described in the section on Japan, which is the same lever turned the other way.

What a general licence signals

A general licence lets a qualified exporter ship repeatedly to named buyers. The spokesperson tied it to the exporter’s compliance record. [306] In effect the ministry has built a trusted-exporter tier. It rewards Chinese firms that document their customers well, and it favours foreign buyers who disclose their end use. The same idea appears in the 2026 drone rules, which offer general licences to firms with a working compliance system.

What the buyer must give up

The price of a licence is information. Exporters must state who the end user is and what the magnet is for, and the buyer must supply it. A carmaker’s request therefore tells the Chinese authorities which model uses which magnet, in what quantity, from which supplier. That reading is this site’s, and the application forms were not read. Over a year of applications, the licensing office acquires a map of foreign industry’s dependence that no customs statistic could give it.

Licensing in practice is the missing piece between the rules and their effects. The section on minerals reports the shortages of 2025. The cause was a procedure, not a prohibition: one licence per batch and per recipe, two to three months each. [305] China’s leverage over rare earths lies as much in the speed of an office in Beijing as in the text of any announcement.

That also explains why the pause of November 2025 changed less than it seemed. The paused announcements were new rules. The April 2025 licensing requirement was never paused, and its queue is still the one that every magnet for a foreign motor passes through, eased since December 2025 for exporters the ministry trusts. [306, 411]

Limits. The account of licensing practice rests on one Chinese financial news report of May 2025 quoting magnet makers and an analyst, so it describes the first weeks of the system and may not describe it now. The general licences are confirmed only by the spokesperson’s one-sentence statement; press reports naming the firms that received them were seen in a search summary and are not cited. The ministry publishes no figures for applications, approvals or waiting times. The price and refining-share figures are the analyst’s. The reading that licensing gives the ministry a map of foreign dependence is this site’s inference, and the application forms were not read.

China · the October 2025 controls and their suspension

Six Chinese controls written in October 2025 have never been applied, and on 9 November 2026 their suspension was extended by two months, not twelve

61 daysLength of the second suspension, 11 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. The first ran for a year

26Classes of rare-earth processing equipment in Announcement No. 56, from extraction tanks to magnet sintering furnaces

5Rare earths added by No. 57: holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium

300 Wh/kgEnergy density at or above which a lithium-ion cell or pack is controlled under No. 58

45 μmLargest wire diameter of a controlled diamond wire saw under No. 55

27 Nov 2026End of the separate suspension of the ban on gallium, germanium and antimony sales to the United States

On 9 October 2025 China’s commerce ministry and customs published the widest set of export controls in the country’s history: four joint announcements, numbered 55 to 58, and the ministry’s own Nos. 61 and 62. [403, 404, 405, 406, 360, 378] The four were to take effect on 8 November 2025. [403, 404, 405, 406] On 7 November, the day before, a one-sentence announcement suspended all six until 10 November 2026. [407]

That date has now passed. On 9 November 2026 the two bodies issued Announcement No. 58 of 2026: the six stay suspended from 11 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. [408] The first suspension ran for a year. The second runs for two months. A separate suspension, of the ban on selling gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials to the United States, runs out on 27 November 2026, and no extension had been found when this was written. [409, 410]

The six texts are complete law, approved by the State Council, with control numbers, technical thresholds and customs codes. [403, 404, 406] Nothing in them needs to be drafted again. They can be switched on by letting a date pass.

The six announcements of 9 October 2025 and the two orders that hold them in suspension, from the ministry’s texts.

Announcement	What it controls	Detail from the text	Status on 14 November 2026
No. 55, superhard materials	Synthetic diamond powder and crystal, diamond wire saws and grinding wheels, and one kind of diamond deposition equipment with its process technology. [403]	Powder of 50 micrometres or finer. Single crystal of 50 to 500 micrometres, jewellery stones excepted. Wire saws of 45 micrometres or thinner with grit of 8 micrometres or finer. [403]	suspended To 10 January 2027. [408]
No. 56, rare-earth equipment and inputs	Twenty-six classes of equipment for separating, smelting and making magnets from rare earths, the ores themselves and the chemicals used to separate them. [404]	Centrifugal extractors, electrolysis cells of 6,000 to 30,000 amperes, hydrogen decrepitation furnaces, jet mills to 5 micrometres, sintering furnaces, grain-boundary diffusion equipment. Five named extractants. [404]	suspended [408]
No. 57, five more rare earths	Holmium, erbium, thulium, europium and ytterbium as metals, alloys, targets, magnets, crystals, oxides and compounds. [405]	Added to the rare earths under export control since April 2025, which the ministry’s explanation refers to. [405, 411]	suspended [408]
No. 58, batteries and graphite anodes	Lithium-ion cells and packs, the machines that make them, cathode materials, artificial graphite anode material and the furnaces and processes for it. [406]	Cells at 300 watt-hours per kilogram or more. Iron phosphate cathode above set density and capacity. Winding, stacking and filling machines. Graphitisation furnaces of four types. [406]	suspended [408]
No. 61, items made abroad	Foreign-made goods containing Chinese rare earths above a value share, described in the section on the 0.1% rule. [360]	The first Chinese control to reach goods made in other countries. [360]	suspended [408]
No. 62, rare-earth technology	Technology for mining, separating and smelting rare earths and for making and recycling magnets. [378]	Covers technical services by Chinese citizens and firms. [378]	suspended [408]
No. 70 of 2025	Suspends all six “with approval”, from 7 November 2025 to 10 November 2026. [407]	One sentence. No reason given in the text. [407]	expired Replaced by the 2026 order.
No. 58 of 2026	Continues the suspension from 11 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. [408]	One sentence, dated 9 November 2026. [408]	in force
No. 46 of 2024, first paragraph	Bans all dual-use exports to American military users or for military use. [409]	Also makes anyone, anywhere, liable for passing Chinese-origin items on to the United States in breach of the rule. [409]	in force Never suspended. [410]
No. 46 of 2024, second paragraph	Refuses in principle licences for gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials to the United States, with stricter review for graphite. [409]	Suspended by No. 72 of 2025 from 9 November 2025. [410]	suspended To 27 November 2026. [410]

The texts are aimed at the factory, not the product

Read together, Nos. 55 to 58 and No. 62 do something the earlier Chinese controls did not. They control the means of building a rival industry: the extraction tanks, electrolysis cells and sintering furnaces for rare earths, the graphitisation furnaces for battery anodes, the winding machines for cells, and the process knowledge for each. [404, 406, 378] A country that wants to stop buying Chinese magnets or anodes needs these machines first. This is the logic of the American controls on chipmaking tools, applied in the fields where China is the toolmaker.

How the ministry explained it

The ministry’s spokesperson said on the day that rare-earth items have military uses, that control is international practice, and that rare-earth technology has been on China’s restricted technology catalogue since 2001. The reason given for acting was that organisations abroad had passed Chinese-origin rare earths, or goods made with illegally obtained Chinese technology, to military users. The spokesperson said the scope was limited, that licences would be granted to those who comply, and that humanitarian uses would be exempt. [411]

A declaration that reverses the burden

Each of the four joint announcements ends with the same customs clause. An exporter of a controlled item must write on the declaration that it is a dual-use item and give its control number. An exporter of something close to the thresholds must write that it is not controlled and give the actual figures. If customs doubts the entry, the goods are held while it asks. [403, 404, 406] The second requirement makes every near-threshold shipment a signed statement that can later be tested.

The length of the new suspension is the news. In April 2026 the ministry’s spokesperson described the pause as part of the consensus reached with the United States at Kuala Lumpur and gave its end as 10 November 2026. [412] A further year would have signalled a settled truce. Two months signals that the question is open, and puts the next decision on 10 January 2027. [408] The texts give no reason, so that reading is this site’s.

Suspension is also not removal of control. The April 2025 licence requirement for rare earths, the December 2024 ban on dual-use sales to American military users, and the earlier controls on gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite all remain law. [409, 410, 411] What is paused is the second layer: the extension from materials to machines, technology and goods made abroad.

Limits. Announcements 55, 56, 58 and 70 of 2025, No. 46 of 2024 and the spokesperson’s explanation were read on the commerce ministry’s site; No. 57 as carried by the state news agency; No. 58 of 2026 on the site of the ministry’s Dalian office, which reproduces it; the suspension of the second paragraph of No. 46 from a state broadcaster’s report of the ministry’s notice. Whether that suspension has been extended beyond 27 November 2026 could not be established: a search on 14 November 2026 found nothing, which is not proof that nothing exists. Neither suspension order gives a reason, and the link to the trade talks is the ministry’s statement of April 2026 and press reporting, not the orders themselves. The uses of the listed items in chipmaking and magnet-making are not stated in the announcements and are from general knowledge. No licensing figures were found.

China · the technology export catalogue, 2025 and 2026

In October 2026 China moved to put large models, agents and computing clusters on its list of technologies that need a licence to leave the country, and made exporters register at once

40Technologies proposed for the catalogue on 16 October 2026: 14 prohibited, 26 restricted

23Of them in SI: large models, agents, computing clusters and information processing

16 Oct 2026Date from which exporters of the listed technologies must register before exporting

15 Nov 2026Close of the public comment period

30,000 tYearly output of a single polysilicon line at or above which its engineering technology would be restricted

2001Year the catalogue was first issued. It was revised in 2008, 2020, 2023 and 2025

China has two export control systems. One, for dual-use goods, is described in the sections on statutes and lists. The other is older and less noticed: a catalogue of technologies that are prohibited or restricted for export, kept by the commerce and science ministries under the Foreign Trade Law since 2001. [430] A prohibited technology may not leave. A restricted one needs a licence. Everything else is free and only registered. [430]

On 16 October 2026 the two ministries published Announcement No. 48, a draft revision adding forty technologies in three fields: twenty-three in SI, five in biomedicine and twelve in solar power. Fourteen would be prohibited and twenty-six restricted. [429] The SI group covers large models, agents, computing clusters and information processing. It is the first time China has proposed to control the export of model technology as such. [429]

The draft was open for comment until 15 November 2026, but one part took effect on the day of publication. Until the revision is final, anyone exporting a listed technology must first register it on the ministry’s system, including exports already under way. [429] Three days later the ministry issued two further announcements on drones and on tunnelling machines, both in force from 18 November 2026. [427, 431]

China’s technology export catalogue: the 2025 adjustment and the 2026 draft, from the ministry’s announcements and explanations.

Field	What is listed	What is left free	Reading
Battery cathodes (2025, in force)	Preparation of lithium iron phosphate and lithium manganese iron phosphate for batteries, and of phosphate cathode raw materials, added as a restricted entry on 15 July 2025. [430]	Products made with the technology are not covered by the catalogue.	in force The know-how behind the battery controls paused in November 2025.
Lithium and gallium (2025, in force)	Five lithium extraction and processing technologies added to the non-ferrous metallurgy entry, and the control points for extracting gallium metal revised. [430]	None stated.	in force Gallium extraction technology is the base of China’s gallium leverage.
SI (2026 draft)	Twenty-three technologies. Prohibited examples: SI-driven generation and mutation of malicious code. Restricted examples: SI-assisted discovery of software vulnerabilities. [429]	Anything already public through open source or academic papers. Model access through an interface, an app, a web page, a hosted service or a light on-device version. [429]	new Weights and methods are controlled, use of the model is not.
SI, deployment abroad (2026 draft)	Installing a restricted model on servers abroad counts as a technology export. [429]	Automatic licences, described as near “declare and go”, for a firm’s own overseas cloud, its own overseas data centres, open-sourcing, joint research abroad and standards work. [429]	managed Chinese firms may take models abroad on their own infrastructure.
Chips (2026 draft)	Not listed as a field.	“Going abroad to tape out and manufacture chips” is named among the cases that receive automatic licences. [429]	carve-out Chinese designers keep access to foreign fabs.
Solar (2026 draft)	Twelve technologies in polysilicon, wafer and cell making, among them perovskite and tandem module production (prohibited) and large polysilicon lines (restricted). Key equipment that embodies the technology is included. [429]	Technology below the stated thresholds, and equipment not named. [429]	new Exporting a production line needs a technology licence.
Biomedicine (2026 draft)	Five technologies in cell and gene therapy, small nucleic acid drugs and pathogens. [429]	Out-licensing and contract research and manufacturing for the platform technologies. [429]	new
Registration (in force)	Before export of any listed technology: transfer of ownership, licensing for use abroad, or a change of owner or controller to a foreign party. [429]	None stated.	in force A sale of a Chinese firm to a foreign buyer is caught if it holds listed technology.

Why the ministry says it is acting

The spokesperson gave two reasons for the SI entries. The first is safety: technologies such as self-directed malicious code could be used against critical infrastructure, defence industry and government systems, and control keeps SI “under human control”. The second is to protect open cooperation, which is why open-source release and published research are excluded. [429] The ministry said the revision is routine, follows international practice and “is not aimed at any particular country, region or entity”. [429]

The third way a technology leaves

The registration rule names three forms of export. Two are familiar: selling the rights and licensing them abroad. The third is a change of the owner or actual controller of a domestic technology to a foreign party. [429] That turns the catalogue into a review of acquisitions. A foreign purchase of a Chinese model developer or solar toolmaker, or a Chinese founder moving a company’s control offshore, now passes through the commerce ministry. The same catalogue was used in 2020 when recommendation algorithms were added during the dispute over a Chinese video app.

A club with easier terms

One sentence looks outward. Technology exports needed for capacity building, sharing and rule-making among members of the World SI Cooperation Organization, the body China has promoted since 2025, “will receive more facilitation and support”. [429] American chip controls sort countries into tiers by how many chips they may buy. This draft sorts them by whether they have joined China’s organisation.

Read with the drone and tunnelling announcements of 19 October, the draft shows where Chinese control is heading. The 2023 to 2025 measures controlled materials. The October 2025 package, now paused, added machines. The October 2026 measures control knowledge: model technology, swarm control, production-line know-how. [429, 427] Each step moves up the chain toward the things China makes that others cannot yet copy.

The tunnelling announcement adds a device not seen before in Chinese controls. Tunnel boring machines, walking excavators and concrete-spraying machines built for altitudes above 3,000 metres need a licence only for “sensitive countries and regions that have disputes with China”. Buyers elsewhere must undertake not to pass them on to such countries, and people outside China are barred from doing so. [431] The countries are not named. It is a control aimed at who builds roads and tunnels on a contested mountain border, written as a general rule.

Limits. Announcement No. 48 and the spokesperson’s explanation were read in full in a reproduction of the ministry’s own release on a Chinese security news site; the annex listing the forty technologies and their thresholds was not opened, so the entries named here are only those the announcement and the explanation mention. The draft may change before it is final, and no final text was found on 14 November 2026. The 2025 adjustment was read in the ministry’s explanation as carried by the science ministry’s newspaper, not in the catalogue itself. Announcement No. 50 was read in full as carried by the state news agency. The remark about recommendation algorithms in 2020, the description of the World SI Cooperation Organization, and the reading that the tunnelling rule concerns a mountain border are from general knowledge and are this site’s. Translations are this site’s.

China · the SI entries in the draft technology catalogue

China’s draft would license the export of any model trained with 10²⁶ operations, holding two trillion parameters, or ranked in the world’s top ten, and the technology for clusters of more than 10,000 accelerators

10²⁶Floating-point operations in training at which a model’s technology would be restricted for export

2 trillionParameters at which a model would be restricted

Top 10World ranking, on any of several public measures at the time of export, that also brings a model under restriction

10,000+Accelerator cards in a cluster whose interconnect and scheduling technology is covered

0.1%Share of “important data” in training below which a model escapes the data entry, if other conditions are met

800 GB/sTwo-way interconnect bandwidth at or above which cluster interconnect technology is covered

The section on the technology catalogue describes Announcement No. 48 of October 2026 from the ministry’s own text, which names few of the entries. Two Chinese law firms have published readings of the annex, and they give the thresholds. [283, 284] The SI entries cover four layers: large models, agents, chip design for SI, and large computing clusters. [283]

A large model would be restricted on either of two grounds. The first is its training data: a model trained on what Chinese law calls “important data” and then offered as a service is restricted, and one trained on “core data” is prohibited. [283] The second is capability. A model is caught if its training used 10²⁶ floating-point operations, if it has two trillion parameters, or if at the time of export it ranks in the world’s top ten in public evaluations of overall performance, specialised ability, global usage, safety or training efficiency. [283] What is controlled is the weights, key checkpoints, source code, architecture and the training and inference methods. [283]

For computing power the entry is the technology that makes a very large cluster work: interconnects between chips and nodes, fault recovery in distributed training, communication scheduling, and scheduling across mixed hardware, for clusters of more than 10,000 accelerator cards. [283, 284]

The SI entries in China’s draft technology catalogue as two Chinese law firms read the annex, October 2026. The annex itself was not opened.

Layer	What would be controlled	Threshold reported	Comparison
Models, by data	A model trained on core data and offered as a service: prohibited. On important data: restricted. [283]	An exception for important data of 0.1% or less, if it does not raise research capability, has been cleaned and cannot be reproduced in output, or is lawfully public. [283, 284]	Chinese in kind No American rule turns on what a model was trained on.
Models, by capability	Weights, checkpoints, source code, architecture, training optimisation and inference acceleration. [283]	10²⁶ operations, or 2 trillion parameters, or a top-ten world ranking at the time of export. [283]	same number The American rule of January 2025 on model weights used 10²⁶ operations. It was withdrawn that May. [283]
Agents	Agent technology for highly sensitive settings at high performance: prohibited. Other agent technology above set figures: restricted. [283]	As reported: 200 or more third-party tools integrated; 60 or more agents working together; instructions broken into chains of 20 or more steps at 80% accuracy and 90% average success. [283]	no parallel Defined by what the agent can do.
Chip design for SI	Design technology for SI chips, with use in driver assistance, computer vision and speech named among its features. [283]	Not given in the analyses read.	inbound and outbound The United States controls the tools that design chips. This controls the designs.
Clusters	Interconnect, fault-tolerant training, communication scheduling and mixed-hardware scheduling for large clusters. [283, 284]	More than 10,000 accelerator cards, and performance figures such as 800 GB/s two-way bandwidth or recovery from failure within 120 seconds. [283]	the Chinese answer How to get large-cluster performance from weaker chips.
Security	SI-driven generation of malicious code and certain information-confrontation technology: prohibited. SI-assisted vulnerability discovery: restricted. [283, 429]	Not given.	shared concern
Speech	Voiceprint recognition added to the existing information-processing entry. [283]	Accuracy, delay, throughput, forgery detection, and recognition of minority languages and dialects. [283]	older entry extended

Which Chinese models would be caught

One of the law firms sets the thresholds against public estimates. It cites an outside estimate that the main Chinese models were trained with about 10²⁴ operations, a hundredth of the threshold, and concludes that a Chinese model is more likely to be caught by parameter count or by the top-ten test. [283] The ranking test moves with the field and is judged on the day of export. A model that leads in one specialised ability or in global usage would qualify without leading overall. [283]

The cluster entry is about chips

Under the American controls a Chinese data centre cannot buy the fastest accelerators, so it must link more, slower ones. The engineering that makes ten thousand weaker cards behave like a smaller number of strong ones, fast links between them, recovery when one fails, schedulers for mixed hardware, is what Chinese firms have had to develop. The draft treats that engineering as a national asset to be licensed. It is the first Chinese control that protects a technology created by the American controls. That reading is this site’s. The draft also eases the outward path: building and running one’s own data centre abroad and taping out chips abroad receive automatic licences, while building or running a large cluster for a foreign third party is not among the eased cases. [283]

What remains unclear

The firms list open questions they expect the final text to settle. Whether parameters are counted in total or only those active in a mixture-of-experts model. Whether the operation count is cumulative and includes fine-tuning and later training, and whether a distilled model inherits the count of its parent. How the 0.1% of important data is measured. Which rankings count for the top-ten test. [283] One firm also notes that open-sourcing part of a model does not release the unpublished parts from control. [284]

Two things stand out against the rest of this page. The first is symmetry. China’s capability threshold for models is the number the United States chose in January 2025 and later abandoned, and South Korea’s SI law uses the same figure for its heaviest obligations. [283] A common unit for measuring a model’s weight is emerging across rival systems, even as they disagree on everything else.

The second is direction. In 2020 the catalogue reached one layer of software, the recommendation algorithm, during the dispute over a Chinese video app. [283] Six years later the draft reaches weights, agents, chip design and clusters, almost every layer of the stack. China has moved from protecting one product to licensing the export of a whole technology in which it now has something to protect.

Limits. The annex to Announcement No. 48, which contains the entries and thresholds, was not opened. Every threshold here is as reported by two Chinese law firms’ published analyses, read in full or in large part; the firms may summarise or select, and their figures should be checked against the annex. The draft was open for comment until 15 November 2026 and the final list may differ. The entry on chip design is described only briefly in the analyses and no threshold for it was found. The statements about the American rule of January 2025, the South Korean law and the estimate of Chinese models’ training compute are as cited by the first law firm and were not checked against their sources. The reading of the cluster entry as a response to American chip controls is this site’s.

The design layer

Washington can withhold design software and processor cores, but it cannot govern an open standard

40 dayslife of the US licence requirement on chip design software for China, 23 May to 2 July 2025 [445]

74%combined 2024 global share of the three leading design software suppliers: Synopsys 31%, Cadence 30%, Siemens 13% [446]

Above 10%China’s self-sufficiency rate in chip design software by 2024, as reported by TrendForce [446]

12 of 24top-tier memberships of RISC-V International held by Chinese firms, per an analysis published in autumn 2026 [449]

March 2020RISC-V International moved its headquarters from the United States to Switzerland [448]

53 v 154per-core score of China’s V100 RISC-V server chip against Arm’s best core, on the index used in an autumn 2026 analysis [449]

A chip is designed before it is made, and the design layer has its own chokepoints: the software used to draw circuits, the processor designs that firms license, and the standards that let parts work together. Electronic design automation (EDA) software is the most concentrated. Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens held 31%, 30% and 13% of the global market in 2024. [446] In May 2025 the United States tested that hold by requiring licences for sales to China, then dropped the requirement on 2 July. [445]

Processor designs come in two kinds. Arm licenses proprietary designs, and reporting in 2022 said it would not sell its fastest server cores to Chinese buyers. [447] RISC-V is an open specification for how software instructs a processor. It is free to use and managed by a standards body based in Switzerland. [448] Members of the US House asked in November 2023 for limits on American work with it. [448] China has gone the other way. Eight agencies drafted national guidance in 2025, and the five-year plan for electronics manufacturing calls for RISC-V research and industrialisation. [449]

Outside control is strongest over proprietary products and weakest over open specifications.

Part of the design layer	Who controls it	What happened	Outside hold on China
Chip design software (EDA)	Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens, with 74% of the 2024 global market between them. [446]	The US required licences for sales to China from 23 May 2025 and ended the requirement on 2 July 2025. [445]	proven, then lifted The control worked by letter to three firms and was removed the same way. [445]
Chinese design software	Domestic firms including Empyrean and Primarius. [446]	Self-sufficiency passed 10% by 2024. In October 2025 Qiyunfang, a SiCarrier subsidiary, launched two tools described as fully home-developed. [446]	weakening slowly The launch claims are the company’s own and were not independently tested. [446]
Arm’s fastest server cores (Neoverse V series)	Arm, subject to US and British export approval. [447]	Arm concluded in 2022 that licences for Alibaba would not be approved because performance was considered too high. [447]	holds No later source found showing a change.
Other Arm designs	Arm	Arm said it had a process to deliver compliant designs to Alibaba and other Chinese partners. [447]	licensed within limits
RISC-V specification	RISC-V International, a Swiss standards body since March 2020. [448]	Free to use without licence fees; Chinese firms hold half of the 24 top-tier memberships. [448, 449]	no state control BIS cannot stop the body publishing or admitting Chinese members. [448]
American participation in RISC-V	United States, BIS	House members wrote to the Commerce Secretary in November 2023 asking for restrictions. [448]	not used Limiting US persons is described as the only clear option, and one that could cede leadership of the standard. [448]
Chinese RISC-V policy	Eight agencies; industry and planning ministries. [449]	National guidance drafted in 2025; the electronics five-year plan calls for RISC-V research, development and industrialisation. [449]	state-backed alternative Cities including Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen have backed it explicitly since 2023. [449]
Memory and other hardware standards bodies	JEDEC (memory standards), SD Association, Wi-Fi Alliance. [450]	After a US order in May 2019, Huawei withdrew from JEDEC and the other two bodies restricted its rights. [450]	voice, not use Huawei could still use the open standards but lost its say in writing them. [450]

The 40-day software control

Siemens said BIS notified it of the licence requirement on 23 May 2025. Synopsys and Cadence received similar letters. [445] BIS ended the requirement on 2 July, about 40 days later, and gave no official reason. Reporting linked the reversal to warmer trade talks with China. [445] The episode showed that Washington can impose and lift this control by letter, without publishing a rule.

Arm: closed designs, licensed with limits

Arm concluded in 2022 that the US and British governments would not approve licences for its Neoverse V series because its performance was considered too high, the Financial Times reported. [447] Alibaba was the buyer affected. Arm said it had a process to deliver compliant designs to Alibaba and other Chinese partners. [447] An analysis from autumn 2026 cites Huawei’s loss of access to Arm designs in 2019 as a motive for China’s turn to RISC-V. [449]

Standards bodies: voice can be lost, use cannot

After a US Commerce Department order against Huawei in May 2019, the company withdrew from JEDEC, the body that writes memory chip standards, and the SD Association and Wi-Fi Alliance limited its rights. [450] Huawei could still use the standards because they are open to industry. It lost its voice in writing them. [450] A body based outside the United States is harder to reach, as the RISC-V case shows. [448]

The design layer is governed unevenly. Proprietary products can be withheld: design software by licence letter, Arm’s top cores by export approval. [445, 447] Open specifications cannot. RISC-V International moved from the United States to Switzerland in March 2020, partly to insulate itself from geopolitics, and Chinese firms now hold half of its 24 top-tier memberships. [448, 449] An analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology argued that barring US firms would not stop the work and could hand leadership of the standard to China. [448]

China’s substitutes are real but behind. Its self-sufficiency in design software passed 10% by 2024, and in October 2025 a SiCarrier subsidiary launched two tools it says are fully home-developed. [446] On RISC-V, the 46-core V100 server chip scores about 53 per core on an index where Arm’s best core scores 154, and the state’s own substitution programme calls the share of RISC-V chips in government systems negligible. [449] The United States keeps a lead in design tools and processor cores, but it has not found a way to govern an open standard.

Limits. No source confirmed that China’s eight-agency RISC-V guidance was formally published; Reuters reported in March 2025 that it was being drafted, and the analysis cited here says “drafted”. That analysis (Jamestown Foundation) shows its date as 11.10.2026, read here as 10 November 2026; if the site uses day-first dates it is 11 October 2026, so the text says “autumn 2026” and gives no year for the V100 launch or the five-year plan. The Arm restriction rests on a 2022 Register report of a Financial Times story; search summaries of 2026 coverage said Arm now sells a finished server processor in China while its Neoverse V3 cores still cannot be licensed to Chinese designers, and that Arm has tried to license directly rather than through Arm China, but those pages did not open and are not cited. On standards bodies, the only opened source is from 2019. Not verified and left out: whether Chinese memory makers such as YMTC or CXMT sit in JEDEC today, any rule excluding Chinese firms from packaging or chiplet standards groups, China’s own chiplet interface standard reported in 2023, and a July 2024 BIS rule easing US firms’ participation in standards work alongside listed companies (seen in search summaries only). Dates for the May 2025 letters differ by company: Siemens and Cadence cite 23 May, Synopsys 29 May. A report that the August 2025 resumption of software sales mainly covered designs at 28 nanometres and above was seen only in a search summary. A law-firm review read for this page says Cadence paid 140 million dollars in July 2025 over unlicensed exports to a Chinese military university; it is not cited because the reference list was full. A report that Huawei’s chip unit raised its count of home-made tool categories from 17 to 26 between 2025 and 2026 was opened but not cited. An older figure gives Empyrean about 6% of China’s design software market in 2024, which sits beside the 10% national figure used here. The 74% figure is a sum of the three reported shares.

China · domestic chip-design software, 2025 and 2026

When the United States briefly cut off chip-design software in 2025, China’s three listed makers were strong only in niches; a year on they are buying their way toward a full toolset

3Listed Chinese makers of chip-design software

3Foreign firms that received American export-control notices on China in late May 2025

70.8bn yuanMarket value of the largest Chinese maker on 3 June 2025, during the cut-off

2.17bn yuanPrice of one maker’s 2025 purchase of two design-block firms

7, 5, 3 nmProcess nodes at which foreign tools hold what a Chinese trade publication calls a very high barrier

$7bn+World market for design software in 2020, supporting a chip industry of over $400 billion

A chip cannot be designed without electronic design automation software, and three American-controlled firms supply most of it. In late May 2025 all three announced that they had received new export-control notices from the American commerce department concerning China, and one withdrew its financial forecast. [354] The restriction was lifted about five weeks later as part of the trade talks. For Chinese chip designers it was a demonstration of what the tool could do.

China has three listed makers of design software: Empyrean, Primarius and Semitronix. [353] A Chinese industry expert, quoted during the cut-off, gave a frank account of where they stand. One leads in the joint optimisation of design and process, and another’s verification tool for display panels is the industry’s sign-off standard, used by foreign makers. “But in digital, in analog, and in tools covering the whole flow, we still have many gaps to fill.” [354]

The response since has been acquisition. Empyrean bought a leading domestic maker of digital verification tools in December 2025. Primarius agreed to buy two makers of licensed design blocks for about 2.17 billion yuan. [353]

China’s chip-design software industry around the 2025 cut-off, from Chinese business press reports.

Subject	What is reported	Source	Reading
The cut-off	Three foreign makers received commerce department notices on exports to China. One suspended its forecast. [354]	Newspaper report, June 2025	a tool used Design software joined chips and machines as a lever.
Market reaction	The three Chinese makers’ shares rose. Values on 3 June 2025: 70.8, 13.8 and 11.7 billion yuan. [354]	Same	priced as substitutes Far above their sales.
Where they lead	Design-process co-optimisation, and physical verification for display panels. [354]	Expert quoted in the press	niches
Where they lag	Digital design, analog design and full-flow coverage. At 7, 5 and 3 nanometres foreign firms hold decades of models and process data. [354, 353]	Expert; trade publication	the hard part The tools for advanced processors.
A reported advance	One unlisted firm’s timing-analysis tool has passed validation in advanced-process projects at leading Chinese chip companies, in a field long held by one foreign product. [353]	Trade publication, March 2026	point tools Progress tool by tool.
Consolidation	Empyrean bought a digital verification maker in December 2025 and earlier two smaller firms. Primarius is buying two design-block firms for about 2.17 billion yuan. [353]	Trade publication	the incumbents’ own method The foreign leaders were built by acquisition.
View of the cut-off	“A suppression, and also a valuable chance for real combat” for domestic makers. [354]	Newspaper report	opportunity Customers forced to try domestic tools.

Why full flow is the test

Design software is a chain of dozens of tools, each handing its output to the next, and a design is only as good as the weakest link. The foreign leaders offer complete chains tied to each foundry’s process data. The Chinese business press notes that the largest of them grew by decades of acquisitions, and concludes that no single domestic firm can build the whole chain quickly: it must be assembled by mergers. [354] That is what the 2025 and 2026 deals are doing, and it is what Shanghai’s plan calls for when it names design software and tells firms to merge.

The tie to the foundry

A design tool is useless without the foundry’s process design kit, the file that describes what a particular production line can make. Beijing’s plan to 2030 names design software and process design kits together as a capability to build. [342] For a Chinese designer cut off from the leading foreign foundry, the kit that matters is the domestic foundry’s, and a domestic tool that works well with it may serve better than a foreign tool that does not. The controls have created a home market in which the foreign tools’ main advantage, their tie to the foreign leading edge, counts for less.

What the episode taught

The cut-off lasted weeks and was traded away. Its effect on Chinese policy was lasting. The city plans of 2026 all name design software. Shanghai’s adds design by SI models as a way to rebuild the flow, and the draft technology catalogue of October 2026 lists chip design for SI among technologies China would itself control for export. A lever pulled once and released told the other side exactly where to build.

Design software is the layer of the chip chain where American control is most complete and Chinese substitutes weakest. The 2025 episode showed that the lever exists and that Washington is willing to use it and to give it up. China’s makers remain strong only in niches, and the response is to merge them toward a full toolset while planners look for ways to design chips with models instead. [353, 354]

No source read gives a reliable figure for how much Chinese chip design is now done on domestic tools. Estimates of the domestic share circulate, from under a tenth in 2020 to about a quarter in 2025, but they come from market reports that could not be traced, and they are not used here.

Limits. This section rests on two Chinese business press articles: one from June 2025 on the cut-off and one from March 2026 surveying domestic firms. Neither gives revenue figures that could be checked, and company revenues and domestic-share estimates seen in a search summary are not cited. The date the American restriction was lifted, and its link to the trade talks, are from general knowledge. The statements about process design kits and about the foreign tools’ advantage are from general knowledge and are this site’s reading. The reported validation of one firm’s timing tool is the trade publication’s account and was not confirmed elsewhere.

Chips as the handle on SI

Governments now write SI rules in units of computing power, but only the national versions have survived

10²⁵floating-point operations (FLOP) of training above which the EU presumes a general-purpose model poses systemic risk; duties apply from 2 August 2025 [440]

10²⁶operations in one training run that would have triggered reporting under the US proposal of 11 September 2024 [441]

21,000total processing performance (TPP) score a chip must stay below to be reviewed case by case for China under the US rule of 15 January 2026 [439]

2 daysgap between the withdrawal of the country-tier rule on 13 May 2025 and its compliance date of 15 May [437]

30%completion level below which state-funded Chinese data centres were told to remove foreign SI chips, as reported on 5 November 2025 [443]

Chips are the part of advanced SI that governments can count. A model is software and can be copied, but training it needs specialised processors. A 2024 paper by 19 researchers argued that computing power is easier to detect, measure and control than data or algorithms, and that its concentrated supply chain makes it a practical point of intervention. [444] Rule-makers have therefore started writing SI law in units of computing power. The units differ. Export rules score each chip by performance, while model rules add up the total calculation used in training.

Several such measures have been tried since 2024 and not all survived. The European Union’s AI Act has applied duties to general-purpose models since 2 August 2025 and presumes systemic risk above a fixed amount of training computation. [440] United States export rules, written by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), still score chips by performance. [439] The American plan to make developers report very large training runs rested on an executive order that was revoked in January 2025. [441, 442] The rule that sorted countries into tiers was withdrawn that May. [437] China, by reported guidance, governs its computing centres by where the chips were made. [443]

Each rule counts something different, and the ones that depend on a single regulator are the ones still standing.

Rule	Made by	What it counts	Latest status found
Chip performance threshold for China	United States, BIS	A chip’s total processing performance (TPP) must be below 21,000 and its memory bandwidth below 6,500 GB/s to qualify for case-by-case review. [439]	in force Effective 15 January 2026; shipments above the line and re-exports from third countries stay under presumed denial. [439]
Headquarters rule for advanced chips	United States, BIS	Where the buyer or its ultimate parent is headquartered, not where the chips are installed. [438]	in force Restated in guidance of 31 May 2026. [438]
Country-tier rule (Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion)	United States, BIS	Processing power allowed per country, set by three tiers. [437]	withdrawn Rescission announced 13 May 2025; no replacement issued by June 2026. [437, 438]
General-purpose model definition	European Union, AI Act guidelines	Training computation above 10²³ FLOP, for a model that can generate language, as an indicative test. [440]	applies Since 2 August 2025. [440]
Systemic-risk presumption	European Union, AI Act	Training computation above 10²⁵ FLOP. [440]	under review The Commission says the threshold is being reviewed. [440]
Reporting of large training runs	United States, BIS proposal	Any training run above 10²⁶ operations, reported every quarter. [441]	basis revoked The executive order behind it was revoked in January 2025. [441, 442]
Reporting of large computing clusters	United States, BIS proposal	Clusters networked above 300 Gbit/s with a theoretical peak above 10²⁰ operations per second. [441]	basis revoked Same proposal, same executive order. [441, 442]
Domestic chips in state-funded data centres	China, regulators not named	The origin of the chips and how far the building has progressed, not computing power. [443]	reported only Described by two sources to Reuters on 5 November 2025; no official text found. [443]
International chip registry and compute reporting	Researchers	Transfers of advanced chips and large uses of computing power. [444]	proposal only Set out in a February 2024 paper. [444]

What the tier rule tried to do

The Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion was published in January 2025 with compliance due on 15 May. [437] It sorted countries into three tiers: partners and allies, higher-risk jurisdictions, and everyone else. The tiers set a cap on processing power for each country. [437] It also controlled the weights, the trained numbers that make up a model, of the most advanced closed models, and created a programme to approve individual data centres. [437]

Why it was withdrawn

BIS announced the rescission on 13 May 2025, two days before compliance was due. [437] It said the rule was overly bureaucratic, undermined diplomatic relations and “stifled American innovation”. [437] On the same day it issued enforcement guidance instead. This stated that Huawei’s Ascend 910-series chips are presumed to fall under a US prohibition, and it listed 11 warning signs that chips are being diverted. [437]

What remains

No replacement had been issued by June 2026. [438] The older licence requirement survives. Guidance of 31 May 2026 restated that advanced computing items need a licence when the buyer, or its ultimate parent, is headquartered in China, Macau or another country in the same control group, wherever the buyer is located. [438] For China itself, a rule of 15 January 2026 moved some chips from presumed denial to case-by-case review. [439]

Counting compute works where one authority controls the chokepoint. The export thresholds hold because a single regulator licenses the chips. [439] The European threshold holds because it is written into law, although the Commission says the 10²⁵ figure is under review. [440] Measures that needed wider agreement fared worse. The US reporting scheme rested on an executive order and lost its footing when the order was revoked. [441, 442] The tier rule tried to ration computing power country by country and was withdrawn before compliance began. [437]

An international regime built on chips remains a proposal. Researchers have suggested reporting of large compute use and a registry of advanced chips, and the same paper warns that badly designed compute rules could create privacy and centralisation risks. [444] No body with that role appears in the sources found for this page. The working system is national: American licences by chip performance, a European threshold by training computation, and Chinese guidance by chip origin. [439, 440, 443]

Limits. The newest source found on the US position is dated 5 June 2026, so nothing here confirms whether a replacement for the tier rule or a formal rescission notice appeared between June and November 2026. Search summaries, not opened pages, indicated that BIS sent a rule titled “AI Action Plan Implementation” for White House review in February 2026 and withdrew it in March, that the BIS regulatory plan aimed at a formal rescission by the end of fiscal year 2026, and that a House committee approved the Chip Security Act (location checks on exported chips) 42 to 0 in March 2026; none of these is cited above. The tier rule’s detailed numbers (18 countries in the top tier, a cap of roughly 50,000 advanced chips for most others) were read in a Carnegie Endowment article but are not cited because the reference list was full. The registry and reporting proposals in the 2024 paper were seen in summaries of the paper; only its abstract was opened. No source confirmed whether the US reporting rule was ever finalised; the text says only that its legal basis was revoked, and the revocation date of 20 January 2025 comes from a search summary (the cited article says “first day in office”). The older US chip threshold of TPP 4,800 is general knowledge and is left out. China’s data-centre guidance rests on one Reuters report from unnamed sources; an earlier reported target of 50% domestic chips was seen only in a search summary. The EU page does not give a date for the start of Commission enforcement powers.

China · official figures for computing power, 2026

China reports 2,185 exaflops of SI computing power at mid-2026, nearly three times the figure a year earlier, with over 80% of it in eight state-planned hubs

2,185 EFLOPSIntelligent computing capacity at the end of June 2026, the industry ministry’s figure

+177%Growth on a year earlier

71.4%Share of rack space in computing facilities that is occupied

80%+Share of intelligent computing in the eight national hubs

32.6%Share in western China. The east has 55.9%

140 trillionTokens processed per day by March 2026, against 100 billion in early 2024, as the data administration states it

The American controls on advanced chips aim to limit one thing: how much computing power China can assemble for training and running large models. China publishes its own count. At a State Council press conference on 20 July 2026 the industry ministry said that “intelligent computing” capacity had reached 2,185 exaflops, measured at half precision, at the end of June, up 177% in a year. [318]

The growth is in spite of the controls and is the most direct measure of their limits. The ministry’s figure was 1,882 exaflops at the end of March, so more than 300 were added in three months. [319] A second agency, the National Data Administration, gave 2.4 million petaflops on 28 July, which is 2,400 exaflops, and said the eight national computing hubs hold over 80% of it. [320]

The figures say nothing about what chips provide the power. They count installed capacity of every kind and origin.

China’s official figures on computing power in 2026, from ministry press conferences as reported by state media.

Measure	Figure	Source	Reading
Intelligent computing capacity	2,185 exaflops at half precision, end of June 2026. 1,882 at end of March. [318, 319]	Industry ministry	fast About 100 exaflops added each month.
The same, second count	2.4 million petaflops. [320]	National Data Administration, 28 July	differs About 10% higher. Date and method may differ.
Where it is	East 55.9%, centre 10.6%, west 32.6%, north-east 0.9%. [319]	Industry ministry	planned A third already in the western hubs.
Use	Occupancy of 71.4%. [318]	Industry ministry	not idle Earlier reports of empty data centres do not fit this figure.
Network	More than 70 high-capacity links built between hubs in two years. 1.4 million petaflops connected to a national scheduling platform under test. [318, 320]	Both	pooled Capacity is being made addressable as one system.
Demand	140 trillion tokens a day by March 2026. Open models downloaded more than 10 billion times. SI in use at over 30% of larger manufacturers. [318, 319]	Both agencies	inference-heavy Usage is growing faster than capacity.
Next steps named	Standards for assessing and pricing computing services, and research on “card-to-card interconnect” and new transmission protocols. [318]	Industry ministry	the weak-chip remedy Interconnect is how many weaker chips are made to act as one.

What 2,185 exaflops is

For scale, a Chinese report of Huawei’s 2025 roadmap gives its 910C processor as 800 teraflops at the same precision. [322] On that basis 2,185 exaflops is the equivalent of about 2.7 million such processors. That division is this site’s and is only a way of picturing the number: the installed base is a mixture of imported accelerators bought before and between the controls, domestic ones, and chips reached through routes described in the sections on enforcement. No official figure divides it by origin.

Planned like a grid

The government’s 2026 work report announced “ultra-large intelligent computing clusters” and joint planning of power and computing as infrastructure projects, and the five-year plan calls for national monitoring and scheduling. [435, 398] The figures show the plan in effect: four-fifths of capacity in eight designated hubs, a third in the west where electricity is cheap, links built between them. [319, 320] One province, Inner Mongolia, reports 338,000 petaflops by itself. [319] China treats computing as a utility to be sited by the state. The United States leaves it to firms.

Why the ministry talks about interconnect

The ministry’s list of next tasks includes research on links between accelerator cards. [318] This is the technical heart of China’s response to the chip limits. If each processor is weaker, performance must come from joining more of them, and the joins become the bottleneck. The draft technology catalogue of October 2026 would control the export of exactly this technology for clusters above 10,000 cards, and Huawei’s roadmap, in the section that follows the trade figures, is built on it.

The count does not prove the controls failed. A country denied the best chips can still add capacity by buying more of worse ones, at higher cost in money and electricity, and capacity is not capability at the frontier of model training. What the figures do show is that the quantity of computing in China is not being held down: it nearly tripled in the year to June 2026. [318]

The measure to watch is the one China does not publish, the share supplied by domestic chips. Until it does, the official total can be read two ways: as proof of self-reliance, or as a record of how much foreign hardware still arrives.

Limits. The figures are official statements at press conferences as reported by the state news agency and its financial service; the underlying statistics and their method were not found. “Intelligent computing” is not defined in the reports, the two agencies’ totals differ, and neither separates training from inference capacity or domestic from imported chips. The comparison with the 910C processor uses one press report’s figure for that chip and is this site’s arithmetic. The statement about earlier reports of empty data centres, and the contrast with the United States, are from general knowledge. Occupancy refers to rack space, not to how intensively processors are used.

Part 3

Building at home

The domestic rules that decide whether a fab is built and who works in it.

Domestic rules

A fab is licensed by local permits, grid connections and water rights long before trade policy reaches it

19 vs 38 monthsPermits to production for a comparable fab in Taiwan and in the United States, Exyte estimate reported in February 2025. [469]

17% to 30%Chipmaking’s share of Taiwan’s electricity use in 2026 and in 2035, Taipower internal assessment reported in July 2026. [471]

1.9 of 15-16 GWPower supply available in the Yongin area against what the full cluster needs, in gigawatts, reported in May 2026. [472]

2.5 of 3.1 million tonsGroundwater drawn by the first Kumamoto fab in 2025 against the prefecture’s annual limit. [473]

4.75 million gallonsDaily water use at TSMC’s Arizona site, with about 65% recycled, reported in August 2026. [474]

4 of 13First-of-a-kind European plants with state-aid approval when the European Court of Auditors examined the first Chips Act. [470]

Subsidies decide where a chip factory, or fab, is announced. Domestic rules decide when it opens. The widest gap between the chip powers is the time it takes to permit and build. An executive at the fab builder Exyte put a recent large fab in Taiwan at about 19 months from permits to production, against about 38 months in the United States and about 34 months in Europe. [469] He blamed long permit approvals and the lack of round-the-clock construction for the slower sites. [469] Singapore and Malaysia came in at about 23 months. [469]

Governments have responded by cutting review steps. The United States exempted fabs funded under the CHIPS and Science Act from review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in a law signed on 2 October 2024. [468] Korea’s Semiconductor Special Act, passed on 29 January 2026, waives preliminary feasibility studies and tells the state to expand power, water and road networks for chip clusters. [479] The European Commission proposed a second Chips Act on 3 June 2026 with faster permit-granting and one-stop shops. [470] Faster paperwork does not create electricity or water, and those are now the binding limits.

What decides whether and when a fab opens in each place, and how firm that ground is in 2026.

Place	Rule or constraint	State of play in 2026	Rating
United States, federal review	CHIPS-funded fabs are exempt from NEPA review under a law signed on 2 October 2024. [468]	Environmental groups opposed the law, saying it removed the last federal lever to assess large fabs. [468]	federal review removed
United States, build time	About 38 months from permits to production in the Exyte comparison. [469]	Construction costs about twice as much as in Taiwan. [469]	slowest build
Arizona, water	TSMC uses 4.75 million gallons a day, mostly reclaimed wastewater supplied through the City of Phoenix. [474]	About 65% is recycled; a reclamation plant meant to reach 90% reuse or better is not expected to be fully running until 2028. [474]	depends on 2028 plant
Taiwan, build time	About 19 months for a recent large fab. [469]	The figure is one example given by a builder, not a national average. [469]	fastest build
Taiwan, power	Chipmaking is forecast to use about 52 billion kWh in 2026 and about 110 billion kWh in 2035. [471]	A draft discussed on 22 July 2026 would make users above 5 megawatts generate and store some of their own power. [471]	supply tightening
Japan, Kumamoto groundwater	The first fab drew about 2.5 million tons in 2025 against a limit of 3.1 million tons a year. [473]	A second plant would bring the total to an estimated 8 million tons; the prefecture is revising its ordinance to demand 100% recharge. [473]	limit will bind
Korea, Yongin grid	The cluster needs 15 to 16 GW and the area supplies about 1.9 GW. [472]	A 1,153 km network of 345-kilovolt lines has a target year of 2036 and faces local opposition; a 3 GW gas plant is the stopgap. [472]	grid not secured
European Union, permits and state aid	About 34 months to build in the Exyte comparison. [469] State aid needs Commission approval. [470]	The Commission has now approved aid for 11 first-of-a-kind projects; a second Chips Act with faster permits is pending. [470]	slow approvals
European Union, PFAS chemicals	A broad restriction is under review at the European Chemicals Agency. [475]	The risk committee gave its final opinion on 2 March 2026; the socio-economic committee aims to finish by the end of 2026. [475]	rule still open

Power

Taiwan’s state utility, Taipower, expects chipmaking to use about 52 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2026 and about 110 billion in 2035. [471] That lifts its share of national demand from about 17% to about 30%. [471] The economics ministry raised its forecast of yearly demand growth for 2026 to 2035 from 1.7% to 2.5%. [471] Korea’s gap is larger. The Yongin cluster would have to draw more than eight times the local supply from outside. [472]

Water

Kumamoto’s first fab is run by JASM, the Japanese arm of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). It drew about 2.5 million tons of groundwater in 2025, under the prefecture’s limit of 3.1 million tons. [473] A second plant would lift the total to an estimated 8 million tons, and the prefecture wants every ton replaced. [473] In Arizona, TSMC relies mostly on reclaimed wastewater and recycles about 65% of what it uses. [474]

Chemicals

The European Union is deciding how far to restrict per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as forever chemicals. Five countries proposed the restriction in January 2023. [475] The consultation on the draft socio-economic opinion drew 3,511 comments, and electronics and semiconductors was the most closely watched sector at 12.7%. [475] No final rule exists yet. Kumamoto prefecture already tests water near chip plants for PFAS. [473]

The pattern in 2026 is that review law has been loosened faster than physical supply has been built. The United States removed the federal environmental review and still has the slowest build time in the Exyte comparison. [468, 469] Korea passed a law promising infrastructure, but the transmission network meant to feed Yongin has a target year of 2036 and faces local opposition. [479, 472] Taiwan builds fastest and is now debating whether its largest power users should supply part of their own electricity. [469, 471]

Europe has a different problem. Its money needs approval before its permits matter. When auditors examined the first Chips Act, 4 of a potential 13 first-of-a-kind plants had state-aid clearance, and stakeholders still describe the procedures as lengthy and fragmented. [470] The places that will add capacity soonest are those that can deliver a grid connection and a water right on a known date. On that test no chip power is fully secure in 2026, and Korea and Europe are the most exposed.

Limits. The build times come from one engineering executive and describe single comparable projects, not national averages; a separate academic study seen only in search summaries gives different averages. No source opened gave a measured number of months for European state-aid approval, and search summaries disagree on whether the Court of Auditors report dates from April or December 2025. A 12-month permitting cap in the second Chips Act proposal was seen on a trade association page but is not cited here. United States PFAS rules were checked only in a law-firm note: the federal reporting rule under the Toxic Substances Control Act has been delayed again and its proposed exemptions are not final, and no chip-specific exemption was found. The option that European regulators favour for semiconductors, continued use under strict control, appeared only in a search summary. State-level permits in the United States, Colorado River cuts in Arizona, Taiwan’s nuclear restart reviews and TSMC’s own share of Taiwan’s electricity were seen in search summaries only. The statement that PFAS are widely used in chipmaking is general knowledge. The Yongin figures come from a Korean parliamentary research report as relayed by a trade publication that says it uses machine assistance. The ratings are editorial judgments.

Taiwan · electricity for the chip plants

TSMC used about a tenth of Taiwan’s electricity in 2025, and the state utility expects chips and servers to take about three-tenths by 2035

9%TSMC’s share of Taiwan’s electricity consumption in 2024, up from under 6% in 2020

25.55bn kWhTSMC’s electricity use in 2024

110bn kWhForecast use by semiconductors and high-end servers in 2035, from 52bn in 2026

about 30%Share of Taiwan’s electricity that forecast represents

5 yearsTime the reserve margin has been below the 15% planning target

11.2bn kWhYearly use projected for five 2-nanometre plants in Kaohsiung, by an environmental group’s reckoning

The section on permits describes how power and water decide whether a plant can be built. In Taiwan the question is whether the island can power the plants it already plans. TSMC’s sustainability report gives its electricity use in 2024 as 25.55 billion kilowatt-hours, about 9% of all the electricity consumed in Taiwan that year, against under 6% in 2020. The economics ministry expected the share to pass 10% in 2025. [585]

The state utility’s chairman published a forecast in 2026 for semiconductors and high-end servers together: 52 billion kilowatt-hours in 2026, 80 billion in 2030 and 110 billion in 2035. That is a doubling in nine years, to about 30% of the island’s electricity. [586]

The margin is thin. A legislative budget office report found that Taiwan’s reserve margin has been below its legal planning target of 15% for five years running, and the energy administration’s own outlook has the night-time reserve falling to 8% in 2028 and 7.1% in 2029. [586]

Electricity and Taiwan’s chip industry, from Taiwanese press reports of company, utility and government figures.

Measure	Figure	Source	Reading
TSMC’s use	25.55 billion kWh in 2024, about 9% of national consumption of 283.8 billion. Under 6% in 2020. [585]	Company sustainability report, as reported	one firm, a tenth of the grid
Expected 2025 share	Above 10% for the first time. [585]	Economics ministry estimate	rising Driven by SI demand while other industry is weak.
Chips and servers	52 billion kWh in 2026, 80 billion in 2030, 110 billion in 2035. [586]	State utility chairman	doubling
Reserve margin	Below the 15% target for five years. Night-time reserve projected at 8% in 2028 and 7.1% in 2029. [586]	Legislative budget office; energy administration	tight Little room for a plant outage.
One new site	Five 2-nanometre plants in Kaohsiung projected to use about 11.2 billion kWh a year, equal to the city’s household and commercial use in 2025. [587]	Environmental group at an impact assessment	local strain A critic’s figure.
Company commitments	60% renewable electricity by 2030 and 100% by 2040. [587]	As cited by the same group	pledge Depends on supply that does not yet exist.
Industry’s request	The chip industry association’s chairman supports assessing a restart of nuclear power as “too important to this industry”. [586]	Business magazine	nuclear back on the table

The newest process is the hungriest

Each generation of chipmaking uses more electricity per wafer, chiefly because of the extreme-ultraviolet lithography machines. Taiwan’s rule that the newest process stays on the island, described elsewhere on this page, therefore concentrates the most power-hungry plants there. The group objecting to the Kaohsiung plants put it bluntly: it would “not be an exaggeration” to say they will use up the city’s electricity. [587] Keeping the leading edge at home has an energy price that grows with each node.

The nuclear question

Taiwan closed its last reactor in 2025 under a policy of phasing out nuclear power. The chip industry association now asks openly for a restart to be studied, and a national referendum on nuclear power is scheduled for 28 November 2026. [586] The referendum date is from a search summary of press coverage. The industry’s argument is arithmetic: renewable build-out is behind schedule, gas must be imported by sea, and the forecast adds the equivalent of a fifth of today’s national consumption in nine years.

A vulnerability the strait section describes

The section on the Taiwan Strait argues that a blockade would stop the plants through the power grid before any weapon reached them, because Taiwan imports almost all its fuel. These figures add scale. By 2035 nearly a third of the island’s electricity is forecast to go to chips and servers. [586] The more of Taiwan’s grid the industry takes, the more the industry’s continuity depends on fuel shipments, and the more a pressure on those shipments is a pressure on the world’s chip supply.

Controls and subsidies decide where chip plants may be built. Electricity decides whether they run. Taiwan’s chip policy commits it to hosting the most power-intensive plants in the world on a grid whose reserve has been under target for five years. [586]

That constraint bears on every other Taiwanese measure on this page. The agreement with the United States moves some new capacity abroad, where power is easier. The rule on the newest process keeps the most demanding capacity at home. How Taiwan votes on nuclear power, and how fast it builds supply, will determine whether those two commitments are compatible.

Limits. The company’s report, the utility’s forecast and the government’s supply outlook were not read; figures are from Taiwanese newspaper and magazine reports of them. A different calculation for 2025, seen in a search summary, gives TSMC 10.2% of Taiwan’s electricity counting its plants worldwide and 9.1% counting those in Taiwan. The Kaohsiung figure is an environmental group’s estimate, not the company’s. The statements about lithography’s power use, the closure of the last reactor, imported fuel and renewable delays are from general knowledge. The referendum date is from a search summary and its outcome is not yet known.

Taiwan · water for the chip plants

TSMC trucked in a million tonnes of water in the 2021 drought and none in 2023, after building the industry’s first plant to turn its own wastewater back into process water

1 million tonnesWater TSMC brought in by truck during the 2021 drought

0Water trucks it needed in the 2023 drought

100m m³+TSMC’s yearly water use from 2023, up from about 77 million in 2020

15,500 tonnesReclaimed water supplied daily to the southern science park by one municipal plant, rising to 20,000

2024Year TSMC signed a contract to buy desalinated seawater

75 yearsRainfall in western Taiwan in early 2026 was the lowest in this long, as reported

After electricity, water is the resource that limits chipmaking in Taiwan. A plant at the leading edge uses very large volumes of ultra-pure water, and Taiwan’s supply depends on a short rainy season and typhoons. TSMC’s water use rose from about 77 million cubic metres in 2020 to more than 100 million in 2023, by its sustainability reports as cited in the Taiwanese press. [600]

The company’s own account, given by a senior executive to a Taiwanese business magazine in 2026, marks the change between two droughts. “In the 2021 dry season we brought in a million tonnes of water by truck. In the great drought in the south in 2023, with the reclaimed water plant at the Southern Taiwan Science Park and several municipal plants supplying us, operations were unaffected and we did not send out a single water truck.” [599]

The plant she refers to, at the science park in Tainan, is described as the first in the chip industry to refine industrial wastewater into water clean enough for manufacturing. In 2024 the company also signed a contract to buy desalinated seawater and began assessing brackish water with the water agency. [599]

Water and Taiwan’s chip plants, from a Taiwanese business magazine’s report as carried by a technology site, and press reports seen in summary.

Subject	What is reported	Source	Reading
Use	About 77 million cubic metres in 2020, over 100 million in 2023. [600]	Company reports, as cited	rising With each new plant and process.
2021 drought	A million tonnes brought in by truck. [599]	Company executive	near-miss The plants ran, at a cost.
2023 drought	No trucks needed. Reclaimed water from the company’s own plant and municipal plants. [599]	Same	fixed by engineering
Reclaimed water	The company’s plant in the southern science park turns industrial wastewater into process water, described as an industry first. [599]	Business magazine	closed loop Water used more than once.
Municipal supply	One plant in Tainan sends 15,500 tonnes a day to the park through a 9.5-kilometre pipe. A second phase, begun in October 2026, raises it to 20,000. [600]	News agency, as summarised	public works The city builds for the industry.
New sources	A contract for desalinated seawater in 2024. Brackish water under assessment with the water agency. [599]	Company executive	diversifying
2026	Rainfall in the west at a 75-year low in early 2026, reservoirs below 30%, reduced water pressure in Hsinchu. [600]	Press report, as summarised	tested again No disruption to chipmaking was reported.

Why water was solved and power was not

Water can be recycled. A plant can clean and reuse most of what it takes in, and a city can turn sewage into industrial water. The company and the municipalities did both between 2021 and 2023, and the next drought passed without incident. [599] Electricity cannot be recycled. The section on Taiwan’s power shows the industry’s demand doubling in nine years on a grid short of reserve. Of the two physical limits on chipmaking in Taiwan, one has been engineered away for now and the other has not.

A question the company meets abroad

The executive describes being asked in Arizona why the plant was built in a desert, and in Kumamoto whether the farmers would object to a plant among rice fields. Water, she says, is “the most sensitive nerve of the local community”. [599] Every country that subsidises a chip plant inherits this argument. The section on permits records it as a cause of delay in the United States and Europe. Taiwan’s reclaimed-water technology is part of what it offers when it builds abroad.

What a drought would mean for the world

In 2021 Taiwan cut irrigation to farmers so that chip plants could keep running, a matter of record at the time and of general knowledge here. The choice was made without public dispute because of what the plants are worth. With exports of about $900 billion a year resting on those plants, the choice would be the same today. A drought severe enough to stop Taiwan’s chipmaking would stop a large part of the world’s supply of advanced processors, which is why the company’s water engineering is a matter of interest far outside Taiwan.

Water is the quiet success among Taiwan’s constraints. Between one drought and the next the industry went from trucking water in to reusing its own. [599] It shows that physical limits on chipmaking can be removed by investment when the stakes are high enough.

It also shows where the next limit lies. The engineering that solved water does not apply to power, and the plants now being built for the newest processes need more of both.

Limits. This section rests mainly on one Taiwanese business magazine’s article, written with the company’s cooperation and carried by a technology site, so the account of the reclaimed water plant and the two droughts is the company’s own. The water-use figures, the municipal plant’s volumes and the 2026 drought conditions are from a search summary of press reports that were not opened. No independent assessment of the company’s water recycling rate was found. The statement about irrigation cuts in 2021 and the description of chip plants’ water needs are from general knowledge.

Labour rules

Every chip power forecasts a shortage of engineers, and visa and labour law now decide who fills it

1 millionExtra skilled workers the chip industry needs worldwide by 2030, Semi projection reported in June 2025. [476]

67,000Forecast United States shortfall by 2030, Semiconductor Industry Association. [476]

$100,000Fee on certain new H-1B petitions from 21 September 2025; vacated by a federal court on 8 June 2026. [477]

300+Korean workers arrested and detained in a United States immigration operation in Georgia in 2025. [478]

199 to 0Vote on Korea’s Semiconductor Special Act on 29 January 2026, with 7 abstentions and no exemption from the 52-hour week. [479]

6.5 billion wonTop Korean fine for leaking national core technology since 22 July 2025, up from 1.5 billion won. [481]

The industry’s own forecasts say there are not enough people. The trade body Semi projects that chipmaking needs about one million more skilled workers worldwide by 2030. [476] The Semiconductor Industry Association puts the United States shortfall at 67,000 by 2030. [476] The same report cites a gap of more than 100,000 engineers in Europe and more than 200,000 workers in Asia-Pacific. [476] Gaps of this size make the rules on foreign workers as important as the subsidies. A fab that is built and cannot be staffed produces nothing.

United States policy pulled in two directions in 2025 and 2026. Washington wants foreign firms to build fabs on American soil. Yet a proclamation of 19 September 2025 put a $100,000 fee on certain new petitions for the H-1B, a visa class for skilled foreign workers. [477] A federal court in Massachusetts struck the fee policy down on 8 June 2026, and an appeals court declined to restore it in July. [477] A new proclamation extends the fee to 21 September 2027, but the law firm Fragomen says it should not be collected while the ruling stands. [477]

The rules on who may work in chipmaking, place by place, and how settled each one is in 2026.

Place	Issue	Rule or figure	State of play in 2026
United States	Forecast shortage	67,000 workers short by 2030. [476]	gap unfilled An industry forecast, not a count of vacancies. [476]
United States	H-1B fee	$100,000 on certain new petitions, mainly for workers applying from abroad; extensions of stay and changes of status were exempt. [477]	rule in court Vacated on 8 June 2026, extended on paper to 21 September 2027, and under appeal. [477]
United States	Staff of Korean investors	A new ‘specialized trainers’ criterion for short-term B-1 business visas. [478]	narrow fix Announced at working group talks in January 2026; it is not a new visa class. [478]
Korea	Working hours	The 52-hour week still applies to chip research and development staff. [479]	settled for now The exemption was left out of the Semiconductor Special Act passed on 29 January 2026. [479]
Korea	Technology leaks	Top fine of 6.5 billion won; damages of up to five times the loss. [481]	penalties raised In force since 22 July 2025; police counted 27 overseas leak cases in 2024. [481]
Japan, Korea, Taiwan	Recruiting abroad	Points-based and fast-track visas for engineers. [480]	fast-track visas Korea’s K-Tech Pass can be issued in as little as two weeks. [480]
European Union	Shortage and skills	More than 100,000 engineers short by 2030. [476]	programmes in silos Skills schemes are spread across several funding programmes. [470]
Asia-Pacific	Forecast shortage	More than 200,000 workers short by 2030. [476]	gap unfilled The report gives no separate figures for Japan, Korea or Taiwan. [476]

The Georgia shock

More than 300 Korean workers were arrested and detained in a United States immigration operation in Georgia in 2025. [478] The two governments then set up a working group on visas. [478] At talks in January 2026 the United States said it had created a new criterion for ‘specialized trainers’ applying for short-term B-1 business visas. [478] It is meant to clarify eligibility, which Korean firms had called unclear. [478] It sits inside an existing visa and creates no new one.

Keeping know-how home

Korea treats the loss of chip expertise as a crime problem. An amended Industrial Technology Protection Act took effect on 22 July 2025 and raised the top fine for leaking national core technology from 1.5 billion won to 6.5 billion won. [481] Brokering or inducing a leak abroad can now be punished without proof of a profit motive. [481] Police counted 27 overseas leak cases in 2024, of which 20 involved China and 9 involved semiconductors. [481]

Recruiting abroad

Japan, Korea and Taiwan now compete for the same foreign specialists. Japan’s points-based Highly Skilled Professional visa can lead to permanent residency in as little as one year, and five municipalities including Fukuoka, Kumamoto and Sapporo offer faster engineer visas. [480] Korea’s K-Tech Pass targets specialists in SI, semiconductors and biotechnology. [480] Taiwan’s Employment Gold Card combines residence and work rights and is not tied to one employer. [480]

Working time is the other lever, and Korea chose not to pull it. The Semiconductor Special Act passed by 199 votes to 0 with 7 abstentions, and the exemption from the 52-hour week for research and development staff was left out after the ruling party opposed it. [479] Korea therefore competes on visas and penalties, not on longer hours. Europe’s weakness is coordination. A European Parliament briefing reports that skills programmes run in silos across several funding schemes, although attracting talent was a stated aim of the first Chips Act. [470]

In 2026 the countries asking for foreign fabs have not yet written stable rules for foreign fab workers. The United States fee is blocked by courts but remains on the books until 2027, and a separate proposed regulation would charge more than $103,000 on all H-1B petitions subject to the annual cap. [477] The fix offered to Korean investors is a narrow business-visa criterion. [478] East Asian governments are moving the other way, with faster visas to attract engineers and heavier penalties to keep know-how at home. [480, 481]

Limits. The reference list is capped, so several figures that were found are not cited. Country forecasts were seen but left out: an industry association estimate of at least 40,000 extra workers for Japan over ten years (search summary only), Korean estimates ranging from about 54,000 to a state audit’s 81,000 by 2031, and a Taiwanese job bank count of 34,000 open chip jobs in May 2025. The Europe and Asia-Pacific figures in the cited report carry no named source. The Georgia site was a battery plant under construction and other reports put total detentions at 475; the cited article gives only the number of Korean workers. No source showed a new United States visa class for foreign fab workers in 2026, and reports that TSMC’s Arizona staff depend on H-1B visas were read but not cited. Taiwan’s rules, including 2022 national security amendments with prison terms for leaking core technologies and a 2026 probe of Chinese-funded recruiters, were seen in search summaries only. A mid-2026 Korean proposal to lift the 52-hour cap in special zones is undecided and not cited. United States training funded by the CHIPS and Science Act was disrupted in 2025 when the Commerce Department cut ties with the nonprofit running the national workforce centre; that was read but not cited. The description of the H-1B as a skilled-worker visa is general knowledge. Another court ruling reported to have upheld the fee was seen only in a search summary. The ratings are editorial judgments.

China · a visa for young foreign scientists and engineers

Since October 2025 China has issued a visa to young foreign science and engineering graduates that needs no employer and no invitation

1 Oct 2025Date the K visa came into force

13thThe K visa is the thirteenth class of ordinary Chinese visa

Bachelor’sLowest degree that qualifies, in science, technology, engineering or mathematics

NoneEmployer or invitation required

The section on talent describes how the United States and its allies restrict Chinese engineers and how China recruits its own back. In 2025 China added a measure aimed at everyone else. State Council Order No. 814, signed in August 2025 and in force from 1 October 2025, adds a new ordinary visa class, the K visa, for “young foreign science and technology talent”. [316]

Four ministries explained it together. The visa is for graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics with a bachelor’s degree or higher from “well-known universities or research institutions in China or abroad”, and for young people teaching or doing research in those fields at such institutions. [316] Unlike China’s other work-related visas, it sets requirements only of age, education or experience, and “does not require an employer or inviting unit in China”. [316]

Holders are promised more entries, longer validity and longer stays than the twelve existing visa classes offer, and may take part in education, science and cultural exchange and in “entrepreneurship and business”. [316]

China’s K visa as described by the justice, foreign affairs and public security ministries and the immigration administration, August 2025.

Question	Answer given	Left open	Comparison
Who qualifies	Young foreign graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics from well-known institutions, or young staff teaching or researching there. [316]	The age limit and the list of institutions, to be published by embassies. [316]	broad A degree, not a job offer, is the test.
Sponsor	None needed. [316]	Nothing.	unusual American and most other skilled-worker visas require an employer.
Terms	More entries, longer validity and longer stays than existing visas. [316]	The actual numbers. [316]	unspecified
Permitted activity	Exchange in education, science and culture, and entrepreneurship and business. [316]	Whether ordinary employment is covered, and how the holder moves to a residence permit.	unclear Work is not named in the list.
Stated purpose	To carry out the talent strategy, make it easier for young foreign scientists to come, and promote international cooperation among young scientists. [316]	Nothing.	openly competitive “China’s development needs the participation of the world’s talent.”
Implementation	The foreign ministry to issue detailed rules and upgrade the application system. Police and immigration to handle extensions and residence. [316]	Figures for visas issued.	no data

Timing

The order was signed on 7 August 2025 and took effect on 1 October. [316] In the same weeks the United States announced a large new fee on its main skilled-worker visa, which is a matter of general knowledge and not in the Chinese texts. Chinese officials did not link the two. The effect was that a young engineer from India or Southeast Asia weighing the two countries met a higher barrier on one side and a lower one on the other in the same season.

What it cannot fix

A visa lets someone in. It does not supply the things that make an engineer stay: a common working language, a route to permanent residence, schooling for children, and the ability to move money and data. The ministries’ explanation leaves the follow-on residence rules to later work. [316] China’s chip industry reports a shortage of more than 300,000 staff, described in the section on China’s chip trade, and the scarce people are experienced process engineers, who are not recent graduates.

The other half of the talent policy

The five-year plan for 2026 to 2030 calls for “extraordinary” expansion of degree programmes in SI and integrated circuits, and for special transfer of staff to major projects. [398] Those are the main effort: train at home and direct people to priorities. The K visa is the small outward-facing complement. It matters as a statement that China intends to compete for foreign graduates at the moment its rival is making itself harder to enter.

On this page the movement of people has appeared as a risk to be controlled: engineers barred, investigated or prosecuted for carrying knowledge across a border. The K visa is the only measure recorded here that treats people as something to attract. Its terms are more open than anything the United States offers a new graduate: no sponsor, no job, a degree and an age. [316]

Whether it draws anyone is unknown. No figures for visas issued were found, and the rules on what holders may do once in China were still being written when the order took effect. It is listed here as a signal of intent whose results have yet to be reported.

Limits. The State Council order was not read; this section rests on the four ministries’ joint explanation as carried by the state news agency. The detailed conditions published by embassies, including the age limit, validity and length of stay, were not found, and no figures for applications or visas issued were found. Whether employment is permitted is not stated in the explanation. The comparison with American visa rules and the 2025 American fee are from general knowledge. The observation that the scarce staff in chips are experienced engineers is this site’s reading of the staffing figures cited elsewhere on the page.

China · A Chinese business daily on chip talent, October 2026

China’s chip industry is short of people and hard to get into at the same time: a business daily finds perhaps 200 to 300 qualified architects for the work that matters most

+22.2%Rise in new chip-industry job postings, January to September 2026

291,900 yuanAverage advertised annual salary in the industry

+211.2%Rise in postings for chiplet work over the same period

200–300Qualified senior chiplet architects in China, by one insider’s estimate

70–90 daysAverage time to fill a key architecture post, by the same source

80–90%Share of upper-level design code that one graduate says SI tools can now generate

In October 2026 a Chinese business daily published an investigation of the chip labour market, built on a recruitment platform’s data and interviews with engineers, a recruiter, a company founder and a recent doctoral graduate. Its title describes a market that is “hard at both ends”. [253]

Demand is rising. From January to September 2026 new chip-industry postings were up 22.2% on a year earlier and the average advertised salary was 291,900 yuan a year, up 8.8%. Postings for work on chiplets, the method of building a processor from several smaller dies, more than tripled, and their average advertised pay was 649,500 yuan, over twice the industry average. One SI chip firm offered up to 1.8 million yuan a year for an architect. [253]

The people are not there. An insider at a listed SI chip company told the paper that architects with ten years’ experience and a large SI or graphics chiplet project behind them number “about 200 to 300” in the whole country, “and most are already locked in by leading firms”. [253]

The two ends of China’s chip labour market, from a business daily’s investigation, with this site’s reading.

Finding	Detail	Source	This site’s reading
Where demand is growing	SI-related design of processors first, then memory, optical chips and communications. Consumer electronics and security are flat. [253]	A recruiter with over ten years in the sector	follows the money Hiring tracks the SI accelerator boom.
Packaging becomes design work	Advanced packaging postings up 134.6%, at 422,400 yuan average. Chip firms are hiring packaging engineers directly. [253]	Recruitment platform data	the workaround shows Stacking and chiplets are how China compensates for process limits.
Scarcity at the top	Most domestic chiplet projects are still at early definition or verification, so “very few firms can train people to architect level”. [253]	Insider at a listed SI chip company	the binding constraint Experience cannot be bought with subsidy.
Hiring cost	50 to 80 applications to find one worth a technical interview. Under 5% reach an offer. [253]	The same insider	one firm’s numbers
Harder entry	More graduates in the field, more people switching in, and fewer openings in an industry adjustment. “The brand of a famous university is weakening.” [253]	A doctoral graduate of a leading university, name altered	the other end The 2021 boom in enrolment is arriving.
Automation	Near the device and materials level substitution is hard. In upper-level coding and modelling it is plain, and junior coding posts are expected to shrink. [253]	The same graduate	one view An opinion, though a common one.
The cycle	Around 2005 a leading university graduated only single digits in microelectronics. In 2021 to 2022 pay for engineers with three to five years’ experience could triple. [253]	A company co-founder with an Academy of Sciences doctorate	context

Why money does not fix it

The platform’s explanation is a mismatch of structure. Firms want people with project experience, tools and engineering verification behind them. Graduates do not have it, and “the senior engineers firms urgently need cannot be produced quickly by short-term training”. [253] That is the labour-market form of a point made throughout this tab: China can fund plants and buy equipment faster than it can accumulate the experience to use them. A senior architect is made by taking several chips through to production, and the number of Chinese projects that have done so in the relevant field is small.

What is being tried

The paper describes a shift from “grabbing people” to “growing people”. One Shanghai college has moved graduate students’ desks into an industrial park, where they take responsibility for specific modules. A Beijing base has the leading foundry, a leading equipment maker and a leading memory maker set problems for universities to solve. A Guangdong university runs a joint laboratory on stacked chiplets with a company, and a Shanghai university has a dedicated class in chiplet packaging. [253] These move training into real projects before employment. They do not shorten the ten years.

This site’s reading

The insider names the three most urgent gaps for the next three to five years: interconnect protocols between dies and in-house designs for them, interface design for high-bandwidth memory, and system-level architecture driven by SI workloads. [253] Each corresponds to a sanctioned or constrained item covered elsewhere in this tab: packaging as the substitute for process, high-bandwidth memory as a controlled product, and the accelerator itself. The controls did not create the shortage of people, but they decided where it bites. The same figures also explain the American and Taiwanese rules on recruitment covered in other sections. If a country has 200 to 300 such people, each one hired from abroad is a measurable gain.

The forecast offered to the paper is that competition will intensify, above all for junior posts, while architects and senior engineers with three to five years in SI chips remain what firms fight over. [253]

Limits. This is a newspaper investigation. The figure of 200 to 300 architects is one unnamed insider’s estimate and cannot be checked. Posting and salary data come from a single recruitment platform and are advertised figures, not pay actually agreed. The graduate and the insider are anonymous. The article is about design and packaging roles and says little about fab engineers or equipment technicians, where shortages are also reported. The link to export controls in the last card is this site’s.

Taiwan · the chip tax credit under the Statute for Industrial Innovation

Taiwan’s “chip act” is a tax credit, open only to firms spending at least 6 billion Taiwan dollars a year on research; approved credits under the statute reached a record 49 billion in 2025

25%Tax credit on forward-looking research spending

5%Tax credit on equipment for advanced processes

NT$6bnMinimum yearly research spending to qualify

5Companies that applied in 2025, the second year

NT$49.2bnInvestment tax credits approved under the statute in 2025, up from 29.7bn in 2024

NT$35.9bnOf that, credits to makers of electronic components

The United States, Japan and Europe support chip plants with grants. Taiwan uses the tax code. Article 10-2 of its Statute for Industrial Innovation, in force since 7 August 2023 and known as the Taiwanese chip act, gives a credit against corporate income tax of 25% of spending on forward-looking research and 5% of spending on equipment for advanced processes. [588]

The thresholds make it a rule for very large firms. A company must spend at least 6 billion Taiwan dollars a year on research, with research at 6% of revenue or more, and at least 10 billion on advanced-process equipment, and must pay an effective tax rate of 15%. [588] Four companies applied in the first year and five in 2025. A newspaper’s review of public filings found seven large technology firms that met the conditions, TSMC first among them with research spending of 204 billion Taiwan dollars. [588]

The finance ministry’s statistics show the effect on the whole statute. Credits approved under it were 21.4 billion Taiwan dollars in 2023, 29.7 billion in 2024 and 49.2 billion in 2025, a record, of which electronic components makers received 35.9 billion. [589]

Taiwan’s chip tax credit, from Taiwanese press reports of the statute, its rules and finance ministry statistics.

Element	Rule or figure	Source	Reading
Research credit	25% of forward-looking research spending in the year. [588]	Statute, as reported	generous The highest research credit Taiwan has offered.
Equipment credit	5% of spending on advanced-process equipment. [588]	Same	small Beside 25% to 35% in other countries’ schemes.
Who qualifies	Research of NT$6 billion and 6% of revenue, equipment spending of NT$10 billion, effective tax rate of 15%. Any industry. [588]	Ministry rules, as reported	a club Seven firms by one count.
Applicants	Four in 2024, five in 2025. [588]	Press report	few
Credits under the whole statute	NT$21.4 billion in 2023, 29.7 billion in 2024, 49.2 billion in 2025, on 777 approvals and research spending of 254.1 billion. [589]	Finance ministry statistics, as reported	rising More than doubled in two years.
By industry	Electronic components: 214 approvals, research of 183.7 billion, credits of 35.9 billion. [589]	Same	chips dominate Nearly three-quarters of the total.

A reward for research, not for plants

The design says what Taiwan is trying to keep. A grant for a factory attracts a factory. A 25% credit on research, limited to firms that already spend heavily, rewards a company for keeping its development at home. Taiwan does not need to attract chip plants. It needs its leading firms to keep their newest work on the island while they build abroad, and the credit is aimed at that.

What it costs

The credits are tax not collected, so they appear in no budget line. The finance ministry’s figure of 49.2 billion Taiwan dollars for 2025 covers every investment credit under the statute, and the ministry attributes the rise partly to Article 10-2 taking effect. [589] The amount due to the chip credit alone is not published in the reports read. For scale, the whole figure is about $1.5 billion a year, small beside the tens of billions other governments have pledged in grants.

The other half of the same statute

The statute that gives the credit also governs investment abroad. The section on Taiwan’s outbound rule describes its Article 22, amended in 2025 so that investments in certain countries, industries or technologies need approval in advance. Taiwan thus uses one law for both ends of its policy: tax relief for developing technology at home, and a permit before taking it elsewhere.

Taiwan’s support for its chip industry is modest in money and precise in aim. It pays its largest firms, through the tax code, to do their most advanced research at home, and it leaves the building of plants to them. [588, 589] The section on what subsidies bought finds grants elsewhere producing plants slowly and at high cost. Taiwan’s approach has not been tested in the same way, because the firms it supports were already the leaders.

The premier has also announced a ten-year programme of 300 billion Taiwan dollars for chip-based innovation, seen here only as a headline. With the tax credit, it is the whole of Taiwan’s direct support. The contrast with China’s funds, described in several sections above, could hardly be greater in scale.

Limits. The statute and its rules were not read; this section rests on a Taiwanese technology site’s reproduction of a business newspaper’s report and on a jobs site’s report of finance ministry statistics. The finance ministry’s figures are for all investment credits under the statute, not the chip credit alone, and the share due to Article 10-2 is not published in the material read. The list of firms that meet the conditions is a newspaper’s reading of public filings, not an official list of beneficiaries. The comparison with other countries’ credit rates and grants, and the conversion to dollars, are from general knowledge. The ten-year programme is from a headline in search results and was not read.

Japan · state funding of the 2-nanometre venture, 2026

Japan has put about 2.4 trillion yen of research money into Rapidus and is now becoming its shareholder, while asking private firms for a trillion yen in equity and two trillion in loans

about 2.4tn yenGovernment research funding given to Rapidus so far

400bn yenState equity if the fiscal 2027 request of 150bn is granted

167.6bn yenEquity subscribed by 32 Japanese companies in February 2026

1tn + 2tn yenPrivate equity and loans the government wants Rapidus to raise, with state guarantees

FY2027Planned start of volume production at 2 nanometres

60+Companies Rapidus is in talks with. About ten have received quotations

Japan’s answer to its lost position in advanced logic is one company. Rapidus, founded in 2022 with backing from eight Japanese firms, is building a plant at Chitose in Hokkaido to make chips at 2 nanometres from the 2027 fiscal year. It has no earlier generation to build on, and the state has carried almost all the cost.

A Japanese industrial daily summed up the position in August 2026. The government has so far given about 2.4 trillion yen as commissioned research, with about 300 billion more planned for fiscal 2027. [482] It is now changing the form of support from research contracts to ownership: the economy ministry will ask for 150 billion yen in the fiscal 2027 investment and loan programme as equity, which with earlier injections would bring the state’s equity to 400 billion yen. [482]

The private side arrived in February 2026, when 32 Japanese companies, among them Toyota, Sony and NEC and Hokkaido’s banks and power utility, subscribed 167.6 billion yen, for a public and private total of 267.6 billion. [483]

State and private funding of Rapidus, from Japanese newspaper reports of economy ministry plans and company announcements.

Form	Amount	Source	Reading
Research commissions	About 2.4 trillion yen to date, about 300 billion more in fiscal 2027. [482]	Industrial daily, August 2026	the bulk The state paid for development as contracted research.
State equity	150 billion yen requested for fiscal 2027 through the information-technology promotion agency, for a total of 400 billion. [482]	Same	ownership From funder to shareholder.
Source of the equity	Dividends on state-held shares in the telecoms and tobacco companies. The first use of this “industrial investment” for Rapidus. Earlier injections came from the budget. [482]	Same	off-budget A fund that expects a return.
Private equity	167.6 billion yen from 32 companies in February 2026. [483]	Hokkaido newspaper	a start A sixth of the trillion sought.
Targets for private money	About 1 trillion yen in equity and over 2 trillion in loans, supported by state debt guarantees. [482]	Industrial daily	the gap Most of the mass-production cost is still to be found.
Customers	Talks with over 60 companies, quotations to about ten, a process design kit due in fiscal 2026. [482]	Same	unproven No volume customer announced in the reports read.

Why the form of support is changing

The ministry describes the 2027 equity as “transitional”, meant to draw in private money. [482] Research commissions can fund development. They cannot fund a production line that must earn a return, and a company owned by its customers and its government is easier to lend to than one living on grants. A law amended in 2025, known here from a search summary, lets a state agency take shares and hold a veto. Japan is taking the position the Chinese national fund takes in SMIC: a large shareholder that is also the industrial policy.

The scale of the bet

Total investment to reach volume production has been put above 4 trillion yen in Japanese reporting. Against that the state has given 2.4 trillion, private firms 168 billion. [482, 483] The section on what subsidies bought compares public money per plant across countries. Japan’s commitment to a single unproven company is the largest relative to that company’s own resources of any on this page. It is also the only one aimed at the newest process without a parent firm that has made the one before.

What it has to do with the controls

Rapidus is a consequence of the same reasoning as the controls. The leading edge is concentrated in Taiwan. The United States wants it spread among allies, and Japan wants its own. The technology comes from an American partner and a European research centre, and the tools from the firms the controls are built around. A working 2-nanometre plant in Hokkaido would give the allied side a second source that is neither on a contested island nor dependent on one company.

Japan is trying something no other government on this page has attempted: to create a leading-edge chipmaker from nothing with public money. By 2026 it had spent about 2.4 trillion yen, become the firm’s largest shareholder, and persuaded 32 companies to put in less than a tenth of that. [482, 483]

The test is near. Volume production is scheduled for fiscal 2027, and the reports name no customer that has committed to it. Whether private lenders provide the two trillion yen the government hopes for will show what they think the answer is.

Limits. This section rests on one Japanese industrial daily’s article, read in full, and the visible part of a Hokkaido newspaper’s article behind a paywall. The government’s share of voting rights, its special share, the 2025 law, the April 2026 research allocation and the total investment estimate are from a search summary of other Japanese reports. The company’s founding, partners and technology sources are from general knowledge. The research funding figure is the newspaper’s round number; another report gives 2.354 trillion yen. No independent assessment of the plant’s progress was found.

Japan · the SI and semiconductor funding framework

Japan has committed more than 10 trillion yen of public support to chips and SI by fiscal 2030, on three stated conditions, and its 2026 chip budget is reported at nearly four times the year before

10tn yen+Public support for chips and SI over seven years to fiscal 2030

50tn yen+Public and private investment the frame is meant to draw over ten years

about 160tn yenEconomic effect the ministry expects

1.23tn yenFiscal 2026 budget for chips and SI, as reported, nearly four times the year before

3 nmProcess now planned for TSMC’s second Kumamoto plant, upgraded from 6 nm in February 2026

$17bnInvestment in that plant after the upgrade, from $12.2bn

The section on Rapidus describes one company. The money comes from a wider commitment. In its economic package of November 2024 the Japanese government adopted an “SI and Semiconductor Industrial Base Reinforcement Frame”. The economy ministry states its terms: public support of more than 10 trillion yen for semiconductors and SI over the seven years to fiscal 2030, intended to draw more than 50 trillion yen of public and private investment over ten years. [490]

The ministry also states the test a project must meet. Support goes to things that strengthen the competitiveness of Japanese industry broadly, that are “chokepoints in the supply chain” important to economic security, and that private firms could not fund adequately “without a medium and long-term fiscal commitment by the state”. [490]

Taiwanese trade press, citing the ministry’s strategy summary, puts the fiscal 2026 budget for chips and SI at about 1.23 trillion yen, nearly four times the previous year’s, of which about 630 billion is for Rapidus and 387 billion for SI research. [491] It also reports that in February 2026 TSMC decided to make its second plant at Kumamoto a 3-nanometre plant, not 6-nanometre as planned, raising the investment from $12.2 billion to $17 billion, with production in 2028. [491]

Japan’s funding frame for chips and SI, from the economy ministry’s page and Taiwanese trade press.

Element	What is stated	Source	Reading
Size	More than 10 trillion yen of public support to fiscal 2030. [490]	Economy ministry	a seven-year promise Meant to give firms predictability.
Leverage	More than 50 trillion yen of public and private investment over ten years. [490]	Same	a target Five yen of total investment for each yen of public money.
Conditions	Broad competitiveness; a chokepoint important to economic security; beyond what private firms can fund alone. [490]	Same	explicit A chokepoint test written into subsidy policy.
Budget lines	Research on post-5G systems, equity for volume production of next-generation chips, energy-saving chip technology, and foundation models for robots. [490]	Same, fiscal 2026 budget list	chips and SI together
Fiscal 2026	About 1.23 trillion yen, with about 630 billion for Rapidus and 387 billion for SI research. [491]	Taiwanese trade press citing the ministry	front-loaded Half to one company.
Foreign plants	TSMC’s second Kumamoto plant upgraded to 3 nanometres, $17 billion, production in 2028. [491]	Same	leading edge on Japanese soil By a Taiwanese firm, ahead of Japan’s own.

A chokepoint test for subsidy

Most governments justify chip subsidies by jobs or by resilience in general terms. Japan’s frame names the criterion this page is about: the item must be a chokepoint. [490] That ties industrial policy to the logic of export controls. Japan holds several chokepoints already, in materials and in certain tools, and the section on Japan against Korea shows what happened when it used one. The frame pays to keep those and to acquire one it lacks, the manufacture of leading-edge logic.

Two routes to the same end

Japan is paying for advanced logic twice. Rapidus is the domestic route, with about 2.4 trillion yen of public money and production planned for fiscal 2027. The Kumamoto plants are the foreign route, built by TSMC with Japanese subsidy and Japanese partners. The February 2026 decision to make the second plant 3-nanometre brings a process close to the leading edge to Japan by 2028. [491] The Taiwanese article’s title describes the relationship as moving “from cooperation toward competition”, since both routes will sell to the same customers.

What it means for Taiwan’s rule

Taiwan’s rule keeps the newest process on the island and lets overseas plants trail by two generations. A 3-nanometre plant in Japan in 2028 is consistent with that, since 2-nanometre production began in Taiwan in 2025 and the next node follows. It still narrows the gap between what is made in Taiwan and what is made elsewhere, and it does so in a country that is funding a rival. Japan’s frame, Taiwan’s outbound rule and the American tariff deal are three governments each trying to shape where the same plants are built.

Japan’s frame is the most explicit statement by any government on this page of why it subsidises chips. It is a commitment of more than 10 trillion yen to hold and acquire chokepoints, made for seven years so that firms can plan. [490]

The reported fiscal 2026 budget shows how concentrated the spending is, with half going to one unproven company. The second Kumamoto plant shows the alternative, which is to pay a proven foreign maker to build at home. Japan is doing both, and by 2028 it will know which worked.

Limits. The economy ministry’s page on the frame was read in full; it states the frame’s size, purpose and conditions and lists budget programmes without amounts. The fiscal 2026 budget figures and the Kumamoto upgrade are from a Taiwanese trade publication citing the ministry’s strategy summary and the company, and were not checked against either. Subsidy amounts for the Kumamoto plants were not found in a source that could be opened. The statements about Japan’s existing chokepoints and about when 2-nanometre production began in Taiwan are from general knowledge.

South Korea · the Semiconductor Special Act, January 2026

South Korea’s parliament passed a special law for chips in January 2026 that makes power and water for chip clusters a duty of the state, and left out the exemption from the 52-hour week that the industry wanted most

29 Jan 2026Date the National Assembly passed the act

10 yearsLife of the special account created to fund chip support

52 hoursWeekly working limit from which research staff were not exempted

Q3 2026When the government expected the act to take effect

3New bodies: a presidential committee, a ministry support unit and a special account

All or partShare of cluster power, water and road costs the state may pay first

South Korea makes most of the world’s memory chips and had supported the industry mainly through tax credits. On 29 January 2026 the National Assembly passed the Special Act on Strengthening the Competitiveness of and Supporting the Semiconductor Industry. [486]

The law creates a special committee on semiconductors under the President to direct support that had been scattered across programmes, a support unit inside the industry ministry, and a special account, set up for ten years, to pay for it. [487] It allows the designation of chip clusters. Inside them the government is to give priority support for all or part of the cost of electricity, water and roads, and projects may have permits simplified and be exempted from the preliminary feasibility study that large public spending normally requires. [486]

One clause did not survive. The industry had asked that research staff be exempt from the legal limit of 52 working hours a week. The parties could not agree, and the law passed without it, with a note that the relevant committees would “continue to discuss alternatives”. [487]

South Korea’s Semiconductor Special Act, from Korean newspaper reports of its passage.

Provision	What it does	Source	Reading
Presidential committee	A special committee under the President coordinates chip policy. [487]	Business daily	centralised Chips raised to the top of government.
Special account	A dedicated account for ten years. [487]	Same	standing money Support no longer depends on yearly programmes. Its size is not in the reports read.
Clusters	Legal basis for designating chip clusters, with regional balance in mind. [486]	Economic daily	sites
Infrastructure	Priority state support for all or part of the cost of power, water and roads in clusters. [486]	Same	the real subsidy The state builds what a plant cannot run without.
Speed	Simplified permits and an exemption from preliminary feasibility review for urgent projects. [486]	Same	time Aimed at years of delay over transmission lines and water.
Scope	Memory, system chips, and materials, parts and equipment, across the whole cycle. [486]	Same	whole chain
Working hours	No exemption from the 52-hour week for research staff. Further discussion promised. [487]	Business daily	omitted Labour and business could not be reconciled.
Timing	In force after subordinate rules, expected in the third quarter of 2026. [486, 487]	Both	delayed effect

A law about electricity

The provisions with most effect concern infrastructure. South Korea’s largest planned chip cluster, at Yongin, has been held up for years by disputes over the transmission lines and water it needs, as the section on permits records. The act makes that infrastructure a matter for the state to fund first and lets projects skip the review that slows public works. [486] It is the same problem as Taiwan’s, met by statute: the limit on a new plant is the grid, and the law puts the grid on the government’s account.

The clause left out

Korean chipmakers argued that their rivals’ engineers work without a cap on hours and that development of the next generation of memory cannot stop at 52. A business daily’s report puts the industry’s case in its headline: “the exemption was dropped after all”. [487] Unions opposed it, and the governing and opposition parties passed the rest of the law without it. It is a reminder that what limits a chip industry in a democracy is often a domestic rule that has nothing to do with rival powers.

Late among allies

The United States passed its chip subsidy law in 2022, Japan had funded plants from 2021, and Taiwan’s tax credit took effect in 2023. South Korea, home to two of the world’s three memory makers, legislated in 2026. Until then it relied on an investment tax credit, which helps firms that have profits to offset. The act’s shift toward infrastructure and a standing account reflects a view that the industry’s need is less cash than land, power, water and speed.

South Korea’s law confirms a pattern across this part of the page. In Taiwan the constraint is electricity, and in Korea it is the transmission line and the water pipe. The newest national chip law spends its words on infrastructure and permits, and the question it could not settle was working hours. [486, 487]

Nothing in the act concerns China or export controls. Korea’s position between its largest customer and its security ally is handled elsewhere, in licences for its plants in China and in its law on technology leaks, which the next Korean section describes.

Limits. The act itself was not read; this section rests on two Korean newspapers’ reports of its passage. The size of the special account, the vote, and the dates of promulgation and effect are not in the reports read; a search summary gives promulgation on 10 February and effect on 11 August 2026, and reports that the enforcement decree was open for comment in June and July 2026. Whether the working-hours question was later settled was not checked. The background on Yongin, on other countries’ laws and on Korea’s tax credit is from general knowledge and other sections of this page.

South Korea · electricity for the Yongin chip cluster, 2026

South Korea’s Yongin chip cluster needs about 16 gigawatts and has secured about 9; in 2026 a minister suggested moving it, and parliament began letting Samsung and SK hynix build their own transmission lines

16 GWElectricity the Yongin cluster is estimated to need

9 GWSecured so far: about 6 for Samsung and 3 for SK hynix

1.07m tonnesWater needed per day

13 yearsAverage time the state utility takes to build a transmission line

150 monthsDelay on one line serving the region

about 2tn wonCost the utility attributes to delays on two lines

The largest chip investment planned anywhere outside Taiwan is at Yongin, south of Seoul, where Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are to build ten plants. By the industry’s estimate the cluster will need 16 gigawatts of electricity. Samsung needs 9 and has secured about 6. SK hynix needs 6 and has secured about 3. [492] A Korean weekly puts the full requirement at 10 to 16 gigawatts, the output of ten to sixteen nuclear reactors, and 1.07 million tonnes of water a day. [493]

In December 2025 the minister for climate and energy said on the radio that the plants’ demand would equal fifteen reactors, and hinted that the cluster might be better placed where power is available. That started a public argument over moving it to the south-west coast, where renewable power is plentiful and transmission lines would not have to cross the country. [492] The government then dismissed the idea. [494]

The practical response came in May 2026. A parliamentary committee passed three grid bills, one of which lets private companies, not only the state utility, build national transmission lines. Samsung and SK hynix would be able to build the lines to Yongin themselves and hand them to the utility on completion. [495]

Power and water for the Yongin cluster, from Korean press reports in 2026.

Subject	What is reported	Source	Reading
Demand	16 GW in total. Samsung 9, SK hynix 6. [492]	Industry estimate, in a news site’s report	a very large single load Comparable to ten or more reactors.
Secured	Samsung about 6 GW, SK hynix about 3. [492]	Same	a gap of 7 GW
Supply plan	Three gas-fired plants of 1 GW each by state generators for Samsung’s site. A three-stage national plan to 2053 with more transmission and gas. [493, 494]	Weekly; regional daily	gas first Against the firms’ pledge of 100% renewable power by 2050. [493]
Transmission	Lines from the south-west and the east coast. Local opposition to pylons unresolved. [492]	News site	the real constraint Not generation but wires.
Delays	One line 150 months late, another 90. About 2 trillion won in cost. [495]	News agency citing the utility	a decade
Relocation debate	A minister’s hint in December 2025, proposals for the south-west coast, then dismissed by the government. [492, 494]	News site; regional daily	politics Raised before local elections.
Grid bills	Private firms may build national transmission lines, from site selection to construction, with the utility taking them over. [495]	News agency, May 2026	firms build their own A committee vote. The plenary was still to come.

Wires, not watts

South Korea can generate the power. It cannot easily move it. Generation is in the south and on the coasts, demand is around Seoul, and every new high-voltage line meets opposition from the districts it crosses. The state utility takes thirteen years on average to build one. [495] A chip plant takes three or four. The mismatch is why a cluster announced as the centre of the national strategy has secured a little over half its electricity. [492]

Letting the customer build the grid

The grid bill’s answer is to let the companies that need the line build it. The utility would take ownership afterwards, and the report notes that returns to the builders cannot be unlimited, which points to higher electricity charges. [495] It is an unusual step for a country where transmission has been a state monopoly. The Semiconductor Special Act passed in January 2026 already makes the state pay first for cluster infrastructure. Together the two laws bring both public money and private construction to the same bottleneck.

The cost of concentration

The relocation debate exposed a choice the industry would prefer not to discuss. A regional daily’s analysis notes that the south-west site proposed has doubts over water and ground stability, and the industry says its plans cannot now be changed. [492, 494] Korea, like Taiwan, has put its most valuable industry in one place for good reasons of labour and suppliers, and now finds that place cannot easily be supplied. Japan chose a northern island with power to spare for its new plant. The difference will show in which projects open on time.

Yongin is where the limits described for Taiwan appear in Korea, at larger scale and with less time. The cluster has a little over half the electricity it needs, and the lines for the rest are measured in decades. [492, 495]

None of this is caused by any rival’s control. It is the physical side of the contest: every government wants leading-edge plants at home, and each plant needs power and water on a scale that planning systems built for other industries cannot deliver quickly.

Limits. The power figures are an industry estimate as reported by a Korean news site and were not confirmed against the companies’ or the government’s plans; a weekly gives a range of 10 to 16 GW. The grid bills had passed a parliamentary committee when reported in May 2026, and whether they have since become law was not checked. Current construction status at Yongin was not found. The description of Korea’s grid geography, plant construction times and Japan’s choice of site is from general knowledge.

China · the standing offers

State Council Document 8 of 2020 gives a 28-nanometre fab ten years free of corporate tax, and a 2025 order adds computing power on home-made chips

10 yearsCorporate income tax holiday for a fab at 28 nanometres or below with an operating term of 15 years or more, State Council Document 8 of 2020

5 + 5Years free, then years at half rate, for a fab at 65 nanometres or below

10%Tax rate for key chip design and software firms after five tax-free years, against a standard 25%

0Import duty on materials, consumables and own-use equipment for qualifying fabs and advanced packaging plants

over 70% by 2027Target adoption rate for new intelligent devices and software agents in the August 2025 SI Plus opinion. Over 90% by 2030

40Articles in Document 8, in eight policy areas from tax to international cooperation

China’s chip subsidies are usually counted through the national funds. The larger and steadier support is in a tax document. On 4 August 2020 the State Council published Document No. 8 of 2020, a policy of forty articles for the chip and software industries. [370] A fab making chips at 28 nanometres or below, with an operating term of at least fifteen years, pays no corporate income tax for its first ten years. [370] At 65 nanometres or below it pays nothing for five years and half the 25% rate for the next five. At 130 nanometres or below, with a ten-year term, it pays nothing for two years and half for three. [370] Losses at such fabs can be carried forward for up to ten years. [370]

The document reaches beyond fabs. Design, equipment, materials, packaging and test firms get two years free and three at half rate from their first profitable year. Key design and software firms get five years free and then a 10% rate. [370] Imports of materials, consumables, cleanroom materials and equipment for qualifying fabs are free of duty. [370] It applies to any qualifying firm in China, whatever its ownership. [370] Five years later the State Council’s opinion on its SI Plus campaign, dated 21 August 2025, added the demand side: support for breakthroughs in SI chips and their software, and a national network of computing power. [371]

What State Council Document 8 of 2020 offers, by kind of firm.

Who qualifies	Corporate income tax	Other terms	Reading
Fab at 28 nanometres or below, operating term 15 years or more	Exempt in years one to ten. [370]	Losses carried forward up to ten years. Duty-free imports of materials and equipment. [370]	largest benefit Written for SMIC’s advanced lines and for memory makers.
Fab at 65 nanometres or below, operating term 15 years or more	Exempt in years one to five, half the 25% rate in years six to ten. [370]	As above. [370]	mature logic and memory
Fab at 130 nanometres or below, operating term 10 years or more	Exempt in years one and two, half rate in years three to five. [370]	As above. [370]	older nodes The capacity now worrying Western makers of mature chips.
Design, equipment, materials, packaging and test firms	From the first profitable year: two years exempt, three at half rate. [370]	Duty-free imports of own-use equipment for key design firms and advanced packaging plants. [370]	the rest of the chain The toolmakers and materials firms the controls made necessary.
Key design firms and software firms	From the first profitable year: five years exempt, then 10%. [370]	Temporary import of equipment under simplified customs procedures. [370]	permanent low rate
Major chip projects	Not a tax holiday.	Value added tax on imported new equipment may be paid in instalments. [370]	cash-flow help
Foreign-owned firms in China	The same terms. The policy applies regardless of ownership. [370]	The document also promises a good environment for foreign investment and research centres. [370]	open in text Samsung’s and SK hynix’s Chinese fabs fall within the wording.

A subsidy that scales with ambition

The schedule rewards the most advanced process most. Ten years without income tax at 28 nanometres against five at 65 and two at 130 tells every investor which fab to build. [370] The document also says the thresholds will be adjusted as technology advances. [370] It was issued in August 2020, three months after Washington cut Huawei off from TSMC, and it overrides the policies of 2000 and 2011 where they differ. [370]

Warnings inside the same text

Document 8 is not only an offer. Its financing section tells authorities to keep order in the industry and avoid low-level duplicate construction. [370] Its talent section calls for self-discipline to stop firms poaching each other’s engineers. [370] Both are signs of what the tax breaks had already produced by 2020: local governments building fabs that did not work, and a bidding war for staff. The state was subsidising and restraining at once.

Demand by decree

The 2025 SI Plus opinion sets targets for use, not for production: an adoption rate above 70% for new intelligent devices and software agents by 2027 and above 90% by 2030. [371] Its section on computing power asks for breakthroughs in SI chips and the software around them, very large computing clusters, and a nationwide computing network built on the east-data-west-computing hubs. [371] A market of that size, reserved in practice for home-made chips, is worth more to a chipmaker than a tax holiday.

The two documents are the supply and demand sides of one policy. The first makes an advanced fab nearly tax-free for a decade and lets it import its machines without duty. [370] The second orders the economy to use the output. [371] Neither mentions export controls, and both answer them: one lowers the cost of building without foreign partners, the other guarantees a buyer.

Set beside the American review in the evidence part, the contrast is in form. The CHIPS Act is a fund with a budget, awards and an expiry date. China’s main instrument is an open-ended tax rule that any qualifying firm can claim, including foreign ones on paper. That makes Chinese support hard to total, which is one reason estimates of it differ so widely.

Limits. Both documents were read on government sites through a reading tool that summarises: Document 8 on the State Council’s page and the SI Plus opinion on the cyberspace regulator’s copy. The tax terms were checked item by item; the non-tax sections are summarised. Later notices that set the detailed conditions for the tax breaks, and any changes since 2020, were not read, so the terms may have been adjusted. The remarks on which firms the terms were written for, on Huawei and TSMC in 2020, on failed local fabs, on the market being reserved for home-made chips and on the comparison with the CHIPS Act are this site’s reading from general knowledge, not statements in the documents. No Chinese figure for the tax revenue forgone was found.

China · the third national chip fund at work, 2025 and 2026

China’s third chip fund began spending in September 2025: first on tools and materials for the gaps the controls opened, then in 2026 on large plants

344bn yuanRegistered capital of the fund’s third phase

3Vehicles through which it invests, with 93.1bn, 71.1bn and 60.1bn yuan

12 Sep 2025Date the first investment became public, sixteen months after the fund was registered

$7.78bnCash injection into SMIC’s advanced-process subsidiary announced in December 2025, with the third fund among the new investors

33Notices of share sales by the first fund at 14 listed companies in the year to May 2026

1stPlace of integrated circuits in the 2026 work report’s list of emerging pillar industries

The section on China at home records that the third phase of the national integrated circuit fund was registered in 2024 with 344 billion yuan and had been slow to spend. Chinese company filings and trade press now show where the money is going. In January 2025 the fund set up three vehicles, each 99.9% owned: Huaxin Dingxin with 93.1 billion yuan, Guotou Jixin with 71.1 billion, and a National SI Industry Investment Fund with 60.1 billion. [433]

The first investment surfaced on 12 September 2025: up to 450 million yuan for 12.7% of a subsidiary of the toolmaker Piotech that builds bonding equipment for stacking chips. [433] Other 2025 deals went to synthetic quartz and mask substrates for lithography and to advanced packaging substrates. [432] In 2026 the fund placed fewer and larger bets: specialty and analog wafer plants, and acquisitions that give Chinese toolmakers a full product line. [432]

The government’s work report for 2026 set the frame. It lists integrated circuits first among the “emerging pillar industries” to be built, tells state-owned firms to “take the lead in opening application scenarios”, and promises a standing fast track for listings and mergers of firms in core technologies. [435]

Investments by the third national chip fund’s vehicles reported in Chinese company announcements and trade press to November 2026.

When	Target	What it makes	Gap it fills
Sep 2025	Piotech Jianke, up to 450 million yuan for about 12.7%. [433]	Hybrid and fusion bonding equipment for three-dimensional integration. [432, 433]	packaging Stacking is China’s route around the limit on smaller transistors.
2025	Nantong Crystal and Changfei Quartz. [432]	Synthetic quartz and mask substrates. [432]	lithography inputs Upstream of the photomask.
2025	AKM Meadville. [432]	High-end chip carriers and substrate-like boards. [432]	packaging
Dec 2025	SMIC South, as a new investor in a $7.78 billion capital increase. [434]	SMIC’s line for 14-nanometre FinFET and below. [434]	leading edge The plant most directly under American controls.
2026	Hua Hong’s third Wuxi plant. [432]	55,000 twelve-inch wafers a month of embedded memory, analog, radio and power processes, a $6.95 billion project. [432]	mature capacity
2026	Financing for AMEC’s purchase of Hangzhou Sizone. [432]	Polishing machines for twelve-inch wafers. [432]	tools Gives the etch leader a polishing line.
Aug 2026	Shenyang Zhengxin, a vehicle led by Fortune Precision. [432]	Holds the assets of Compart, a maker of ultra-pure gas delivery parts for etch and deposition tools. [432]	tool parts A foreign supplier brought under Chinese ownership.
2026	Tiansui Xinyuan, 300 million yuan. [432]	VeriSilicon’s vehicle for buying a display and video chip designer. [432]	design
Oct 2026	Silan Jihua, 900 million yuan for 14.98%, paid in three parts to December 2027. [432]	A twelve-inch analog chip line in Xiamen, 10 billion yuan in its first phase, 240,000 wafers a year by 2030. [432]	analog For cars, servers and robots.

Recycling the first fund

While the third fund invests, the first is selling. In late May 2026 it disclosed sales of shares in a wafer maker, a materials firm and SMIC, each described by the company as a planned exit. Over the previous year fourteen listed companies had issued thirty-three such notices. [436] The first fund dates from 2014 and its term has run out. Analysts quoted in the Chinese press describe the cycle as “invest, exit, reinvest”, with proceeds going to equipment and materials. [436]

The state consolidates SMIC

Two transactions at the end of 2025 show the fund’s other role, as a holder of plants. SMIC agreed to buy the 49% of its Beijing subsidiary held by the national fund and Beijing state bodies for 40.6 billion yuan, paid in shares, which lifts the fund’s stake in SMIC itself. On the same day SMIC’s Shanghai subsidiary for advanced processes took a $7.78 billion capital injection, raising its registered capital to about $10.08 billion. [434] State money first builds a plant beside the listed company, then folds it in.

Provinces alongside

The national fund is one of several. Shanghai’s integrated circuit fund has 45 billion yuan and set up five sub-funds in 2025. A new company for the third phase of the memory maker YMTC was registered in Wuhan with 20.7 billion yuan, almost half from Hubei state investors, including a city fund created in 2024 for chips. [433] The section on China’s cities describes the local rules these funds work under.

The pattern answers a question raised in the evidence part of this page: whether subsidy follows the controls. It does, item by item. Bonding tools, mask blanks, polishing machines and gas delivery parts are the places where a Chinese plant still depends on a foreign supplier that an American rule could cut off. [432] The third fund’s list reads as an inventory of remaining chokepoints.

What the filings do not show is results. A stake bought is not a tool qualified on a production line. The planning commission’s newspaper says chip plants now open their lines to domestic tools, and that is the test these investments have to pass. [402]

Limits. This section rests on Chinese trade press and news reports of company announcements and registry data, not on the announcements, the registry or the fund’s own accounts; the fund publishes no list of holdings. The deal list is therefore incomplete and the amounts are as reported. Whether the third fund itself, or one of its vehicles, is the investor in SMIC South, and how much it put in, could not be confirmed from the report read; a search summary gives $1.83 billion. The description of what each target makes follows the trade press. The work report was read in full on the state news agency’s site. The remark that the first fund’s term has run out is the reported view of analysts.

China · consolidation in the chip industry, 2026

Chinese chip firms announced 53 mergers in the first eight months of 2026, a quarter more than a year earlier, led by state foundries absorbing the plants built beside them

53Merger and restructuring events with semiconductor targets, January to August 2026, against 43 a year earlier

40.6bn yuanPrice SMIC agreed for the 49% of its Beijing subsidiary held by state investors

8.27bn yuanPrice of Hua Hong’s purchase of 97.5% of Huali Microelectronics

38,000Twelve-inch wafers a month at the plant Hua Hong is acquiring, at 65 to 40 nanometres

108.3%Hua Hong’s capacity utilisation in the second quarter of 2025, the reason it needs the plant

+470%Premium over book value in one 2026 purchase of a test company, as its draft terms state

Shanghai’s plan to 2030 tells the city’s chip firms to merge, and the government’s 2026 work report promised a fast track for mergers in core technologies. The deals are now visible. A Chinese securities firm’s count, as reported, finds 53 merger and restructuring events with semiconductor targets from January to August 2026, against 43 in the same months of 2025, a rise of 23%. [347]

The largest are among state-backed manufacturers. In the last days of 2025 SMIC agreed to buy the 49% of its Beijing subsidiary that it did not own for 40.6 billion yuan in shares. [434] Hua Hong, the second foundry, is buying 97.5% of Huali Microelectronics, a sister company in the same Shanghai state group, for 8.27 billion yuan. [348] Each takes a plant that public money built outside the listed company and folds it in.

A second kind of deal gives a toolmaker or designer a missing product: the etch leader AMEC buying a maker of polishing machines, and a chip designer buying a maker of power devices for 1.9 billion yuan. [432, 349]

Mergers in China’s chip industry announced or advanced in 2026, from Chinese financial press reports.

Deal	Terms	Purpose	Kind
SMIC and SMIC North	49% for 40.6 billion yuan, paid in shares to the national fund and Beijing state investors. [434]	Full ownership of a twelve-inch plant in Beijing.	folding in a state-built plant
Hua Hong and Huali Micro	97.4988% for 8.268 billion yuan in shares and cash, with up to 7.556 billion raised alongside. Shareholders approved on 10 February 2026. [348]	Adds 38,000 wafers a month and processes down to 40 nanometres. Honours a promise made at listing to resolve competition within three years. [348]	folding in a state-built plant
What Hua Hong does not get	The group’s other plant, at 28 and 22 nanometres, is left out. [348]	Only the plant that competes with Hua Hong is included.	advanced line kept apart
AMEC and Hangzhou Sizone	A majority stake, part-financed by a vehicle of the third national fund. [432]	Adds polishing machines to etch and deposition.	completing a tool range
Unigroup Guoxin and WeEn	All of a power-device maker that twice failed to list, for 1.9 billion yuan. [349]	Entry to automotive power chips. Investors objected to the price at the results meeting. [349]	a way out for unlisted firms
A test company	Valued at 936 million yuan, 470% above book. [349]	Adds test services.	high prices
The sector	53 events in eight months, up 23%. Deals moving toward manufacturing, test and power devices. [347, 349]	“Precise filling and strengthening of the chain”, in a Chinese weekly’s phrase. [349]	policy-led

Why now

Three things arrived together. The securities regulator eased merger rules in late 2024 and the 2026 work report promised a standing fast track. A decade of subsidy left hundreds of small firms that cannot all list, and a merger is the way out for their investors: one target in 2026 had tried and failed to list twice. [349] And the national fund’s third phase finances acquisitions directly, as its section shows. A Chinese business weekly sums up the half-year as a turn “from expanding scale to concentrating value”. [349]

A promise kept on schedule

The Hua Hong deal shows how state ownership shapes these transactions. When Hua Hong listed in Shanghai in 2023 it undertook to bring the competing plant into the listed company within three years. The deal was approved by shareholders in February 2026 and, as reported, registered by the regulator in July, inside the deadline. [348] The plant’s equipment is near the end of its depreciation, so it adds capacity at low cost to a foundry that was running above its rated capacity. [348]

What consolidation does to the controls

A scattered industry is easy to starve: each small firm lacks the scale to qualify a domestic tool or carry a loss-making process. Larger groups can. A toolmaker with etch, deposition and polishing can offer a plant a line’s worth of equipment, and a foundry with several plants can spread the cost of qualifying it. The American strategy has relied on Chinese firms being many and dependent. Consolidation is aimed at making them few and self-supplying. Whether mergers arranged by the state produce stronger firms, or only larger ones, is the usual question about such policies.

The merger figures complete the account of how China’s plans are carried out. Money comes from the national and city funds. Listing rules are changed so that loss-making plants can reach the market. Then the plants and small firms that subsidy created are gathered into a few groups. [347, 348, 349] Each step has a document behind it on this page.

The risk is visible in the same reports: prices several times book value, a buyer’s own shareholders objecting, a target that could not list by itself. State-led consolidation can as easily rescue weak firms as build strong ones. The test will be whether the merged toolmakers and foundries qualify more domestic equipment, which the half-year reports of 2027 will show.

Limits. The count of 53 deals is one securities firm’s, by date of first disclosure, seen in a search summary of a press report and not in the firm’s own note; its definition of a semiconductor target is not known. The Hua Hong terms are from a Chinese commentary site’s account of the announcements; the regulator’s registration in July 2026 is from a search summary, and whether the deal has closed was not checked. The other deals are from a Chinese business weekly’s survey and from sections of this page on the national fund. The statements about the 2024 merger rules, the 2023 listing undertaking’s date, and the effect of consolidation on the controls are from general knowledge or are this site’s reading.

China · the listing of the national memory champion, July 2026

China’s only maker of mainstream memory chips raised 57.9 billion yuan on Shanghai’s technology board in July 2026, after going from a 16 billion yuan loss to a quarter with 33 billion in profit

57.9bn yuanRaised at listing before the over-allotment option, against 29.5bn planned in the prospectus

7.67%Share of the world DRAM market, fourth quarter of 2025, up from 3.97% two quarters earlier

50.8bn yuanRevenue in the first quarter of 2026, up 719% on a year earlier

36.65bn yuanAccumulated losses at the end of 2025

8.73%Stake held by the second national chip fund before listing

6 monthsFrom acceptance of the application in December 2025 to the securities regulator’s approval in June 2026

ChangXin Memory Technologies, of Hefei, is the one Chinese firm that makes DRAM, the working memory in every phone, computer and server, at scale. The world market is held by three companies, two South Korean and one American, with more than 90% between them. [313] On 27 July 2026 ChangXin listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market. [314]

The offer price was 8.66 yuan a share, valuing the company at about 579 billion yuan. It raised 57.9 billion yuan before the over-allotment option, the largest listing on the mainland in 2026. [315] The prospectus had planned for 29.5 billion. [313, 314] The company lost 16.3 billion yuan in 2023 and 7.1 billion in 2024, made 1.9 billion in 2025, and reported 33.0 billion in net profit for the first quarter of 2026 alone. [313, 315]

The prospectus gives the cause: world DRAM prices rose sharply from the second half of 2025 as demand for computing grew and the three leaders moved capacity to memory for SI servers. [314, 315] ChangXin’s share of the world market went from 3.97% in the second quarter of 2025 to 7.67% in the fourth, making it the fourth-largest producer. [315]

ChangXin Memory Technologies’ listing and finances, from Chinese press reports of its prospectus and offering announcements.

Item	Figure	Source	What it shows
Revenue	9.1bn yuan in 2023, 24.2bn in 2024, 61.8bn in 2025. Forecast 110 to 120bn for the first half of 2026. [313, 315]	Prospectus, as reported	scale A sixfold rise in two years, then doubled again in six months.
Profit to shareholders	Losses of 16.3bn and 7.1bn yuan, then 1.9bn profit in 2025. Forecast 50 to 57bn for the first half of 2026. [315]	Prospectus, as reported	cycle Enough to wipe out all accumulated losses.
Use of proceeds	Upgrading production lines (7.5bn), DRAM technology upgrades (13bn), forward research (9bn). [313]	Prospectus, as reported	technology, not just volume
Ownership	No controlling shareholder. Largest holder 21.67%. Second national fund 8.73%, Anhui provincial investment 7.91%, Hefei vehicles besides. [313]	Prospectus, as reported	state capital City, province and national fund together.
Customers	Alibaba Cloud, ByteDance, Tencent, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Transsion, Honor, Oppo and Vivo. [315]	Prospectus, as reported	home demand China’s cloud and phone makers.
Suppliers	Listed Chinese makers of tools, gases and packaging have said they supply it. [315]	Press report	pull-through Its lines are where domestic tools are proven.
Speed of approval	Accepted 20 December 2025, passed the listing committee 27 May 2026, approved 12 June, listed 27 July. [314]	Exchange records, as reported	fast track Seven months for the board’s second-largest listing by planned size.

What the controls did and did not do

American rules restrict ChangXin’s access to the newest memory-making tools, and it does not make the stacked memory used beside the most advanced SI processors. The prospectus as reported lists DDR5 and LPDDR5X, a generation behind the leaders’ newest products. [314] Its opening came from the leaders’ choice to move capacity to SI memory, which left ordinary memory short. [315] The controls kept it from the top of the market, and the boom at the top handed it the middle.

A price cycle, and the company says so

The prospectus is candid about the source of the profit: prices. An industry forecaster put the rise in DRAM contract prices in the second quarter of 2026 at about 60% on the quarter before. [315] The risks the company lists are accumulated losses, the industry’s cycle, very large depreciation and falling stock values. [313] The section on China’s chip trade found the same pattern in customs data: the value of chips crossing the border doubled in 2026 while the number barely moved. ChangXin is the largest single Chinese beneficiary of that price rise.

The model: city first, nation after

The company was founded in 2016 with Hefei’s backing, and its shareholder list still shows the layers: city vehicles, the province, and the second national fund. [313, 315] The government’s 2026 work report promised a standing fast track for listings by firms in core technologies, and this listing moved from application to trading in seven months. [314, 435] The pattern on this page for SMIC repeats here: public capital carries the losses for a decade, and the stock market is brought in once the firm is profitable.

For the argument of this page, ChangXin is the strongest case that Chinese industrial policy in chips can produce a world-scale firm in a segment where the controls bite. In 2019 China made almost no DRAM. In late 2025 it held a thirteenth of the world market. [315] It got there with state capital, domestic customers and older tools, and it became profitable when the market leaders turned to a product it cannot yet make.

The test comes when prices fall. Memory is the most cyclical part of the industry, and the prospectus records 36.65 billion yuan of accumulated losses from the last downturns. [313] A firm that raised 57.9 billion yuan at the top of a cycle has the means to keep building through the next trough, which is how the three leaders reached their position.

Limits. The prospectus and offering documents were not read; every figure is from Chinese newspapers’ reports of them, and profit figures mix net profit and profit attributable to shareholders as each report gives them. The final amount raised depends on the over-allotment option, whose exercise was not checked, and no figures after the listing date were sought. The statements that American rules restrict ChangXin’s access to the newest tools, that it does not make stacked memory for SI processors, and made almost no DRAM in 2019 are from general knowledge and the other sections of this site, not from the reports read. Market share figures are a research firm’s as cited in the press.

China · A Chinese listings column on equipment makers, October 2026

A dozen Chinese tool makers are queuing to list, many of them loss-making. A Chinese listings column says the exchange has stopped accepting the substitution story and now asks for repeat orders

12Equipment makers the column lists as applying or preparing to list

3.5bn yuanLargest sum sought, by a maker of lithography stages applying for the second time

47 monthsTime one materials firm waited at the registration stage before withdrawing

20.2bn yuanFirst-half 2026 revenue of the largest listed tool maker, up 24.9%

About 40%Gross margin on equipment at the leading etch tool maker

5Core risks the column says examiners now press on

In October 2026 a column on stock listings published by a Chinese news portal surveyed the chip equipment makers going to market: the listed leaders raising more capital, twelve firms in the queue for Shanghai’s technology board, and one that withdrew after waiting nearly four years. [256]

It describes a wave of applications in 2026 with three features. The national chip fund is a shareholder in many applicants. More of them are unprofitable, using the listing standards opened for technology firms without earnings. And almost all are questioned about imported core parts. [256]

The column’s judgement is that the mood has turned. “The era of concepts and stories is over.” Investors and the regulator are moving from chasing the “domestic substitution concept” to weighing orders, qualification and the truth of the accounts: whether a product has entered a leading fab’s line and produced repeat volume orders. [256]

The five risks a Chinese listings column says examiners raise with chip equipment makers, with this site’s reading.

Risk	What examiners ask	This site’s reading
Technology and its origin	Whether core technology was developed in-house, brought in, or carried by former employees of a rival. Whether patents can be industrialised or exist only on paper. [256]	the trade secret problem The same issue as the leak cases in this tab, seen from the listing side.
Qualification and revenue	A demonstration machine is not a volume order. Examiners separate sample, qualification and repeat orders, and ask when a loss-making firm will reach volume. [256]	the real filter Most applicants are at the first two stages.
Parts and geopolitics	Share of core parts bought abroad, risk of cut-off, backup plans. [256]	controls as a disclosure item
Stock and margins	Custom machines sit in inventory and cannot be resold if an order is cancelled. First machines are sold cheap, so margins swing. [256]	accounting, but telling Shows how thin early sales are.
Shareholders	Terms of the national fund’s investment, repurchase agreements, special rights. [256]	state money scrutinised After the fund’s corruption cases, not surprising.

The queue

The column sorts the applicants by field, and the list is a map of where China is trying to fill gaps: a maker of precision stages for lithography, applying a second time and seeking 3.5 billion yuan; two makers of inspection and measurement tools, one using electron beams and the other optics; several in etching and thin-film deposition; the country’s only maker of a full range of ion implanters; a laser annealing firm; a maker of automated wafer transport; and a maker of precision motion parts. [256] One was founded jointly by the leading foundry and an arm of the national fund. Five of them filed on the same day, 30 June 2026.

The one that withdrew

The cautionary case is a Beijing maker of compound semiconductor substrates controlled by a company listed in the United States. Its application was accepted in January 2022, approved by the listing committee that July and sent for registration in August. It then waited. In July 2026 it withdrew. The column gives three causes from the examination record: a trade secret dispute after a former employee of a domestic rival joined to develop a core product, ending in a criminal judgment; the foreign holding structure and dealings with the parent; and rules on technology credentials that tightened while its file aged. [256] Its lesson, the column says, is that passing the committee “does not mean the listing is safe”.

This site’s reading

Two points stand out for the argument about controls. First, the stock market is the main way China now funds tool makers, and the exchange has become a quality filter that the subsidy system lacked. A firm that cannot show repeat orders from a leading fab struggles to list, which is a harder test than winning a grant. Second, the listed leaders show what passing that test looks like: revenue rising by a quarter, margins near 40%, repeated capital raisings. The distance between them and the queue is the distance between a tool that works in a fab and one that works in a demonstration. The column says the same in its own words: look past the “grand narrative” to orders, qualification, supply chain and accounts.

The column notes that even the leaders carry the two standing risks: dependence on fabs’ spending cycles, and “overseas purchase of core parts for high-end equipment”, which it calls a long-term problem still to be solved. [256]

Limits. This is a column on a news portal by a listings commentator, not a regulator’s statement, and its description of what examiners ask is its own summary of inquiry letters. Company figures are from half-year reports as the column quotes them and were not checked. The list of applicants and their filing dates is as the column gives it in early October 2026 and will have changed. The account of the withdrawn application rests on the column’s reading of the record.

China · the flash-memory maker’s listing application, August 2026

YMTC, on the American Entity List since 2022, lost 19 billion yuan in 2023, kept building, and applied to list in August 2026 as the world’s third-largest maker of flash memory

33bn yuanAmount the company seeks to raise: 20.8bn for production-line upgrades, 12.2bn for research

3rdWorld rank in NAND flash by shipments and by sales, first quarter of 2026, as the prospectus cites it

19.2bn yuanNet loss in 2023, on revenue of 18.7bn

33.5bn yuanNet profit in the first quarter of 2026, on revenue of 47.0bn

75.2%Combined stake of the four largest shareholders, all state capital or national funds

3 monthsTime taken to complete pre-listing counselling, from 19 May to 21 August 2026

Yangtze Memory Technologies, of Wuhan, makes NAND flash, the storage in phones and data centres. The United States put it on the Entity List in December 2022, cutting it off from American tools and parts. On 21 August 2026 the Shanghai exchange accepted its application to list on the STAR Market and raise 33 billion yuan. [338, 339]

The prospectus, as reported, traces a full cycle. In 2023, the bottom of the memory market, the company had revenue of 18.7 billion yuan and a net loss of 19.2 billion, with a gross margin on its flash products of 1%. [339] It did not cut capacity. It kept expanding, and by 2025 revenue was 63.2 billion yuan and profit 14.2 billion. In the first quarter of 2026 alone it made 33.5 billion. [338, 339]

By a market researcher’s figures cited in the prospectus, in January to March 2026 the company ranked third in the world in flash memory by both volume and sales, behind the two South Korean makers. [338]

Yangtze Memory Technologies’ listing application and finances, from Chinese press reports of its prospectus.

Item	Figure	Source	What it shows
Revenue	18.7bn yuan in 2023, 45.2bn in 2024, 63.2bn in 2025, 47.0bn in the first quarter of 2026. [338, 339]	Prospectus, as reported	cycle and share A quarter now nearly equals 2024.
Profit to shareholders	Loss of 19.2bn in 2023, profit of 6.8bn in 2024 and 14.2bn in 2025, 33.4bn in the first quarter of 2026. [338, 339]	Prospectus, as reported	price boom
Ownership	No controlling shareholder. Hubei and Wuhan state vehicle 26.54%, a second holder 25.35%, the first national fund 11.97%, the second 11.38%. [339]	Prospectus, as reported	state-owned Province and national funds.
Technology	Its own stacking architecture, in its fourth generation. Among the first to ship flash with more than 200 layers. A patent cross-licence with leading foreign makers in 2025. [338]	Company account in the prospectus	its own design Recognised by rivals through cross-licensing.
Research	Nearly 16 billion yuan spent from 2023 to the first quarter of 2026. 4,796 research staff. 6,088 patents granted. [338]	Prospectus, as reported	scale
Use of proceeds	20.8bn yuan to upgrade production lines, 12.2bn for research platforms. [339]	Prospectus, as reported	generation, not just volume
Staff ownership	1,024 managers and engineers hold 1.29% through thirty vehicles, priced on net assets at mid-2023. [339]	Prospectus, as reported	retention Bought at the bottom of the cycle.

The most direct test of a listing

No Chinese chipmaker was hit harder by the Entity List. The company depended on American deposition and etch tools for stacking memory layers, and outside analysts expected it to stall. The prospectus as reported does not discuss the listing’s effect. The figures suggest what happened: it lost heavily in 2023, it kept building with state capital, and it reached more than 200 layers on its own architecture. [338, 339] How it equipped and maintained its lines is not in the reports read. The section on China’s toolmakers records one Chinese deposition maker’s profit rising thirteen-fold in 2026.

Expanding in the trough

A Chinese investment paper draws the lesson that capacity built in the downturn “became an amplifier of profit” when the market turned. [339] This is the memory industry’s oldest strategy, used by the South Korean makers in earlier cycles: the firm with the deepest pockets builds through the losses and takes share from those that cannot. Here the deep pockets were the Hubei government and two national funds, which between them own most of the company. [339]

A quick passage

The company registered for pre-listing counselling on 19 May 2026 and completed it on 21 August, about three months, and applies under the board’s standard for firms judged on technology and market position. [339] Its last private share sale valued it at about 160 billion yuan. [339] The DRAM maker in Hefei listed in July at about 579 billion. With both memory makers on the market, the state’s decade of funding in memory will have a public price.

Set beside the Hefei DRAM maker, this application completes a picture. China now has a top-four maker of each of the two main kinds of memory, both state-owned, both profitable at the peak of a cycle, both going to the stock market in the same year. [338, 315] One of them was on the Entity List throughout.

The usual caution applies with more force here than anywhere. Memory prices fall as fast as they rise, the company lost almost as much in 2023 as it earned in 2024 and 2025 together, and the prospectus was written at the top. What the application shows beyond doubt is that the listing of December 2022 did not stop the firm, and that the state was willing to fund it through losses of that size.

Limits. The prospectus was not read; all figures are from a Chinese financial data service’s report and a Chinese investment paper’s report of it, and the account of the technology is the company’s own. The date and effect of the American listing, the company’s earlier dependence on American tools, and the remarks on outside expectations and on South Korean makers’ strategy are from general knowledge. Whether the application has since been reviewed or approved was not checked. The comparison of 2023 losses with 2024 and 2025 profits uses the reported figures (19.2bn against 6.8bn and 14.2bn).

China · the advanced packaging leader’s listing, April 2026

The firm that does about 85% of mainland China’s 2.5D chip packaging listed in Shanghai in April 2026, and within a month was valued at 325 billion yuan

about 85%Share of mainland China’s 2.5D packaging revenue in 2024, a consultancy’s figure from the prospectus

5.03bn yuanRaised at listing on 21 April 2026

325bn yuanMarket value on 20 May 2026, the highest among Chinese packaging and test firms

6.52bn yuanRevenue in 2025, up 38.6%

923m yuanProfit attributable to shareholders in 2025, up 332%

41%Compound yearly revenue growth, 2022 to 2025

Advanced packaging joins several chips in one package so that they work as one. It is how the most powerful SI processors are assembled, and for China it is the main route around the limit on smaller transistors: if one chip cannot be made denser, several can be placed side by side or stacked. Every plan on this page names it.

The mainland’s leader is SJ Semiconductor, of Jiangyin, which began in the middle stage of wafer processing and moved into wafer-level and multi-chip packaging. A consultancy’s figures in its prospectus make it first on the mainland in 2.5D packaging revenue in 2024, with about 85% of that market, and the holder of the mainland’s largest capacity for forming the microscopic bumps that connect chips. [350, 351]

It listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market on 21 April 2026, raising 5.03 billion yuan, the largest listing by a Chinese packaging and test firm. [352] By 20 May its shares had risen 8.6 times over twenty trading days and it was the most valuable company in its sector at 325 billion yuan. [350]

SJ Semiconductor’s listing and finances, from Chinese newspaper reports of its prospectus and first-quarter report.

Item	Figure	Source	Reading
Position	First on the mainland in 2.5D packaging revenue, about 85% share in 2024. Largest twelve-inch bumping capacity. First in wafer-level chip-scale packaging revenue. [350, 351]	Consultancy figures in the prospectus	near-monopoly at home One supplier for the key step.
Revenue	1.63 billion yuan in 2022, 4.71 billion in 2024, 6.52 billion in 2025. [351, 352]	Prospectus, as reported	fast Fourfold in three years.
Profit	923 million yuan in 2025. 191 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 51.6% on revenue up 13.1%. [350, 351]	Reports, as reported	slowing growth, rising margin
Use of proceeds	Three-dimensional multi-chip packaging, and ultra-high-density interconnect for three-dimensional packaging, with more bumping capacity. [351]	Prospectus, as reported	stacking From side-by-side to stacked chips.
Technology in development	Three-dimensional integrated circuits, by both micro-bump and hybrid bonding routes. [351]	Company account	bonding The step the third national fund’s first investment targets.
Market’s view	Shares up 8.6 times in twenty trading days. [350]	Newspaper report	scarcity priced Investors paying for the only listed leader.

Why this firm matters to the controls

An SI processor made in China on an older process needs more silicon area and more memory beside it to do the same work. Both needs are met in the package. The firm that can place several large chips and memory stacks on one interposer at volume therefore decides how many usable processors China’s designers can ship. With about 85% of the mainland’s 2.5D revenue, that is one company. [350] Its customers are not named in the reports read. The step it performs is the mainland equivalent of the foreign leader’s packaging service, which Chinese designers on the Entity List cannot use.

Qualification, not invention

Analysts quoted in the Chinese press make a point that recurs for toolmakers. Many packaging techniques can be demonstrated in a laboratory, they say, but entering a customer’s supply chain takes long validation and proof of stable production at scale, and different customers need different process routes. [350] The firm’s value lies in having passed that test for the chips that matter. It also means capacity cannot be added quickly by a newcomer, which is why its listing proceeds go to capacity.

The state’s part

The third national fund’s first disclosed investment, in September 2025, was in a maker of bonding equipment for three-dimensional integration, and one of its 2025 investments was in advanced packaging substrates. Shanghai’s and Beijing’s plans both list advanced packaging among their chip priorities. The listing gives the leading packager the capital to build the capacity those plans assume. Public funds are paying for the tools and materials, and the stock market for the plant.

Packaging has moved from the least-regarded step in chipmaking to one of the most contested. The American controls of late 2024 extended to some packaging equipment and to stacked memory for that reason. China’s answer has a single name on the mainland, and since April 2026 it has a public valuation larger than any other Chinese packaging firm’s. [350, 352]

The concentration cuts both ways. One qualified supplier is a strength when it works and a chokepoint if it falters, and a listing by name would stop it buying foreign equipment. Nothing in the reports read says whether its tools are domestic.

Limits. The prospectus was not read; figures are from two Chinese newspapers’ reports and a search summary for the listing date, amount raised and its record status. The market share is a consultancy’s figure commissioned for the prospectus. The firm’s customers and the origin of its equipment are not in the reports read. What 2.5D packaging is, why it matters for SI processors, the reference to the foreign leader’s packaging service, and the scope of the 2024 American controls are from general knowledge. Share prices are as of May 2026.

China · the domestic product standard in government procurement

Since 1 January 2026 a product made in China has a 20% price advantage in government tenders, and within five years “made in China” will be defined product by product, down to key components and processes

20%Price-evaluation advantage for a domestic product over a non-domestic one in government procurement

1 Jan 2026Date the rule took effect

5 yearsTime allowed to set cost-share thresholds product by product

3 to 5 yearsTransition period for each product once its threshold is set

3.39tn yuanGovernment procurement in 2023, the finance ministry’s figure

2003Year the procurement law first required buying domestic goods, without defining them

China’s procurement law has said since 2003 that the government should buy domestic goods. It never defined a domestic good. [308] On 30 September 2025 the State Council’s general office issued a notice that does, in force from 1 January 2026. [307]

A domestic product is one produced in China whose components made in China reach a set share of its cost. “For specific products” the key components and key processes must also be made or carried out in China. [307] In a tender, a domestic product receives a 20% advantage in price evaluation over one that is not. [307] The market concerned was 3.39 trillion yuan in 2023. [308]

The thresholds are not yet set. Within five years the finance ministry, with the ministries for each industry, is to fix the cost share product by product, and the key components and processes for specific products, with a transition of three to five years for each. Until a product’s threshold applies, anything produced in China counts as domestic. [307]

China’s domestic product standard for government procurement, from the State Council general office’s notice as reported on the central government’s site and by the state news agency.

Element	What the notice says	Still open	What it means for chips
Definition	Produced in China, with components made in China reaching a set share of cost. [307]	The share, product by product. [307]	depends on the number A server assembled in China from imported processors may or may not qualify.
Key components and processes	For specific products, key components must be made in China and key processes carried out there. [307]	Which products, which components. [307]	the lever If the processor is named a key component of a computer, the rule reaches the chip.
Preference	20% in price evaluation. [307]	None stated.	large Enough to decide most tenders between comparable bids.
Interim rule	Until a product’s threshold applies, production in China is enough. [307]	When each threshold arrives.	soft start Foreign firms assembling in China qualify for now.
Equal treatment	State, private and foreign-invested firms treated alike. No naming of brands, no discrimination by ownership or investor’s country. [307]	Enforcement.	on paper The test is where the product is made, not who owns the maker.
Treaties	Where an international agreement provides otherwise, it prevails. [307]	China is not yet a party to the main procurement agreement.	reserved

A rule about location, not ownership

Officials and the experts quoted by the state news agency stress one point: a domestic product can come from a foreign-invested firm. [308] A foreign company’s China manager is quoted welcoming the clarity and promising more local production. [308] That is the purpose. The rule does not shut foreign brands out. It gives them a 20% reason to move production, and later components, into China. An academic quoted in the same report says the transition period gives foreign firms time to “adjust their production layout and investment decisions in China” to meet the standard. [308]

The same tool as Washington’s

The experts describe the standard as common practice among major economies and consistent with international procurement rules. [308] The United States has had a Buy American preference since 1933 and has raised its domestic content threshold in recent years. That comparison is from general knowledge. China’s version copies the structure: a cost-share test, a list of critical components, and a price preference. On this page the two governments are usually shown answering each other’s restrictions. Here China has adopted the other’s oldest industrial policy.

Where chips enter

A securities firm’s analysis quoted in the Chinese press names information technology equipment, medical equipment and office equipment among the largest categories of government purchases. [309] For each, the thresholds to come will decide how much of the electronics inside must be made in China. The existing security-based rules, described in the section on China at home, already steer agencies toward approved domestic processors and operating systems. The procurement standard adds a price mechanism that applies to all goods the state buys, and it is written in law that other countries use themselves.

This is the quietest of China’s instruments and may be among the largest. The export controls on this page restrict what leaves. This rule shapes what the state buys, across a market of more than three trillion yuan a year, and it turns on a definition that ministries will write product by product over five years. [307, 308] Each time a threshold names a key component, a foreign supplier of that component faces a choice between making it in China and losing a fifth of its price competitiveness in public tenders.

What to watch is the first thresholds for computers, servers and network equipment, and whether processors, memory or storage are named as key components. The notice sets a deadline of the end of 2030 for the whole system.

Limits. The notice itself was not found as a full text; its content is taken from the central government site’s report of it and the state news agency’s explanatory article, which quote it at length. The follow-up document from the finance and industry ministries, and any product thresholds already issued, were not read, so whether any chip-containing product has a threshold yet is not known. The procurement figure is for 2023. The comparison with American law, the date of the Chinese procurement law, and the statement that China is not yet a party to the main international procurement agreement are from general knowledge. The reading that the rule will reach chips through “key components” is this site’s inference from the text.

China · Chinese press investigations of computing centres, 2025 and 2026

Chinese reporters found computing centres full and empty at the same time: the best domestic chips are sold out, and the lesser ones bought to meet localisation targets sit unused

36.8%Share of China’s SI computing supply actually used in 2025, by a state institute’s figures

About 30%Average utilisation of graphics processors in SI computing centres, early 2026

500+SI computing centres in use in June 2026, with nearly 400 more building or planned

4 trillion yuanNew direct investment in the computing network expected in 2026 to 2030

About 20Chinese makers of graphics processors, with no authoritative independent benchmark

5th to 30thRank of the domestic chipmakers whose cards find little real commercial load, by one operator

In September 2026 a Chinese securities newspaper published an investigation of the country’s SI computing centres, a year after the science ministry’s newspaper had run its own. Both are built on interviews with operators, tuning firms and researchers, several of them under altered names. Together they are the frankest Chinese account of what the localisation of computing looks like on the ground. [249, 250]

The headline finding is a split. By a state research institute’s figures, China supplied about 3.8 billion card-hours of SI computing in 2025 and used 1.4 billion, a usage rate of about 36.8%. Another institute put average utilisation of graphics processors at about 30% in early 2026. Yet clusters with top-tier chips are sold out, and one operator said capacity is booked within a week of release. [249]

The reporters’ conclusion is that this is “structural imbalance” and not general surplus. The line runs between chip generations and between owners: internet firms’ own clusters are full, the three state carriers are covered by their own business, and centres built by local government investment platforms are “widely vacant”. [249]

Why Chinese computing centres are idle, as found by two Chinese press investigations, with this site’s reading.

Cause	What the reporters were told	Who said it	This site’s reading
Build first, find users later	In the rush to build, localities adopted “build first, find demand afterwards”, without checking that chips were commercially usable or lining up orders. [249]	A researcher at an electronics institute, name altered	the root cause A subsidy-led build, as the 2025 report also found.
Localisation targets	Some less developed areas, to meet domestic-content targets, “blindly purchased immature low-end domestic chips”. [249]	A computing researcher, name altered	the policy cost The direct price of buy-domestic rules.
The best chips are taken	Leading domestic chips are monopolised by large internet firms. Local state projects can buy only middle and low-end chips. [249]	A data centre hardware specialist	scarcity at the top Points to limited output of the leading chips.
Paper performance	Many smaller makers’ cards do not reach advertised figures. Much “paper computing power” cannot become output because the software stack does not fit. [249]	Founders of two tuning firms	the software gap The same point Chinese strategists make about ecosystems.
No independent testing	About twenty makers and no public, authoritative third-party evaluation. Some grew on local state orders and publicity, aiming at a stock listing. [249]	A chief executive in the sector	a market failure Buyers cannot tell good cards from bad.
Too small	Clusters of a thousand cards cannot take the ten-thousand-card training orders of leading firms. [249]	The same institute researcher	changing Inference demand suits smaller clusters, as the 2025 report argued.
Old designs	Racks under 15 kilowatts where training needs at least 40. Centres stocked with a single type of chip. [250]	A researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an unnamed insider	early wave Describes centres built before 2025.

What it says about domestic chips

The investigation separates Chinese chips into those that work and those that do not, which official statements never do. A cluster in Shaanxi ran at low utilisation until the leading chipmaker’s engineers tuned it on site, after which it reached 80% to 90%. Older domestic cards with 64 gigabytes of memory cannot run current models, while the 2026 generation with 144 gigabytes is fully used. And one operator predicts that cards bought before 2026 from makers outside the leading group “may be hard to recover the investment on”. [249] The implication is that China has perhaps two or three accelerator makers that matter and a long tail kept alive by local procurement.

The response

Officials told the paper that approval rules have changed. Local projects whose finances cannot cover long-term costs are refused, counties may no longer follow the fashion, the capacity to absorb computing is a condition of approval, and low-level thousand-card projects outside hub regions are tightly limited. Operators describe a model of “projects approved with orders attached, run by professional third parties”, and of separating ownership from operation for existing idle centres. [249] The 2025 report had pointed to the same answer from the demand side: many small firms needing inference, matched to scattered supply through scheduling platforms. [250]

This site’s reading

An earlier section of this tab cites an industry ministry occupancy figure of 71.4% for data centres and notes that reports of empty centres do not fit it. These investigations explain the difference. The ministry’s figure appears to measure occupancy of data centres in general. The 30% to 37% figures cover SI computing specifically, where a card can be installed and powered and still do no useful work. Both can be true. For the argument about controls, the lesson cuts two ways. American limits have not left China short of installed accelerators. They have left it short of good ones, and localisation rules have filled the gap with hardware that sits idle, paid for by local governments.

One operator gave the paper the sentence the sector now repeats: “three parts building, seven parts operating”. The value, he said, is not in hardware assets but in scheduling, platform support and the ability to find users. [249]

Limits. These are newspaper investigations, and several sources spoke under altered names, so their claims cannot be traced. The utilisation figures come from a state research institute and a server maker’s research arm and use different measures. Other Chinese reports in 2026 quote far higher utilisation for particular clusters. Operators and tuning firms quoted have a commercial interest in the remedy they describe. The paper’s statement that approval rules now prevent new idle capacity is an official claim that the next two years will test.

China · An academician and the Academy of Sciences on RISC-V, March 2026

China’s best-known advocate of self-reliance in computing says the open chip architecture is moving “from alternative to mainstream”, and the Academy of Sciences calls it a “Chinese path”

25%Share of the world processor market Ni Guangnan attributes to RISC-V in January 2026

200+Chips in volume production using the internet firm’s processor designs

70Score its new flagship design is said to pass on a standard single-core benchmark

1,100+Universities in the Academy’s training programmes for open chip design

27,000+Participants in those programmes

36bnDevices a market research firm expects to ship with the architecture in 2031, as cited

In the last week of March 2026 two events put China’s case for RISC-V, the free and open instruction set for processors. At a conference in Shanghai held by a large internet company’s research institute, Ni Guangnan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering who has argued for domestic computing technology for decades, said the architecture “is moving quickly from alternative to mainstream”. [251]

Two days later in Beijing the Chinese Academy of Sciences released its open high-performance processor design and a native operating system, and started joint work on the next generation with the state telecom carriers and the country’s largest internet and equipment firms. [252]

The state news agency’s report gives the reason in one sentence: the architecture carries no patent fees and can be modified freely, and is “one of the important routes for our country to break through in chip ecosystems and develop controllable computing power”. [252]

The Chinese case for the open processor architecture, from the two March 2026 events, with this site’s reading.

Claim	What was said	Who said it	This site’s reading
Market position	It held 25% of the world processor market in January 2026, and the two-architecture duopoly “is loosening”. [251]	Ni Guangnan	by unit count Mostly small embedded cores. Not a quarter of value.
Where it fits	In SI that acts in the physical world, its modular, low-power, customisable and secure design suits the varied demand for computing, including on-device chips. [251]	Ni Guangnan	plausible Robots and devices are where China deploys.
Performance	A new flagship design described as the highest-performing processor of its kind, with native support for very large models. [251]	The firm’s chief scientist	company claim Design performance, not a chip on a stated process.
Two battles	The architecture “has to win two campaigns”, general computing and SI computing, by producing high-performance benchmark products. [251]	The same scientist	honest Concedes neither is yet won.
Open design as public good	An open high-performance processor at “international advanced level”, with commercial chips already built on it by several Chinese firms. [252]	Chinese Academy of Sciences	the distinctive part A state body publishing core designs for anyone to use.
A national system	“A whole-chain system” of research, industrial use and training: a “Chinese path” for open chips. [252]	A vice-president of the Academy	a slogan with content The training numbers are real scale.

Why this route and not another

The two established processor families are owned by American and British firms, and China’s access to the newest designs of one of them has been restricted by export rules. An open standard cannot be withheld in the same way. That is the meaning of “controllable” in the news agency’s sentence. [252] It is also why this route differs from the rest of China’s chip effort. Lithography, memory and design software are attempts to rebuild something that exists. Here China is investing in a standard that is not owned by anyone and that its firms can shape, a point made about standards in general elsewhere in this tab.

Who is doing it

The list of participants shows the breadth. An internet company supplies commercial processor designs used in more than 200 production chips. The Academy supplies open designs and an operating system. State carriers, equipment makers and the largest platform firms have joined the next-generation project. Listed chip designers showed products for smart glasses, power grid control, networking and servers. [251, 252] This is closer to how the country built its telecom standards than to how it funds fabs: many firms coordinated around a shared specification, with a public research body at the centre.

This site’s reading

The architecture solves a licensing problem. It does not solve a manufacturing one. A fast open design still has to be made, and the highest-performing versions need the advanced processes China is short of. Nor does a share of units mean a share of the market that matters: the figure Ni cites counts tiny controllers alongside server processors. What the bet does offer is independence at the design layer and an ecosystem China can lead, in the fields where China is strongest, devices and machines. That fits the “infrastructure road” a Chinese scholar describes in another section: many adequate chips in many products, not a few of the best.

American legislators have at times proposed restricting cooperation with China on the standard. Neither report mentions that. The Academy’s stress on an open design that is “led by our country” and “fully supports international standards” reads as an answer in advance: stay inside the global standard, and make the leading open implementations Chinese. [252]

Limits. Both sources are news reports of promotional events: a company’s ecosystem conference and an Academy release. The 25% market share is the academician’s statement as reported, with no source or definition given, and the shipment forecast is from a market research firm. Performance claims are the developers’ own. Neither report says on what manufacturing process the chips are made. The remark about proposed American restrictions is from this site’s general knowledge and was not checked for this section.

China · Chinese industry analysis of equipment components, 2026

China’s chip tools are 30% domestic, but the parts inside them are not: Chinese industry writing puts vacuum pumps at 5% to 10% and electrostatic chucks, valves and seals lower still

30%Domestic share of China’s chip equipment in 2025, by an industry alliance

5% to 10%Domestic share of vacuum pumps

Over 10%Domestic share of quartz parts and showerheads

2Test machines a Shanghai tool maker built entirely from domestic parts

1 to 1.5 yearsMinimum qualification time for a critical part

37%Mainland China’s forecast share of world 22 to 40 nanometre capacity in 2026, as cited

A Chinese-built etching or deposition tool is assembled from thousands of parts, and by Chinese accounts many of the critical ones are imported. In July 2026 an industry commentary published on a Shanghai news site set out where the parts stand, starting from a disclosure by a listed Shanghai tool maker. [255]

That company told investors it had, since 2025, designed and assembled two machines using only domestic components. They are not for sale. They exist to test parts, which will be run in the company’s own clean room and, if they pass, moved into production tools. [255]

The commentary’s figures show the gap this is meant to close. An industry alliance puts the domestic share of chip equipment at 30% in 2025, rising to 35% in 2026. For the parts, it gives quartz pieces and showerheads at over 10%, vacuum pumps at about 5% to 10%, and electrostatic chucks, O-ring seals, valves and measuring instruments “lower still”. Parts for lithography are the weakest of all. [255]

The state of domestic components for chip tools, from a Chinese industry commentary and a listings analysis, with this site’s reading.

Subject	What is reported	This site’s reading
What fabs spend most on	Quartz parts, radio-frequency power supplies and pumps each take 10% or more of parts spending. Valves, chucks, showerheads and edge rings follow. [255]	useful map The big-ticket items are also the hard ones.
Mechanical parts	One listed maker has gas distribution plates and special coatings in volume production after customer qualification. Heaters and valves are due in 2026. [255]	progress Company-reported.
Electrostatic chucks	The same maker has set a three-to-five-year plan. [255]	a long way off The part that holds the wafer in every etch chamber.
Electrical parts	“The foundation is especially weak”, with a clear gap to the international level. [255]	the weakest class Power supplies and flow controllers decide process control.
Raw materials	Materials for high-end metal parts are “basically monopolised by American and Japanese firms”. [255]	dependence one level down
Price war	Competition among parts makers was fierce in 2025, and customers pressed prices down. Segments are small and fragmented. [255]	a familiar pattern Many entrants, thin margins.
Stock exchange questions	For nearly every tool maker seeking to list, the exchange asks the share of core parts bought abroad, the risk of cut-off, progress on substitutes and backup plans. [256]	the regulator agrees Treated as a standing risk to disclose.

Why two unsellable machines matter

A part cannot be proven on a bench. It has to run in a real process, wafer after wafer. Until now a Chinese parts maker had to persuade a tool maker to put an unproven component into a machine bound for a customer’s fab, where a failure costs both of them. A test machine and an in-house process line break that circle: a part is pre-qualified at the tool maker and then goes to the fab for final qualification. The commentary says other leading tool makers are doing the same, and that the first company’s non-standard parts are now all domestic, with progress on standard items such as pumps, heaters and filters. [255]

The second layer of the controls

American rules since 2022 have covered components and subassemblies for chip tools as well as the tools themselves. The commentary names this as the push behind the effort: with limits tightening and tariffs raising costs, localisation “has become a survival strategy”. [255] It also explains a number that appears elsewhere in this tab. A rising domestic share of equipment purchases tells you who assembled the tool. It does not tell you where the pump, the power supply or the valve inside it came from, and by this account most still come from abroad.

This site’s reading

The commentary ends with a forecast that Chinese parts will move from “replacing imports” to “exporting in return”, citing Korean fab expansion and Chinese firms already supplying silicon parts and quartz to foreign tool makers. [255] That is plausible for consumable parts, where China is competitive. It should not be read across to the parts that control a process. The honest summary in the piece is its own last section: low shares, qualification of a year or more, imported raw materials, weak surface treatment and special welding. On this evidence China’s equipment independence is real at the level of the finished machine and still shallow one layer down.

The commentary’s closing line is measured: the two test machines show that localisation has moved from scattered breakthroughs to systematic qualification, “but the start of momentum is only a beginning”. [255]

Limits. The main source is an unsigned commentary on a news site’s contributor platform, which the site says does not represent its views. Its shares for individual parts carry no source, and the 30% equipment figure is attributed to an industry alliance without a document. Company progress is as the companies report it. The second source is a column on listings. The statement about American rules on components is from this site’s other sections and was not re-checked here.

China · A Chinese financial daily on photoresist, September 2026

When Japan’s three photoresist makers raised prices, Chinese reporters called the fabs and the domestic makers. The fabs shrugged, and the domestic share of the advanced grade is still about 5%

About 5%Domestic share of the advanced (argon fluoride) grade, by industry estimate

About 10%Domestic share of the krypton fluoride grade

15% to 22%Price rise announced by the three Japanese makers from October 2026

6 to 12 monthsBasic qualification time now, down from one to two years, by one domestic maker

About 38Chinese firms making chip photoresist or its raw materials, by the reporter’s count

6.6bn yuanChina’s market for chip photoresist in 2025, by an industry association body

In September 2026 the three Japanese firms that dominate photoresist, the light-sensitive chemical used to print circuit patterns, announced a new price list from 1 October: 15% on all new orders and 16% to 22% on long-term contracts for the advanced grade used with argon fluoride light. A Chinese financial daily’s reporter then interviewed four Chinese chipmakers and five domestic photoresist firms. [254]

The chipmakers said the rise hardly matters. One put photoresist at about 1% of its costs. Another said a 10% rise on a purchase bill of 100 million yuan is 10 million, against revenue in the tens of billions. A 300-millimetre wafer uses only a few grams to a dozen or so grams of the advanced grade. What a fab cares about, the report says, is that every batch behaves identically, far more than the price. [254]

The domestic makers gave the figure that matters for self-reliance. The industry’s common estimate is that Chinese products supply about 10% of the krypton fluoride grade and about 5% of the argon fluoride grade, and the second accounts for nearly half the value of the whole Chinese photoresist market. [254]

Where China’s photoresist makers stand, as they told a Chinese financial daily in September 2026, with this site’s reading.

Firm or source	What it reported	This site’s reading
Largest domestic maker	Several advanced-grade products fully qualified and in stable batch supply. Orders at the scale of tonnes. Chip-related revenue of about 200 million yuan in the first half of 2026. [254]	the leader is small Roughly a twentieth of the chip photoresist market for half a year.
A maker focused on advanced grades	A 300-tonne line started in March 2026. Over 40 products. Long-term orders in the tens of millions of yuan covering eight products, with more than ten in qualification. [254]	early Says prices will not be raised until volume is reached.
A second advanced-grade maker	Design capacity of 50 tonnes a year, still ramping. Six products sold. Revenue from them of about 20 million yuan in 2025. [254]	shows the scale A national champion with sales the size of a small shop’s.
Other makers	Mostly older grades for mature processes. Advanced grades in small batches only. [254]	as expected
An industry insider	Foreign makers have not cut supply. Fabs’ main orders still go to Japanese products. Domestic products are at an early stage of entering supply chains. [254]	the key fact There has been no embargo to force the switch.
A fab’s securities office	It does not sort suppliers by nationality. A domestic product that meets every specification faces no barrier. [254]	the real test Performance, not policy, decides.

Why substitution is slow here

The people interviewed placed the obstacle at every stage. Qualification at a fab follows fixed procedures. Even a qualified product will not replace a core material while the Japanese supply is stable. And whether a domestic product is fully equivalent and can be made consistently for years is something that has to be shown over time. The deciding variable, the report concludes, is “the fab’s trust in long-term process stability”. [254] This is the opposite of the situation in equipment, where American controls removed the foreign option and forced Chinese fabs to qualify domestic tools. Japan has not embargoed photoresist, so the fabs have had no reason to take the risk.

What changed in 2026

Two things, by the makers’ account. Fabs are offering far more test opportunities, and basic qualification has fallen from one or two years to six to twelve months. And demand is rising with the expansion of logic and memory plants for SI. [254] The price rise adds a third: it gives buyers a commercial reason to qualify a second source. The reporter’s judgement is that the rise matters less as a cost than as “a window for accelerated local substitution”.

This site’s reading

Photoresist is the clearest case in this tab of a dependence that export controls have not touched and that China has not closed. Japan restricted exports of related materials to South Korea in 2019 and has added chip items to its control lists since, so Chinese planners treat it as a risk. Yet after years of national programmes the domestic share of the grade that matters is one part in twenty, and the leading firms’ sales are measured in tens of millions of yuan. The lesson is uncomfortable for both sides of the control debate. Where no embargo forces the issue, Chinese substitution moves slowly, because the customer has no incentive. Where an embargo is imposed, it creates that incentive.

The fabs’ own position is plain. One said it does not distinguish suppliers by country, and another that its will to buy locally is strong “but the only standard is the product’s real strength”. [254]

Limits. This is one newspaper report based on interviews with company securities offices and unnamed insiders, who have an interest in presenting progress. The 5% and 10% shares are described as common industry estimates with no named source. The leading foundry did not reply to the reporter. The comparison with equipment and the reference to Japan’s 2019 measures are this site’s. Whether the announced price rise took effect as stated was not checked.

China · Chinese trade press on optical interconnect, 2026

China’s optical module makers are earning record profits from SI data centres on lasers, signal processors and wafers they buy abroad. A Chinese trade paper lists the missing parts

13.65bn yuanFirst-half 2026 net profit of China’s largest optical module maker, up 241.7%

1Chinese firm in volume production of the 200-gigabit modulated laser, by the paper’s account

2Firms worldwide that can reliably supply 200-gigabit photodetectors

90%+Share of high-quality indium phosphide wafers supplied by foreign makers, by industry estimate

70%+Shortfall of indium phosphide wafer supply against demand in 2026, as cited

7 nmProcess needed for the signal processor in a high-end module

The modules that turn electrical signals into light inside SI data centres are a field China leads. In the first half of 2026 the largest Chinese maker earned 13.65 billion yuan, up 241.7%, and the second 7.53 billion, up 91%. In September a Chinese telecom trade paper set out what lies behind those figures. [262]

“Behind this prosperity,” it wrote, “it must be soberly recognised that current growth depends heavily on core upstream links supplied from abroad.” From high-end optical chips and high-speed electrical chips to the indium phosphide wafers they are made on, “key technology is still monopolised by a few overseas makers”. [262]

It names three optical chips as the tightest chokepoints: the modulated laser used in the fastest modules, the high-power continuous laser needed for silicon photonics, and the 200-gigabit photodetector, which only two firms in the world supply reliably, both American. [262]

What China’s optical interconnect industry still imports, from a Chinese telecom trade paper, with this site’s reading.

Part	Who supplies it	Where Chinese firms stand	This site’s reading
Modulated laser	A few American and Japanese makers hold volume production of the high-end type. [262]	Several make the 100-gigabit version. One makes the 200-gigabit version in volume. The foreign leader did so in 2023 to 2024.	two to three years behind
High-power continuous laser	“Almost monopolised” by two American firms. [262]	A Chinese firm is the world’s second supplier at lower power. The 150-milliwatt class is not in volume.	close at the low end
200-gigabit photodetector	Two American firms. [262]	Three Chinese firms have sent samples. None has passed large-scale reliability tests.	a true chokepoint
Signal processor	American firms lead. It needs 7-nanometre or better. [262]	The leading Chinese telecom equipment maker has its own for internal use. Commercially “almost blank”.	the controls bite here An advanced-process chip China cannot easily make.
Driver and amplifier chips	American firms. [262]	Lower speeds substituted. No public case of volume production at the 200-gigabit level.	behind
Indium phosphide wafers	Japanese and American makers. [262]	One Chinese maker had capacity of about 100,000 wafers in 2025 and is adding 300,000.	improving World supply is short, which opens a door.

A position built on assembly

The pattern is the one seen in other Chinese electronics. Chinese firms lead the world in designing and assembling the module and buy its most valuable parts abroad. A Chinese analysis published in October 2026 puts the optical chips at over 30% of a module’s cost now and perhaps 60% at the next speeds, with gross margins of 50% to 90% at the high end. [263] So the profits reported by the module makers, large as they are, come from the lower-margin part of the product. The trade paper’s list is, in effect, a list of where the rest of the money goes.

A different kind of American limit

The October analysis describes a risk that is not an export control. It says restrictions from the American communications regulator hang over the optical supply chain, and may be applied in stages starting with the fastest modules, with an exemption for products whose parts are mostly American-made. Its reading is that this would squeeze Chinese-made chips out of modules sold in North America and that the purpose is to buy time for American makers to expand. It concludes that the window for Chinese substitution is being compressed to 2026 to 2028, after which low-end lasers may be in surplus. [263] This is an import-side limit: it does not stop China buying parts, it stops China selling products that contain its own.

This site’s reading

Optical interconnect shows the two-way dependence more exactly than any slogan about irreplaceability. American data centres rely on Chinese modules. Chinese modules rely on American and Japanese lasers, detectors and processors, and one of those processors needs a manufacturing process China lacks. Neither side can cut the other off without stopping its own build-out, which is presumably why this trade has continued through every round of controls. The Chinese trade press does not treat that as security. It treats it as a list of things to replace before the other side replaces China’s part first.

The trade paper ends on the wafers. The head of the leading American laser maker said in July 2026 that indium phosphide was in shorter supply than memory, with orders booked into 2028. Whether Chinese wafer makers can raise yields and volume in that window, the paper says, “will decide whether substitution succeeds”. [262]

Limits. The main source is a trade paper’s survey, which draws on company statements and industry estimates without naming documents. The second is a contributor’s analysis on a business site, of which this site read the published summary and opening and not the full argument, and its account of the American regulator’s measures was not checked against American sources. Profit figures are the companies’ half-year results as the trade paper quotes them. The statement that one Chinese firm alone makes the 200-gigabit laser in volume is the paper’s, and other firms announced plans during 2026.

China · the cities

Shanghai and Shenzhen pay a third of the bill: 30% of a chip design firm’s advanced tape-out, of new equipment plants and of tool research

30%Share of an advanced tape-out, of a new equipment or materials project, or of tool research that Shanghai or Shenzhen will pay

¥100 millionShanghai’s normal ceiling for support to one project

50%Share of the purchase price of home-made chip design software that Shanghai refunds

¥5 billionSize of Shenzhen’s semiconductor fund, registered in May 2025, for equipment, parts, design and advanced packaging

¥142.4 billionOutput of Shenzhen’s chip industry in the first half of 2025, up 16.9%, as reported by the city

over 40Firms and institutions supported under Shenzhen’s measures by October 2025

National policy sets the tax rate. The cash comes from cities. Shanghai’s policy for the chip and software industries, in seven chapters and 27 articles, has applied since 1 January 2022. [386] For equipment and materials projects it pays 30% of new investment, normally up to ¥100 million. [386] For a design firm taping out a chip at 28 nanometres or below, it pays 30% of the tape-out cost, up to ¥100 million. [386] A firm that buys qualifying home-made design software gets half the purchase price back. [386]

Shenzhen followed with its own ten measures, which its development and reform commission put into effect in July 2025. [387] They cover high-end chips, tape-outs, design software, core equipment and parts, manufacturing and packaging materials, advanced packaging and compound semiconductors. [387] A city chip fund of ¥5 billion had been registered in May 2025. [387] By October 2025 the measures were paying 30% of tape-out costs up to ¥3 million and 30% of research spending on core equipment, parts and advanced packaging up to ¥10 million a project, and more than forty firms and institutions had received support. [388]

What two Chinese cities offer chip firms, from Shanghai’s 2022 policy and reports of Shenzhen’s 2025 measures.

What is supported	Shanghai	Shenzhen	Reading
Tape-out of a new chip	30% of the cost for design firms at 28 nanometres and below, up to ¥100 million. [386]	30% of the cost, up to ¥3 million. [388]	lowers the cost of a first chip Shanghai’s ceiling suits large designs. Shenzhen’s suits start-ups.
Equipment and materials makers	30% of new investment in a project, normally up to ¥100 million. [386]	30% of research spending on core equipment and parts, up to ¥10 million for one tool or project. [388]	aimed at the controlled items
Trying home-made tools in a fab	Up to ¥1 million for verifying one machine and ¥500,000 for a batch of material. Supported projects must spend at least 30% of the support on home-made equipment and materials. [386]	Not given in the reports read.	creates the first customer A new tool is worthless until a fab has qualified it.
Chip design software	50% of the purchase price of qualifying home-made tools. Software projects with new investment of ¥50 million or more get 30%, up to ¥100 million. [386]	Promotion of design tools is one of the ten measures. [387]	answers the 2025 American software cut-off
People	Awards to the core team of a firm that first passes a revenue threshold, up to ¥500,000 a person. [386]	Not given in the reports read.	keeps engineers in the city
Finance	A larger city chip fund, subsidised long-term loans, and 75% of the guarantee fee paid for guarantors charging 2% or less. [386]	A ¥5 billion fund for early and growth-stage firms. [387, 388]	state money beside private

Where the money is pointed

Both cities spend most on the links the export controls target. Shanghai’s largest grants go to equipment and materials plants, design software and advanced tape-outs. [386] Shenzhen’s go to core equipment, parts and advanced packaging. [388] Its measures speak of using the new whole-nation system in key core fields while leaving the market to allocate resources elsewhere. [387] City budgets are being used to fill the gaps the controls opened.

A quota for home-made tools

One clause in Shanghai’s policy matters more than its size suggests. A project that takes city money must spend at least 30% of that support on home-made equipment and materials, and the share can be raised. [386] Together with payments for verifying a machine on a production line, this gives Chinese toolmakers what they lack most: a fab willing to try an unproven machine. It is a buying rule written into a subsidy.

Shenzhen’s different position

Shenzhen is Huawei’s home, and the state-owned investor behind SiCarrier and several new fabs is the city’s. Its published measures are modest beside that: ceilings of ¥3 million and ¥10 million, and a ¥5 billion fund. [387, 388] The larger sums move through city-owned companies and do not appear in a public policy. The published measures are for the small firms around the main effort.

City policies explain a feature of China’s chip industry that national figures hide. A design start-up in Shanghai can have 30% of its first advanced chip paid for, half its design software refunded and its senior engineers rewarded. [386] The result is a great many firms, which is exactly what the industry’s own association complains about. Its head said in November 2025 that small, scattered and weak firms remained the industry’s basic condition. [367]

The same policies show where the effort is serious. Rules that force subsidised fabs to buy home-made tools, and payments to qualify them, attack the hardest problem directly. Whether the tools are good enough is not something a policy can settle, but a toolmaker with guaranteed trials improves faster than one without. The cities are buying learning time.

Limits. Shanghai’s policy was read in full as reproduced by a Chinese investment news site in January 2022; the document number and the date of issue were not shown there, and whether the policy has since been revised or renewed was not checked. Shenzhen’s ten measures themselves were not read: they are described from a provincial newspaper’s report carried by a financial news service and from a business newspaper’s later feature, which give some figures and not the full text, so the Shenzhen column is incomplete. A draft of 2022 with higher figures, and percentages for design software quoted in a search summary, are not used. The remarks on Huawei, on SiCarrier’s owner and on money moving through city-owned companies draw on the House committee report cited in the evidence part and on general knowledge. Beijing, Wuxi, Hefei and Wuhan have comparable policies that were not read.

China · Shanghai’s industrial plans for 2026 to 2030

Shanghai’s plans to 2030 name chips first of three lead industries, target a trillion-yuan cluster, and tell the city’s chip firms to merge

1stPlace of integrated circuits among Shanghai’s three lead industries in both plans

1 trillion yuanScale set for each of three new industry clusters: chips, biomedicine and SI

10%+Target yearly growth of manufacturing in the three lead industries to 2030

2.1tn yuanTarget value added of the city’s strategic emerging industries in 2030

2.5tn yuanTarget scale of the three lead industries in the Zhangjiang zone by 2030

3Districts named as the core of the chip cluster: Zhangjiang, Lingang and Jiading

The national plan sets the direction and the cities carry it out. Shanghai is the largest centre of China’s chip industry, home to its leading foundries and toolmakers. In 2026 the city government issued two plans for the next five years: one on new industrialisation, as Document No. 8 of 2026, and one on strategic emerging industries, as General Office Document No. 19, dated 27 July. [323, 324]

Both name integrated circuits first among the “three lead industries”, ahead of biomedicine and SI. The industrial plan’s formula is “break through along the whole chain, advance as a cluster”, and it repeats the national plan’s phrase on whole-chain work on key core technologies. [323] It sets out to make integrated circuits one of three new trillion-yuan industry clusters, and it instructs the city to “speed up mergers and integration” in the industry. [323]

The technical targets are stated as product classes. Computing chips, general-purpose processors, memory, interconnect chips and smart sensors are all to reach “the international advanced level”. [323]

What Shanghai’s two plans for 2026 to 2030 say on integrated circuits, from the city government’s published texts.

Subject	What the plan says	Document	Reading
Design	“High-end” design to lead. Design software and licensed design blocks to move up-market. Chip design models and agents to reshape the design flow and speed simulation. [323, 324]	Both	the software gap The area where American control is strongest.
Products	Computing chips, general processors, memory, interconnect chips and smart sensors to the international advanced level. [323]	Industrial plan	interconnect named A product class that did not appear in earlier lists.
Manufacturing	Faster building of major production lines, quicker process iteration, more capacity, stronger specialty processes. [323]	Industrial plan	no node stated No process figure is given.
Packaging	Advanced packaging to be industrialised, with its equipment and materials. [323, 324]	Both	the route around lithography
New devices	Two-dimensional materials and three-dimensionally stacked chips, through design and tape-out. [324]	Emerging industries plan	bets beyond silicon scaling
Tools and materials	Equipment, materials and parts to be raised in level and organised as systems and platforms. [323]	Industrial plan	consolidation Fewer, larger toolmakers.
Structure	Cultivate leading firms. Speed mergers and integration of the supply chain. [323]	Industrial plan	state-led mergers
Geography	Zhangjiang as the body, Lingang and Jiading as wings, of a “world-class” cluster. [323]	Industrial plan	three sites
Trade	Support for whole-process bonded operation of integrated circuits in the free-trade zone. [323]	Industrial plan	customs Chips move between plants without duty.

Mergers as policy

The instruction to speed mergers stands out. China has many small chip designers and toolmakers, built up by a decade of subsidy, and the section on the third national fund shows that fund financing acquisitions that give one toolmaker a full product range. Shanghai’s plan makes consolidation a city objective. [323] The government’s 2026 work report promised a fast track for mergers in core technologies. The national fund, the city plan and the securities rules now point the same way.

Targets without numbers

As with the national plan, the city sets no process node and no self-sufficiency share. It commits to a scale, a trillion-yuan cluster, and a growth rate of 10% a year for the lead industries’ manufacturing. [323, 324] “International advanced level” is a phrase with a settled meaning in Chinese planning, a step below “international leading”. The city claims parity as its aim in five product classes and leadership in none. The Zhangjiang zone’s own plan sets 2.5 trillion yuan for the three lead industries together by 2030. [325]

Design by machine

The emerging industries plan puts “SI-enabled design” in its first line for chips: models and agents built for chip design, to remake the design flow and accelerate simulation. [324] The American controls of 2025 briefly cut China off from the leading design software. One response is to build domestic equivalents. This plan adds another, to let models do part of what the software does. It is an aim stated in a plan, and whether it works is not yet known.

The city plans show how the national sentence on chips becomes administration. “Extraordinary measures” along the whole chain turns into named districts, named product classes, a scale target and an instruction to consolidate. [323, 324, 398] The method is consistent from Beijing down: name the fields, organise the firms, measure by scale and growth, and publish no technical target that could later be held up as missed.

Shanghai matters more than most because the firms that the American controls name, the leading foundry and the lithography toolmaker among them, are there. Its plan gives the control debate a date to test against: 2030, five product classes at the international advanced level.

Limits. Both plans were read from the city government’s published files, searched for every passage on integrated circuits and chips; the rest of each document was not read closely. The Zhangjiang figure is from a Chinese financial news report of that zone’s plan, which was not read. The plans state aims and contain no account of results or funding. The description of Shanghai as the largest centre of the industry and as home to the firms named in American controls, the gloss on “international advanced level”, and the statement about design software in 2025 are from general knowledge and the other sections of this site.

China · Beijing’s plan for advanced industries, 2026 to 2030

Beijing’s plan to 2030 treats chips as the “technology base” for self-reliance and bets on open architectures: RISC-V, chiplets and the fusion of photonics with electronics

40%Target share of advanced industries in Beijing’s economy in 2030, from 34.6% in 2025

3 to 5Trillion-yuan industry clusters, 2025 and the 2030 target

37.2%Target share of high-technology manufacturing in larger firms’ industrial output, from 32.1%

3Architectural platforms named for chips: RISC-V, chiplets, and photonic and electronic fusion

Beijing is China’s second chip centre: the country’s leading universities and institutes in the field, the largest toolmaker, and several large wafer plants. In September 2026 the city government published its plan for “high-end, precise and advanced” industries to 2030. [342]

The passage on integrated circuits opens with a purpose the other city plans do not state. The industry is to be the “technology base” for high-level self-reliance in science and technology, built by “linking the whole chain and upgrading the whole stack”. [342] The city’s chosen routes are architectural: platforms for RISC-V, for chiplets, and for “the fusion of photonics and electronics”, with new designs such as computing inside memory, in order to “foster an independent computing ecosystem”. [342]

On manufacturing the plan asks for “a nationally leading, comprehensive manufacturing base” and, unusually, names the yield of production lines as something to raise. [342]

What Beijing’s plan for 2026 to 2030 says on integrated circuits, from the city government’s published text.

Subject	What the plan says	Compared with Shanghai’s plan	Reading
Purpose	A “technology base” for self-reliance. Whole chain linked, whole stack upgraded. [342]	Shanghai speaks of a world-class cluster.	strategic, not commercial The capital frames chips as a national capability.
Design	Design capability to reach “the front of the industry”. [342]	Shanghai lists product classes to reach the international advanced level.	similar aim
Architecture	Platforms for RISC-V, chiplets and photonic and electronic fusion. Computing-in-memory products. [342]	Shanghai names stacked chips and new materials.	open standards Routes that do not need a licensed foreign design or the newest lithography.
Ecosystem	An “independent computing ecosystem”, and open test grounds for RISC-V. [342]	Shanghai stresses mergers.	software and standards
Manufacturing	A leading comprehensive base. Higher process yield and better service on volume lines. [342]	Shanghai stresses new lines and capacity.	yield named An admission that yield is the constraint.
Packaging	Advanced packaging, with design and manufacturing linked to deliver a “full stack”. [342]	Both name it.	shared priority
Design tools	Leading domestic capability in design software and process design kits. [342]	Shanghai names design software and design blocks.	shared priority Process design kits are what tie a design to a particular plant.
Equipment	Specialty processes and metrology equipment to be developed and industrialised. [342]	Shanghai speaks of equipment, materials and parts generally.	measurement tools A segment where domestic share is low.
Districts	Haidian for chip design, with an “IC Bay”. The economic and technological development area for manufacturing. [342]	Shanghai names three districts.	design north-west, plants south-east

Why open architectures

RISC-V is a processor design that anyone may use without a licence. Chiplets are small chips joined in one package, so that a large processor can be assembled from parts made on older processes. Joining photonics to electronics moves data by light between them. Each is a way to build capable systems without the two things China is denied: licences for the leading processor designs under American control, and the newest lithography. Those explanations are from general knowledge. The plan’s phrase for the result is an “independent computing ecosystem”. [342]

Yield in a planning document

Government plans usually speak of capacity and scale. This one asks for higher “process yield” on production lines. [342] Yield, the share of chips on a wafer that work, is where the lack of the best tools shows: a process forced onto older machines can be made to run, but at a lower yield and higher cost. For a city government to write it into a five-year plan suggests that the plants it hosts have capacity and need to make it pay.

A division of labour

Read with Shanghai’s and Guangdong’s plans, a pattern appears. Shanghai is told to scale up and consolidate. Guangdong fills its gap in plants for its own electronics makers. Beijing, where the research institutes are, takes architecture, design tools and measurement. [342, 323] Nothing in the texts says the three were coordinated. Each follows from what the city already has, and together they cover design, manufacture and the tools between.

The Beijing plan is the clearest statement of the technical strategy behind China’s response to the controls. It does not promise to match the leading edge by the same road. It proposes to change the road: open instruction sets in place of licensed ones, many small chips in place of one large one, light in place of copper between them. [342] Huawei’s roadmap, described earlier, is the commercial form of the same idea.

Whether these routes lead to parity is an engineering question that plans cannot answer. What the plan shows is that the capital’s government has committed its chip policy to them through 2030, and that it names yield, design software and measurement tools as the places where the present system falls short.

Limits. The plan was read from the city government’s published file, searched for every passage on integrated circuits and chips; its date of issue is taken from press reports as 9 September 2026. The comparison column relies on the passages of Shanghai’s plans described in that section. The descriptions of Beijing’s chip industry, of RISC-V, chiplets and photonics, and of what yield indicates, are from general knowledge. The reading that the three cities’ plans divide the work is this site’s, and the plan itself makes no such statement.

China · Guangdong’s drive to become the “third pole” of the chip industry

Guangdong buys more chips than any other Chinese province and made few of them; since 2020 it has raised output two and a half times, and its first home-grown wafer plant was cleared to list in 2026 while still losing money

94.2bnChips made in Guangdong in 2025, about 20% of China’s output

+152%Rise in Guangdong’s chip output from 2020 to 2025

about 40%Share of China’s chip imports that once went to Guangdong

25.2bn yuanInvestment in CanSemi’s fourth phase, begun in January 2026

6.7bn yuanCanSemi’s combined losses in 2023 to 2025

2029Earliest year the company expects to make a profit

Guangdong is China’s largest electronics-making province. It once accounted for about 40% of the country’s chip imports by value, and it designs chips, through Huawei’s chip arm and others in Shenzhen, but for years it had almost no plants to make them. [335] In 2020 it produced 37.3 billion chips, under 15% of the national total and less than half of Jiangsu’s output. [335]

The province set out in the last five-year plan to become “the third pole” of China’s chip industry, after the Shanghai region and Beijing, with a programme called “Strong Chip”. By 2025 output was 94.2 billion chips, up 152% on 2020 and about a fifth of the national total. [335] The programme continues in the plan for 2026 to 2030, where it is placed first among the province’s work on key links of the supply chain. [335]

The flagship is CanSemi, in Guangzhou, the first twelve-inch wafer plant the province built itself. On 15 June 2026 its application to list on Shenzhen’s ChiNext board was approved, and on 28 August the securities regulator registered it. [335, 336]

Guangdong’s chip programme and its flagship plant, from Chinese newspaper reports citing the province’s plan, national statistics and the company’s prospectus.

Item	Detail	Source	Reading
Output	37.3 billion chips in 2020, 94.2 billion in 2025. [335]	National statistics, as reported	fast From under 15% of the national total to about 20%.
Programme	“Strong Chip”, placed first among supply-chain priorities in the provincial plan for 2026 to 2030. [335]	Provincial plan, as reported	continuing
Layout	Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Zhuhai as the core, with Zhongshan, Dongguan and Foshan. [335]	Press report	design in Shenzhen, plants in Guangzhou
CanSemi	Founded in 2017. Analog and mixed-signal chips on twelve-inch wafers. More than 1.8 million wafers shipped in total. [335, 336]	Prospectus and press	mature processes Outside the reach of the controls.
Fourth phase	25.2 billion yuan, 40,000 wafers a month at 65 to 22 nanometres, bringing total capacity to 120,000 a month. [335, 336]	Press reports	doubling Aimed at industrial, automotive and on-device SI chips.
State support	Land reserved for five phases, a 7.5 billion yuan policy financing facility from the state development bank, four rounds of investment by the city’s industrial investment group. [335]	Press report	city as backer
Finances	Net losses of 1.92, 2.33 and 2.49 billion yuan in 2023 to 2025. [335]	Prospectus, as reported	loss-making Depreciation of new plants.
Listing	Passed the listing committee on 15 June 2026, registered on 28 August. The first loss-making firm approved after the board’s April 2026 reform, and its first wafer maker. [335, 336]	Press reports	market opened Loss-making chip plants may now list.

A province substituting for its own imports

Guangdong’s case is import substitution at provincial scale. Its phone, appliance and car makers buy chips in vast numbers, and the province’s aim is to make more of them nearby. An industry association official quoted in the report says the Guangzhou plant lets the province’s many design houses tape out close to home, and calls Guangzhou the pivot for moving Guangdong “from a great consumer of chips to a strong maker”. [335] He adds that the plant remains far behind the leading foundries in scale and technology.

Listing rules changed to fit

Until 2026 a firm that had never made a profit could not list on ChiNext. The board’s reform in April 2026 changed that, and CanSemi was the first to pass. [335] In the same months the memory makers of Hefei and Wuhan went to market. [335] The government’s 2026 work report promised listing routes for firms in core technologies. The sequence shows the method: a city carries a plant through its loss-making years, then the stock market rules are adjusted so that public investors can take over the funding.

Many poles

The official quoted describes the national picture as moving from “one dominant region and several strong ones” to “many poles, competing and cooperating, each with its own speciality”: memory in Hefei and Wuhan, specialty processes in Guangzhou, the leading foundries in Shanghai. [335] That is a description of duplication as well as strength. Each province finances its own plants for its own industries, which is why China’s mature-process capacity has grown faster than any single plan would have chosen.

Guangdong shows the mechanism behind the capacity that worries foreign makers of older chips. No central order created it. A province with a large market and a gap in its supply chain set a target, a city provided land, bank credit and equity for a decade, and the plant now makes chips for the province’s own cars and appliances. [335] Multiply that by a dozen provinces and the result is the expansion described in the section on older chips.

It also shows the limit. The plant works at 65 to 22 nanometres, loses about 2.5 billion yuan a year and expects no profit before 2029. [335, 336] Its survival depends on continued public backing and on customers at home preferring a local source. In 2026 both conditions hold.

Limits. The provincial plan and the company’s prospectus were not read; this section rests on a Chinese business newspaper’s report and a provincial party newspaper’s report carried by a national news agency. Output figures are attributed by the report to the national statistics bureau. The description of Shanghai and Beijing as the first two poles, and of Huawei’s chip arm as based in Shenzhen, is from general knowledge. Whether the company has completed its listing since registration in August 2026 was not checked. The claim that China’s mature capacity has grown faster than a single plan would choose is this site’s inference.

Part 4

Enforcement and results

A rule on paper against the trade in practice: goods, cloud access, people and penalties, the tools for a crisis, then the argument over whether it worked.

Enforcement

A rule is as strong as the weakest port it passes through

A control is written in Washington, The Hague or Beijing and enforced somewhere else. The cases of the last two years show four ways through, and each needs a different kind of policing.

How controlled goods get through, and what has been tried. The last column is this site’s reading.

Route	What happened	What was tried	Reading
Billed in one place, shipped to another	Singapore accounted for 18% of Nvidia’s 2024 revenue by billing address. Its government said 1% of the chips arrived there. [227]	An advisory and a new declaration requirement for exporters in 2025, and raids. [226]	Visible, not closed
Servers sold on under a false description	Three men were charged in Singapore in February 2025 and a fourth person in April 2026 over servers with restricted chips that went on to Malaysia. [225, 227]	Fraud charges. The law reaches the lie told to the supplier, not the export. [225]	Punished after the fact
Mislabelled freight	On 5 June 2026 Malaysian customs seized 72 servers worth nearly $13 million in the free trade zone at Kuala Lumpur’s main airport. They had been declared as computer components. [211]	A permit for any movement of advanced American SI chips through Malaysia, with 30 days’ notice where misuse is suspected. [210]	Caught at the border
The licensed channel	Chips sold to China under licence carry a volume cap, outside testing and customer checks. [163] Six months in, the official in charge said very few had shipped. [164]	Conditions written into each licence.	Tight, little used
Machines already installed	Chinese buyers took more than $13 billion of older Dutch lithography machines between 2024 and early 2026, and more than 300 are thought to be running. [172]	A proposed American law would end maintenance, software updates and spare parts for them. [172] Korean plants in China already run on licences that allow upkeep only. [86]	The strongest lever left
Knowledge	An engineer in Taiwan’s 2-nanometre trade-secret case was sentenced to ten years in April 2026. [147]	Criminal law, and review of investment abroad. [146]	Deterred, not measured
Ordinary chips through distributors	Ukraine counts 5,816 foreign components in 202 Russian weapon systems. [108] Each was legal to make and usually legal to sell to its first buyer.	Sanctions lists and requests to distributors.	Not enforceable at scale

Follow the goods

Customs can stop a crate. This works when the item is large and declared, and fails when 72 servers can be written down as components. [211] Proposals to make chips report their location are aimed at this gap, and only at the large chips.

Follow the paper

The Singapore figures show the trail is in the invoices: where a chip is billed and where it lands are different facts. [227] A seller that must know its customer’s customer is the cheapest inspector there is, which is why licence conditions now require customer checks. [163]

Follow the service contract

A machine that needs its maker’s engineers and spare parts can be switched off without being seized. That is why servicing, not sales, is the next argument between Washington and The Hague, and why it is the lever Chinese chipmakers fear most. [172]

Enforcement falls on states that gain nothing from it. Singapore and Malaysia earn their living as open hubs. Each seizure proves they are policing the trade and also gives Washington a reason to ration chips to them. They enforce because the alternative is to be treated as part of the leak, not because the rule is theirs. A system that depends on such partners has to give them something for it, and so far the offer has been continued access and tariff exemptions that can be withdrawn. [213, 229]

Where the chips are

Nobody can count the smuggled chips, and no law yet makes a chip prove where it is

140,000CNAS median estimate of SI chips smuggled into China in 2024, within a range of 10,000 to several hundred thousand (June 2025) [556]

660,000Epoch AI median estimate of H100-equivalents smuggled through the end of 2025, range 290,000 to 1.6 million (April 2026) [557]

about 300,000H100-equivalents in publicly alleged cases of diverted or missing chips, as counted by Epoch AI (April 2026) [557]

93 milesFurthest a chip can be from a landmark server if it answers in one millisecond, in a brief by the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, IAPS (May 2025) [558]

under $1 millionIAPS estimate of the cost of the firmware update needed for delay-based checks (May 2025) [558]

31 July 2025Date China’s internet regulator summoned Nvidia over alleged back doors in H20 chips [560]

Export controls stop at the border, and the chips keep moving after it. The best public estimates of smuggling into China are wide ranges, not counts. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington think tank, put the 2024 figure at 10,000 to several hundred thousand chips, with a median of about 140,000. [556] Epoch AI, a research group, estimated in April 2026 that the total through the end of 2025 was 290,000 to 1.6 million H100-equivalents, a unit that converts different chips into the computing power of one Nvidia H100. [557] Its median was 660,000. [557]

The proposed answer is to make the chip itself report. A chip would answer a timed challenge from a trusted server, and the delay would show how far away it can be. [558] The Chip Security Act, introduced in May 2025, would require such security mechanisms on high-end chips. [560] By November 2026 the idea is in a Senate defence bill but not in law. [562] Nvidia has built opt-in software that can estimate location, and it rejects anything that could switch a chip off. [559, 561] China has treated the whole idea as a security threat to its own users. [560]

Ways of knowing where a controlled chip is, and how far each had got by November 2026.

Measure	What it does	Status	Main limit
Estimating from known cases	Models extrapolate from indictments, press reports and reseller counts. [556, 557]	In use, wide ranges CNAS and Epoch AI both publish distributions, not counts. [556, 557]	Epoch AI assumes only about a quarter of smuggling is detected, with a range of 10% to 80%. [557]
Delay-based location verification	A landmark server times a chip’s signed reply and the speed of light sets a maximum distance. [558]	Prototype only A prototype placed a chip within 300 miles of Singapore. [558]	It gives an upper bound on distance, not a position. [558]
Chip Security Act	Would require high-end chips to carry security mechanisms that detect smuggling. [560]	In Senate bill Included in the Senate version of the annual defence bill, with no White House endorsement. [562]	The final defence bill was not settled as of 11 November 2026. [562]
Nvidia fleet software	Sends health telemetry from data-centre chips and can check location with a ping-style test against a lookup table. [561]	Opt-in only Customers must choose to use it, and it had not been officially announced in December 2025. [561]	A smuggler has no reason to opt in. [561]
Remote disable or kill switch	Would let the maker or a government turn off a diverted chip.	Rejected by Nvidia Nvidia says its chips do not and should not have kill switches or back doors. [559]	Nvidia calls a hardwired switch a permanent flaw and a gift to hackers. [559]
Pre-export lab review	A United States laboratory reviews shipments of advanced chips before export, by sampling batches. [564]	In force Required by the licence rule that took effect on 15 January 2026. [564]	It checks the chip before it leaves, not where it goes afterwards. [564]
China’s response	The Cyberspace Administration of China asked Nvidia to explain back-door risks in H20 chips and hand over materials. [560]	Trust exposed Nvidia answered that it has no back doors in its chips. [560]	Any tracking feature built for Washington gives Beijing a reason to refuse the chip. [560]

How the chips get through

CNAS describes two main routes. Shell companies buy small lots from resellers in third countries and re-export them. [556] Larger operators set up real cloud providers as fronts, buy in volume from server builders or chip makers, and send part of the stock onward. [556] Shipments have reportedly been relabelled as tea or toys. [556] The estimates are models built on known cases, so they describe a range of outcomes. [556]

What a timing check can prove

A delay check can show that a chip is not in a place. A landmark in Taiwan could prove a chip is not in mainland China. [558] It cannot give an exact position, and it only works once a chip is installed, not in transit or storage. [558] The Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAPS) estimates the work at about six months, with landmark servers costing $2.5 million to $12.5 million a year. [558]

Why Nvidia draws the line at control

Nvidia separates reading from controlling. Its fleet service is described as read-only telemetry, uses security functions already in chips back to the Hopper generation, and adds no new chip feature. [561] A spokesperson said there is no kill switch. [561] The company’s August 2025 statement cites the 1993 Clipper Chip as proof that built-in government access fails and erodes trust. [559] China’s summons came days earlier. [560]

The gap between the two headline estimates is the main finding. CNAS counted chips in one year and Epoch AI counted computing power over several, so they cannot be added or compared directly. [556, 557] Epoch AI’s median would be roughly a third of China’s total computing stock, and its upper bound would mean most of it was smuggled. [557] A control system that cannot say which of those is true is governing by guesswork.

Location checks would narrow the range, but adoption lags the engineering. The method is cheap by IAPS’s figures and Nvidia has shown a version of it works. [558, 561] What exists in November 2026 is voluntary software, a pre-export lab check, and a bill attached to the Senate defence text. [561, 562, 564] Each chip that reports its location is also a chip Beijing can call compromised, so the measure carries a commercial cost that falls on the seller. [560]

Limits. Epoch AI’s page uses two denominators for its median (about a third of China’s compute and about 3% of the world’s stock) and gives the detection rate as 10% to 80% in the text and 10% to 60% in a footnote. The CNAS and Epoch AI figures are model outputs, not seizures. Seen only in search summaries and not cited: a 90% interval of about 17,500 to 780,000 for the CNAS estimate; a 42 to 0 House Foreign Affairs Committee vote on the Chip Security Act on 26 March 2026 (the committee press release confirms passage on that date but gives no tally); a 180-day compliance deadline in the bill; a median accuracy of about 60 miles for delay checks; and a report that Nvidia told a congressman informally that location checks were feasible. The bill text on congress.gov could not be opened. Whether Nvidia’s fleet software has been released since December 2025 was not established. The row on remote disabling describes the concept from general knowledge; only Nvidia’s position is sourced. The final defence bill may have changed after 11 November 2026.

Access without shipment

Renting a chip abroad is still mostly legal, and the rules to change that are drafted but not finished

36,000Nvidia B200 chips in the Malaysian cluster ByteDance planned to use through Aolani Cloud, as reported in March 2026 [565]

$2.5 billionReported minimum hardware cost of that cluster (March 2026) [565]

35,000 eachBlackwell-equivalent chips approved for G42 in the Emirates and Humain in Saudi Arabia on 19 November 2025 [567]

nearly 5 monthsTime the May 2025 Emirati chip deal had been stalled by early October 2025 [569]

7 countriesNumber that would need licences for Blackwell-class chips under a Commerce rule reported as near final on 11 November 2026 [566]

6 April 2027Date the licence-free status of G42 and Core42 expires unless they become United States companies or reapply [568]

A chip does not have to enter China to work for a Chinese firm. Export rules govern the movement of hardware, and renting computing power over a network moves nothing. In March 2026 the Wall Street Journal reported that ByteDance was working with Aolani Cloud to deploy about 500 Nvidia Blackwell systems in Malaysia, roughly 36,000 B200 chips, at a hardware cost of more than $2.5 billion. [565] Reuters could not verify the report. [565] Blackwell chips cannot be sold to China, yet a House committee chairman said in January 2026 that American chips in data centres outside China were fuelling its SI ambitions. [563]

Washington has answered in two ways. For rivals, it is writing rules that treat remote use like an export. The House passed the Remote Access Security Act on 12 January 2026, and the Commerce Department was reported in November 2026 to be finishing a rule for seven countries. [563, 566] For partners in the Gulf, it has traded chips for conditions. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia won approvals in November 2025 after months of delay, tied to security and reporting duties. [567, 569] The Emirates then received a standing exemption for named firms in July 2026. [568]

The rules and deals that govern access to restricted chips without shipping them to China, as of November 2026.

Route or rule	What it covers	Status	Weak point
Renting in a third country	A local operator owns the servers and a Chinese firm uses them remotely, as in the reported ByteDance and Aolani plan. [565]	Open route The Reuters account records no legal finding against the plan. [565]	Aolani ran about $100 million of hardware before the plan, so the deal would multiply its size. [565]
Remote Access Security Act	Lets export controls apply to remote access and cloud use of controlled items. [563]	House only Passed the House on 12 January 2026. [563]	No Senate vote was found in the sources used here.
January 2026 licence rule	Applicants must certify that no restricted party gets remote access and must describe the buyer’s Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. [564]	In force Effective 15 January 2026. [564]	It sets conditions on licensed exports and does not say that cloud use is itself an export. [564]
Seven-country rule	Licences, notice of recipients and uses, and monitoring for Blackwell-class chips sent to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Norway and South Africa. [566]	Reported, unpublished Said to be possible as early as November 2026. [566]	Data centres run by United States firms would be exempt if they block remote access from arms-embargoed countries. [566]
Emirates, 2025 approvals	Chips in exchange for Emirati investment in the United States, under a deal signed in May 2025. [569]	Approved late G42 was cleared for up to 35,000 Blackwell-equivalent chips with security and reporting duties. [567]	The Commerce Secretary held approvals until investment commitments were finalised. [569]
Emirates, July 2026 rule	Moves the country into the favoured Country Group A:5 and names approved recipients of advanced chips. [568]	In force Effective 10 July 2026 for government agencies, G42, Core42 and eight United States firms. [568]	Everyone else in the Emirates still needs a licence, and the text sets no remote-access or KYC terms. [568]
Saudi Arabia	Humain, backed by the Public Investment Fund, was cleared for up to 35,000 Blackwell-equivalent chips. [567]	Case by case Imports need Commerce approval with remote-access restrictions. [566]	The security and reporting requirements were not published in detail. [567]
KYC on cloud operators	A data centre receiving licensed chips must limit Infrastructure as a Service, meaning rented computing, for its customers. [564]	Licence condition It applies through the January 2026 rule, not as a general duty on all operators. [564]	The operator must not pass trained model weights to undisclosed users, which is hard to check from outside. [564]

The Malaysian model

The reported plan shows how the route works. Aolani Cloud buys servers from Aivres, a firm that assembles them with Nvidia chips, and ByteDance uses the capacity. [565] ByteDance said the computing was for research outside China and for global customers. [565] Nvidia, ByteDance and Aolani did not answer Reuters. [565] Epoch AI’s smuggling estimate leaves this kind of offshore computing out, so it comes on top. [557]

Chips for conditions in the Gulf

The Gulf deals put a price on access. The May 2025 agreement promised the Emirates several hundred thousand Nvidia chips a year in return for investment in the United States. [569] Officials also worried that Emirati ties to China could let the chips help Beijing. [569] The November 2025 approvals carried what Commerce called rigorous security and reporting requirements. [567] The first chips support Stargate UAE, a one-gigawatt cluster. [567]

Who has to know the customer

The duty to check users sits with the exporter and the receiving data centre. Under the January 2026 rule an applicant must list any intended remote users in China or Macau and describe the site’s physical security. [564] The reported seven-country rule would add reporting of local customers and computing scale by exempt United States operators. [566] Both rely on operators to police their own tenants.

Remote access is the part of the system with the least law behind it. The only binding rule in force is a set of licence conditions, and it reaches only chips that needed a licence in the first place. [564] The statute that would settle the question has passed one chamber. [563] The regulation that would cover Southeast Asia was still unpublished on 12 November 2026. [566] Until one of them lands, a Chinese firm can lawfully reach hardware it cannot lawfully buy.

The Gulf shows the alternative model, which is trust by list. The July 2026 rule does not open the Emirates as a country. It names recipients, and it gives the two Emirati SI firms until 6 April 2027 to become United States companies or apply again. [568] That makes ownership, not location, the test of who may hold advanced chips. It also leaves the remote-access question to conditions that the public cannot read. [567, 568]

Limits. The 1:1 investment condition for the Emirates was seen only in search summaries of Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg coverage, attributed to unnamed officials, and is not cited; the opened sources confirm only that approvals were tied to investment commitments. Also seen only in summaries: a limit of up to 500,000 chips a year under the May 2025 deal; first Emirati licences in October 2025 that excluded G42; the 369 to 22 House vote on the Remote Access Security Act and its referral to a Senate committee; Nvidia’s reported view that the ByteDance plan complied with export rules; a Wall Street Journal account of engineers carrying hard drives to Malaysia; and a February 2026 request for an inspector-general review of the Emirati approvals. The seven-country rule rests on a 12 November 2026 SBS article, translated by machine, relaying The Information; other outlets give different country lists and the rule text is unpublished. The 19 November 2025 date for the approvals is inferred from the article’s wording that Commerce announced them on the Wednesday before publication. No source confirmed whether chips have arrived in Saudi Arabia or any 2026 delay there. The statement that Blackwell chips cannot be sold to China is general knowledge, echoed only in a search summary of the Wall Street Journal report. A separate 2024 proposal for identity checks on cloud customers is general knowledge and its status was not verified. The reading that offshore rental is lawful is an inference from the absence of a rule, not a legal finding.

Governing knowledge

The contest has moved from controlling machines to controlling the people who know how to run them

5 to 12 yearsPrison term for helping a foreign power obtain Taiwan’s core technology secrets, under the National Security Act amendments passed in May 2022 [529]

NT$150 millionFine on Tokyo Electron’s Taiwan unit in the 2-nanometre case, ruling of April 2026 [530]

24 cases, 90 defendantsSouth Korean chip technology leak cases over 20 years, counted from court rulings in October 2026; 18 of the 24 were linked to China [532]

2 years 7 monthsAverage prison term for those jailed in South Korea’s chip leak cases, October 2026 count [532]

3 yearsSentence for a former ASML and NXP engineer who passed files to a contact in Russia, Rotterdam court, July 2025 [533]

3 to 5 million yuanTypical signing bonus under China’s Qiming recruitment programme, reported in August 2023 [534]

Chip rules began with machines and chips. They now reach the people who know how to use them. On 7 October 2022 the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) barred US citizens from supporting the development or production of chips at certain Chinese fabs without a licence, effective 12 October. [528] Reports at the time said hundreds of engineers and executives holding US passports had to choose whether to stay, and that American staff of equipment suppliers began leaving Chinese fabs. [528] Every major chip economy has since built its own version of this control.

The tools differ. Taiwan made the theft of core technology a national security crime in 2022, with prison terms of five to 12 years. [529] South Korea prosecutes leaks under three separate laws, yet the average prison term in its chip cases is about two years and seven months. [532] The Netherlands jailed a former ASML engineer under sanctions law. [533] China works in both directions. It pays large bonuses to recruit chip engineers from abroad and, from 15 September 2026, can bar its own experts from leaving. [534, 535]

How six jurisdictions govern chip knowledge and what the public record shows about each rule.

Jurisdiction	Rule on people or know-how	What the record shows	How well it holds
United States	Since 12 October 2022, US citizens need a licence to support chip development or production at certain Chinese fabs. [528]	Reports said hundreds of engineers and executives faced a stay-or-go choice and that supplier engineers began leaving Chinese fabs. [528]	Fast effect, few cases The effect came through resignations. No prosecution of an individual under this rule was found in the sources used here.
Taiwan: secrets	National Security Act amendments of May 2022: five to 12 years in prison and fines of NT$5 million to NT$100 million for helping a foreign power obtain core technology secrets. [529]	In April 2026 a court gave five defendants terms of up to ten years over Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 2-nanometre data. [530]	Tested in court The law has produced long sentences and a corporate fine. The ruling could still be appealed. [530]
Taiwan: travel	People working in core technology businesses need government approval to travel to China, with fines of up to NT$10 million. [529]	No count of fines under this travel rule was found.	Rule clear, use unknown The rule is on the books. Its enforcement record is not public in the sources used.
Taiwan: covert recruiting	Chinese firms may not set up in Taiwan without approval. People who lend their names to them face up to three years in prison. [529]	Investigators searched 64 sites and questioned 114 people over 17 Chinese firms between 13 July and 4 August 2026. A task force has handled more than 100 such cases since the end of 2020. [531]	Many raids, repeat offences More than 100 cases in under six years shows active policing and steady demand. [531]
South Korea	Leaks are tried under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, trade secret law and the Act on Prevention of Divulgence and Protection of Industrial Technology. [532]	44 of 90 defendants went to prison and another 44 received suspended sentences. The longest term was seven years. [532]	Short sentences Only three defendants received more than five years. [532]
Netherlands	No chip-specific secrets law was used. The court applied computer intrusion law and European Union sanctions on technical help to Russia. [533]	A former ASML and NXP engineer got three years on 10 July 2025 for sharing files with a contact in Russia between May 2023 and August 2024. [533]	One conviction The case succeeded because sanctions applied. Prosecutors could not prove he was paid for the files. [533]
Japan	A Japanese supplier was held liable abroad: Taiwan’s court treated Tokyo Electron’s local unit as a defendant under the National Security Act. [530]	The unit was fined NT$150 million, which may be suspended if it pays NT$100 million to TSMC and NT$50 million to the treasury. [530]	Liability via Taiwan The penalty came from a Taiwanese court. Evidence on Japan’s own enforcement is thin in the sources used.
China: recruitment	Qiming, overseen by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, replaced the Thousand Talents Plan, which China stopped promoting in 2018. [534]	Signing bonuses of 3 to 5 million yuan plus housing subsidies. One city scheme aimed for 200 experts in five years and had recruited 48. [534]	Generous, patchy results Reuters could not establish how many experts the programme has recruited. [534]
China: exit controls	A State Council exit-entry regulation of 19 articles, announced on 31 July 2026 and in force from 15 September 2026, lets commerce departments bar people from leaving if they breach export control or technology trade rules or may endanger industrial security. [535]	The clause names no sector. Chinese commentators said it targets batteries, solar panels and rare earths. [535]	State can refuse exit An exit ban needs no trial, which makes it the bluntest tool in this table. [535]

Taiwan’s first corporate case

TSMC reported the leak on 8 July 2025 and prosecutors indicted three people in August. [530] Chen Li-ming, a former TSMC engineer who had joined Tokyo Electron Taiwan, got ten years. Three TSMC employees got two, three and six years. [530] The Taipei Times called it the first National Security Act case against a corporate entity. [530] The motive was commercial: winning more equipment orders from TSMC. [530]

Korea: many cases, short terms

A review of court rulings published on 1 October 2026 found that 82 of 90 defendants in chip leak cases were tied to China. [532] The longest sentence, seven years, went to a former Samsung employee who leaked 18-nanometre memory chip technology to ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). [532] One defendant was acquitted on appeal because the technology had not yet been designated as advanced when it was taken. [532]

China’s two-way gate

China recruits and restricts at once. Reuters reviewed more than 500 government documents from 2019 to 2023 showing recruitment drives aimed at semiconductors and other sensitive fields. [534] A separate State Council rule in force from 1 July 2026 bars moving controlled technology abroad through staff postings or technical guidance. [535] The exit-entry regulation that followed adds the power to stop the person at the border. [535]

The pattern is consistent. Rules on knowledge work fastest when they change what an individual risks, and slowest when they depend on a long trial. The American rule emptied jobs within days because the people affected could not afford to test it. [528] Taiwan’s law now carries terms long enough to be noticed. [529, 530] South Korea shows the weak case: with an average term under three years and half of defendants given suspended sentences, the penalty is small next to what a rival will pay. [532]

Two limits remain. First, most of these cases were found by the victim company, as TSMC’s was, so the count of prosecutions measures detection more than leakage. [530] Second, the same tools are now used by China to keep its own lead in fields such as rare earth separation. [535] Controls on people have become a shared practice, and engineers on both sides face narrower choices about where they can work.

Limits. Seen only in search summaries, not in a page that opened: the Wall Street Journal figure of more than 40 Americans in senior posts at Chinese chip firms in 2022; the July 2026 Supreme Court ruling that made two sentences in the TSMC case final; South Korea’s higher maximum fine of 6.5 billion won for leaking national core technology abroad, in force from July 2025; the retrial of a former Samsung executive in April 2026. Opened but not cited because of the limit on references: Korean police figures for 2025 (179 leak cases, 33 abroad, 18 of those to China, 5 in semiconductors); a Taipei Times report of an earlier sweep in August 2025 covering 16 Chinese firms, 70 sites and 120 people; a June 2025 TrendForce report, citing the Wall Street Journal, that China asked rare earth firms for rosters of technical staff and to collect passports; a September 2026 report of the arrest in Japan of a former Asahi Kasei employee under the Unfair Competition Prevention Act; a 2023 report that ASML disclosed data theft by a former employee in China. Reports differ on Tokyo Electron’s penalty: NT$150 million fine in the Taipei Times, described in one summary as a suspended sentence with NT$100 million in compensation; both describe the same order. The Dutch court documents did not name the ASML defendant. The Asia Times account of China’s exit rule was read through a summary of the article, not the regulation text, and the article does not mention semiconductor engineers. The judgement that an exit ban is the bluntest tool, and the remarks on deterrence, are this site’s reading and not a sourced finding.

What breaking the rules costs

Fines for breaking chip export rules now reach hundreds of millions of dollars, but they arrive years late and are capped by the size of the deal

$300 millionSeagate, April 2023, for about 7.42 million hard drives sold to Huawei; BIS called it its largest standalone administrative penalty [537]

$252.5 millionApplied Materials, February 2026, for 56 reexports of ion implanters to SMIC; the second-largest BIS civil penalty [538]

over $140 millionCadence, July 2025, net criminal and civil penalties for chip design tools sent to a Chinese military university [536]

$2.5 billionValue of servers allegedly routed through a front company, in the indictment unsealed in March 2026 [539]

$1 billion or morePossible fine facing TSMC over a chip found in a Huawei processor, as reported in April 2025; no settlement was found [540]

20 yearsMaximum prison term for conspiracy to violate the Export Control Reform Act, the lead charge in the March 2026 server case [539]

Breaking chip export rules has become expensive, mostly after the fact. The three largest American penalties tied to chips are Seagate’s $300 million in 2023, Applied Materials’ roughly $252.5 million in 2026 and Cadence’s more than $140 million in 2025. [537, 538, 536] All three concerned sales to restricted Chinese customers: Huawei, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) and a military university. [537, 538, 536] In each case the conduct ended years before the penalty was announced. Seagate’s shipments ran from August 2020 to September 2021, Applied’s from November 2020 to July 2022, and Cadence’s from 2015 to 2021. [537, 538, 536]

Enforcement is also turning criminal. Cadence agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy, the first of these cases to end in a corporate guilty plea. [536] In March 2026 US prosecutors charged three men, including a co-founder and board member of an American server maker, with diverting servers built around restricted SI chips to China. [539] The indictment says a front company in Southeast Asia bought about $2.5 billion of servers in 2024 and 2025. [539] The charges are allegations and have not been proven. [539]

The main penalties and prosecutions touching chips, with a rating of how strongly each one is likely to deter.

Company or defendant	Penalty and date	What it was for	Deterrent weight
Seagate	$300 million civil penalty, 19 April 2023, with a multi-year audit and a five-year suspended denial of export rights. [537]	About 7.42 million hard drives worth about $1.1 billion shipped to Huawei on 429 occasions without a licence. [537]	Twice the profit BIS said the penalty was more than twice its estimate of Seagate’s net profit on the sales. [537]
Applied Materials	About $252.5 million civil penalty, announced 11 February 2026, plus two compliance audits and a three-year suspended denial of export rights. [538]	56 reexports or attempted reexports of ion implanters to SMIC, routed through its South Korean unit for assembly and testing. [538]	Legal maximum, no charges The fine was the statutory maximum, twice the roughly $126 million in sales. The Justice Department and the securities regulator closed their inquiries without action. [538]
Cadence Design Systems	More than $140 million net: nearly $118 million in criminal penalties and over $95 million in civil penalties, with credits between agencies, announced 28 July 2025. [536]	At least 59 exports of electronic design automation (EDA) tools, the software used to design chips, to China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) through an alias. [536]	Guilty plea A criminal conviction marks the company. The criminal fine still carried a 20% reduction from the maximum. [536]
TSMC	No penalty found. A fine of $1 billion or more was reported as possible in April 2025. [540]	A TSMC-made chip was found in Huawei’s Ascend 910B processor in October 2024. It resembled one ordered by the Chinese designer Sophgo, which was blacklisted in January 2025. [540]	Unresolved A threatened fine with no outcome sets no price. TSMC says it has not supplied Huawei since September 2020. [540]
Three men linked to a US server maker	Indicted; unsealed 19 March 2026. Up to 20 years on the lead count and five years on each of two others. [539]	Servers allegedly sent to a Southeast Asian front company, repacked in unmarked boxes and shipped to China, with dummy servers staged for audits. [539]	Prison risk for executives Personal liability reaches a board member. One defendant remains a fugitive. [539]
Tokyo Electron Taiwan	NT$150 million fine from Taiwan’s Intellectual Property and Commercial Court, April 2026. Prosecutors had sought NT$120 million. [530]	Failing to stop staff obtaining TSMC’s 2-nanometre secrets. [530]	Small sum, large signal The sum is modest, but the court went beyond what prosecutors asked. [530]
Nvidia in China	No fine yet. Exposure of 1% to 5% of the previous year’s sales in China. [541]	A preliminary finding on 15 September 2025 by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) that Nvidia breached conditions of its 2020 purchase of Mellanox. [541]	Leverage, not verdict Analysts read the move as pressure before trade talks. [541]

Why the routes failed

Each company had a theory of why the rule did not apply. Applied Materials argued that finishing its tools in South Korea changed their origin. BIS rejected that. [538] Cadence staff used the alias Central South CAD Center for a customer blacklisted in February 2015. [536] Seagate kept selling drives made abroad and extended Huawei more than $1 billion in credit lines in 2021. [537]

The turn to criminal cases

The March 2026 indictment describes about $510 million of servers diverted to China between late April and mid-May 2025 alone. [539] Prosecutors allege false documents, encrypted messaging and non-working dummy servers shown to auditors and to a Commerce Department inspection. [539] The Justice Department did not name the manufacturer. [539] Two defendants were arrested and a third, based in Taiwan, was still at large. [539]

China’s penalties on foreign firms

China uses competition law where the United States uses export law. SAMR opened its Nvidia probe in December 2024, days after new US curbs on memory chips and chipmaking tools. [541] Its preliminary finding came just before trade talks in Madrid. [541] The same weekend Beijing opened an anti-dumping inquiry into chips from US firms including Texas Instruments and Analog Devices. [541]

Measured against the deal, the fines are real. Seagate paid about 27 cents for each dollar of sales to Huawei, and Applied Materials paid two dollars for each dollar of sales to SMIC. [537, 538] The weakness is timing and ceiling: the civil penalty tops out at twice the transaction value, and it lands three to ten years after the first shipment. [538, 536] By then the customer has the hard drives, the implanters or the design tools, and the strategic effect cannot be reversed.

Deterrence therefore depends less on the size of the fine than on who pays it. A company can absorb a settlement spread over years. An executive facing up to 20 years in prison cannot. [539] The move from civil settlements to guilty pleas and personal indictments is the most important change in enforcement since 2023. [536, 539] The unresolved TSMC matter is the test of whether the largest firms face the same rules. [540]

Limits. The server maker in the March 2026 indictment is not named by the Justice Department; press reports seen only in search summaries identify it as Super Micro Computer, say the company is not charged and say it placed two of the men on leave. No final outcome was found for the TSMC inquiry or the Nvidia case in China; searches returned nothing after April 2025 and September 2025 respectively, which is not proof that nothing happened. No completed prison sentence for a chip smuggler in the United States in 2025 or 2026 was found. A Register report of 9 December 2025, opened but not cited because of the limit on references, says a Texas man and his company pleaded guilty in a case involving at least $160 million of Nvidia graphics processors; his sentence, due in February 2026, was not found. Other charged cases appeared only in search summaries. Figures conflict on Applied Materials: the law firm summary gives about $126 million in transactions, while a search summary attributes about $118.45 million to BIS. The Cadence release gives no value for the exports, and the plea needed court approval; whether it was approved was not checked. The 27 cents figure is this site’s arithmetic from $300 million and about $1.1 billion. The statement that the penalty lands three to ten years after the first shipment is derived from the dates in the three cases. That Huawei and SMIC are on the US Entity List is general knowledge here, as is the wider claim that export fines are capped at twice the transaction value, which the sources state only for the Applied Materials case. China’s 2023 restriction on Micron products appeared only in a search summary and is left out.

Taiwan · the first major verdict under the core-technology law, April 2026

A Taiwanese court gave a former TSMC engineer ten years in April 2026 for taking 2-nanometre secrets to a Japanese toolmaker, and fined the toolmaker’s Taiwan unit 150 million Taiwan dollars

10 yearsSentence of the former TSMC engineer who moved to the toolmaker

NT$150mFine on the toolmaker’s Taiwan subsidiary, suspended for three years

12 yearsMaximum sentence under the 2022 law for taking core technology for a foreign party

42Technologies on the draft core list of November 2025, up from 32

3TSMC engineers convicted with him, sentenced to six, three and two years

19 May 2026Date the judgment against the company became final

In 2022 Taiwan amended its National Security Act to make the theft of “national core key technologies” a crime carrying up to twelve years in prison when done for a foreign power, mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau or a hostile force. The science council publishes the list of such technologies: 22 items in December 2023, 32 in 2024, and a draft of 42 in November 2025, adding military and space items. [576] Chipmaking at 14 nanometres and below is on it.

The law’s largest test came from an unexpected direction. On 27 April 2026 the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court sentenced a former TSMC engineer to ten years. He had moved to the Taiwan subsidiary of Tokyo Electron, a Japanese maker of chipmaking tools and a TSMC supplier, and from 2023 had worked with three engineers still at TSMC to obtain confidential images of advanced processes, by remote login or borrowed accounts, photographing the screen with a phone. [577]

The secrets concerned the 2-nanometre process and the more advanced one after it. The recipient was a supplier from an allied country, not a Chinese rival. [577, 578] The court fined Tokyo Electron’s Taiwan unit 150 million Taiwan dollars, suspended for three years on condition that it pay TSMC 100 million and the treasury 50 million. [577]

The TSMC 2-nanometre secrets case, from Taiwanese press reports of the court’s judgment and announcements.

Party	Conduct found	Outcome	Reading
Former TSMC engineer, then at the toolmaker	Colluded with TSMC staff from 2023 to obtain process secrets, to improve his performance in the new job. [577]	Ten years, under the National Security Act and the Trade Secrets Act. He confessed and named an accomplice. He has appealed. [577, 578]	heavy Near the maximum despite cooperation.
Three TSMC engineers	Gave access by remote connection or borrowed accounts. [577]	Six, three and two years. Two cooperated and were forgiven by TSMC. [577, 578]	insiders punished
A manager at the toolmaker	Deleted the photographed images. [578]	Convicted. Has appealed. [578]	concealment
The toolmaker’s Taiwan subsidiary	Liable as the employer. [577]	Fine of NT$150 million, suspended three years, on payment of 100 million to TSMC and 50 million to the treasury. Not appealed. Final on 19 May 2026. [577, 578]	corporate liability A foreign supplier convicted under a security law.
The toolmaker’s position	Says the acts were individual, with no organised involvement, and that no secret left the company. [579]	Will strengthen information controls across the group. [579]	contained The court accepted that nothing reached a third party. [577]
Prosecutors	Considered the sentences proportionate. [578]	Did not appeal. [578]	settled

A security law used on a friend

The 2022 amendments were written with China in mind, and the public debate was about Chinese firms recruiting Taiwanese engineers. The first major conviction involved a Japanese company that TSMC depends on for equipment. The court noted, in the engineer’s favour, that the toolmaker is TSMC’s supplier and not its direct competitor, and that the secrets did not flow onward. [577] He still received ten years. The law protects the technology, whoever takes it.

What the law treats as the asset

The core list is how Taiwan defines what must not leave. Its semiconductor entries cover manufacturing at 14 nanometres and below with the key gases, chemicals and equipment, and advanced packaging. The 2025 draft leaves those unchanged and adds defence and space technologies. [576] Combined with the rule, described elsewhere on this page, that TSMC’s overseas plants stay behind its plants at home, the law fixes Taiwan’s position: the newest process is a national asset, kept on the island and guarded by criminal law.

The supplier’s dilemma

A toolmaker must know a customer’s process to build machines for it. That is why its engineers are former customer engineers, and why the line between collaboration and theft is thin. The Japanese press, as relayed in Taiwan, warned that the verdict tests the toolmaker’s cooperation with TSMC. The company answered that it and TSMC had agreed on stronger protection and that its business was unaffected. [579] Every supplier to a leading-edge plant now works under the same exposure.

The case shows that the protection of chip secrets is not only a matter between China and everyone else. Taiwan applied its harshest economic-security law to an engineer and a company from an ally, over the most advanced process in the world. [577, 578] It is the strictest enforcement of its kind recorded on this page.

The appeals of three defendants are before the Supreme Court. [578] The sentence that stands will set the level for the cases that the next section describes, where the recipients are Chinese.

Limits. The judgment was not read; this section rests on Taiwanese press reports of the court’s announcement, of the appeals and of the company’s statement. The six-year sentence of one TSMC engineer and the status of the manager are from a newspaper’s account and a search summary. The history and maximum penalty of the 2022 law, the December 2023 and 2024 list sizes and the semiconductor entries are from a search summary of earlier coverage and general knowledge; the November 2025 draft is from a newspaper report, and whether it has been finally adopted was not established. The description of the case as the first major verdict under the law is this site’s; one Taiwanese outlet calls it the first under the act, which was not confirmed. Names of individuals are omitted.

Taiwan · raids on Chinese firms recruiting engineers, 2026

Taiwanese investigators raided 11 Chinese companies in March 2026 and 17 more in July and August for recruiting chip engineers through hidden offices

11Chinese companies raided in March 2026

17Chinese companies raided in July and August 2026

49 and 64Places searched in the two waves

90 and 114People questioned in the two waves

330+Officers deployed in the second wave, as reported

August 2025Month the inquiry behind the March raids began

Taiwanese law bars mainland Chinese companies from setting up offices or hiring in Taiwan without approval. The Investigation Bureau, under the justice ministry, enforces it in waves. On 30 March 2026 the bureau announced that eleven Chinese companies were suspected of operating illegally in Taiwan to recruit high-technology staff. Between 16 and 26 March it had deployed more than 185 officers, searched 49 places and questioned 90 people, after an inquiry begun in August 2025. [580]

The Hsinchu prosecutors, whose district holds the science park where TSMC is based, reported their part: 17 searches and 24 people questioned between 16 and 25 March. [581] A second, larger wave followed. From 13 July to 4 August 2026, by the bureau’s account as reported, six prosecutors’ offices directed raids on 17 Chinese companies, with 64 searches and 114 people questioned. [582]

The prosecutors describe the method. Chinese firms “hide behind nominee companies, present themselves as overseas-Chinese or foreign investment, or invest through a third place”, set up unregistered offices, and recruit engineers “with the intention of obtaining our core high technology”. [581]

Raids on Chinese companies recruiting in Taiwan in 2026, from Taiwanese press reports of the Investigation Bureau’s and prosecutors’ announcements.

Wave	Scale	Targets as reported	Reading
16 to 26 March 2026	11 companies, 49 searches, 90 questioned, over 185 officers. Five prosecutors’ offices. [580]	A large Chinese electronics contract maker is named in the headline. Others design chips. [580, 581]	coordinated An island-wide operation.
Hsinchu part of that wave	17 searches, 24 questioned, by a prosecutors’ team for trade secrets and national security. [581]	Chinese chip design firms.	the science park Where the engineers are.
13 July to 4 August 2026	17 companies, 64 searches, 114 questioned, over 330 officers, six prosecutors’ offices. [582]	Said to include firms among the world’s top three in their fields and a military technology firm on an American trade blacklist. [582]	larger Nearly double the first wave.
Method found	Nominee companies, foreign or overseas-Chinese investment as cover, third-place vehicles, unregistered offices. [581]	As prosecutors describe it.	concealed ownership The offence is the hidden presence.
Trend	A Taiwanese commentary counts about eight companies per wave in 2023 and 2024, and a clear increase from 2025. [582]	Not an official statistic.	rising

Why recruiting is the offence

Chip knowledge travels in people. The section on China’s secrets cases shows China prosecuting its own engineers for carrying knowledge between firms. Taiwan’s approach is to stop the recruiter. A Chinese firm cannot lawfully open an office to hire Taiwanese engineers, so it does so through a front, and the front is what the bureau raids. The engineers themselves are usually questioned as witnesses. This is from the pattern of the reports and from general knowledge of the law, which the reports do not cite by article.

Who is recruiting

The firms described are not only chipmakers. The March wave’s headline name is one of China’s largest contract makers of phones and servers, and the July wave is said to include a battery maker and a chip designer. [580, 582] They want Taiwanese engineers for chip design, for power and battery electronics and for server hardware, the fields where Taiwan’s workforce is deep. The demand reflects the staff shortage that Chinese sources themselves report, of more than 300,000 in chips alone.

Enforcement that repeats

The same announcement is made every few months, with a larger number each time. That suggests the raids disrupt particular offices without changing the incentive. A Chinese firm that loses a hidden office can open another, and an engineer offered several times a Taiwanese salary can also be hired abroad or work remotely. Taiwan’s other measures, the core-technology law and its limits on travel by certain engineers, address the person. The raids address the premises. Neither changes the pay gap that drives the movement.

These raids are the Taiwanese end of the movement of people that this page follows from several sides. In 2026 the bureau raided 28 Chinese companies in two waves, more than in earlier years by the reports read. [580, 582] The scale is evidence of how hard Chinese firms are trying to hire in Taiwan, as much as of how hard Taiwan is trying to stop them.

What the reports do not give is results: charges brought, convictions, fines. Earlier waves ended mostly in cases against the local representatives. Whether the 2026 operations reach the companies themselves, as the 2-nanometre verdict reached a foreign toolmaker, is the thing to watch.

Limits. The bureau’s and prosecutors’ announcements were not read; this section rests on a Taiwanese public broadcaster’s and a news site’s reports for the March wave, and on a search summary of press coverage for the July and August wave, whose figures and company descriptions could not be opened. The statute involved is not cited in the reports read, and the statement of what Taiwanese law forbids is from general knowledge. Company names are omitted because the cases are under investigation and no outcome was found. The count of 28 companies adds the two announced waves and assumes no overlap. The observations on pay and on the limits of raids are this site’s.

Japan · the security clearance law and export control changes, 2025 and 2026

Japan’s new economic security clearance system cleared 18 people in its first seven months, none of them at a private company, and its export list now covers modules built around programmable chips

16 May 2025Date Japan’s economic security clearance law took effect

20Designations of secret economic security information in 2025, by nine agencies

18Clearance assessments completed in 2025

0Private-sector employees cleared, and companies certified, in 2025

217People for whom agencies requested a background investigation

14 Feb 2026Date the export list additions, including programmable-chip modules, took effect

Until 2025 Japan had no security clearance for economic and technological information, which kept its firms out of classified work with allies. The Act on the Protection and Use of Important Economic Security Information took effect on 16 May 2025. It lets ministries designate information on supply chains and critical infrastructure as secret and vet those who handle it.

The government’s first report to parliament, published in June 2026, covers the period to the end of 2025. [484] Nine agencies made 20 designations of secret information. Clearance assessments were completed for 18 people in two agencies, and for no employee of a private firm. No company was certified to handle the information. [484] Eleven agencies had asked the Prime Minister’s office to investigate 217 people. Three declined to consent and two withdrew consent. [484]

On the export side, the cabinet approved an amendment to the Export Trade Control Order on 11 November 2025. Among three additions to the controlled list are “modules, assemblies or equipment incorporating field-programmable logic devices”, in force from 14 February 2026. [485]

Japan’s economic security clearance system in 2025 and the November 2025 export control amendment, from the Cabinet Office’s report summary and the economy ministry’s announcement.

Measure	Figure or rule	Source	Reading
Secret designations	20 by nine agencies in 2025. One lifted. 19 at year end. [484]	Cabinet Office report	few A system starting cautiously.
Documents held	43 documents in eight agencies at the end of 2025. [484]	Same	small
Clearances completed	18 people in two agencies. None found unsuitable. None in private firms. [484]	Same	government only Industry not yet inside.
Investigations requested	217 people, from eleven agencies. [484]	Same	a queue Twelve requests for every clearance completed.
Consent	Three people refused. Two withdrew. [484]	Same	voluntary Vetting needs the person’s agreement.
Certified companies	None in 2025. [484]	Same	the gap The law’s purpose was to bring firms in.
Export list, added items	Peptide synthesisers, powders of multi-element and refractory alloys, and modules or equipment with programmable logic devices. [485]	Economy ministry	chips Programmable chips are found in weapons recovered in Ukraine.
Technology dialogue	More technologies added to a scheme of dialogue between government and firms on managing sensitive technology, from 14 January 2026. [485]	Same	outbound know-how Japan’s softer answer to an outbound screen.

Why clearance matters for chips

Joint work with the United States on advanced chips, and on the weapons and computing that use them, involves information allies will share only with cleared people. Japan’s chip policy, including the venture described in the section on Rapidus, depends on such cooperation. The law was passed to close that gap. The first report shows the machinery running inside government and not yet reaching companies: no employee of a firm cleared, no firm certified. [484] A transition allowing uncleared officials to handle the information ran until 14 May 2026. [484]

Programmable chips on the list

Field-programmable chips can be configured after manufacture, which makes them the general-purpose part of choice in guidance and radio systems. The teardown sections of this page record them repeatedly in Russian weapons. The November 2025 amendment follows agreements in the international export control regimes and extends control from the chips to modules and equipment that contain them. [485] That closes a route by which a controlled chip leaves inside an uncontrolled board.

Dialogue in place of a screen

The United States screens its firms’ outbound investment in sensitive technology and Taiwan requires approval in advance. Japan has chosen a different device: a scheme under which firms holding listed technologies consult the government before transferring them abroad. The November 2025 package adds technologies to that scheme. [485] It relies on notification and persuasion. Its reach is as wide as the list, and its force depends on firms coming forward.

Japan’s security rules for chips are being built later than its partners’ and more slowly. The clearance law is in force, and in seven months it cleared eighteen officials. [484] The purpose, to let Japanese companies into classified allied work, had not begun to be met by the end of 2025.

China’s measures of 2026, described in the section on Japan in the war part, named sixty Japanese firms and institutes within six months. The contrast in tempo is the point: Japan’s own system is careful and consensual, and it is operating beside one that is neither.

Limits. The Cabinet Office’s report summary and the economy ministry’s announcement were read in full; the full report and its tables by agency were not, so which agencies made designations is not known here. The report covers only 16 May to 31 December 2025. The background on Japan’s lack of a clearance system, the description of programmable chips and their presence in recovered weapons, and the comparison with American and Taiwanese rules are from general knowledge and other sections of this page. The list of technologies added to the dialogue scheme was not read.

South Korea · technology leaks and the 2025 law

South Korea caught 120 leaks of industrial technology abroad in five and a half years, 45 of them in chips, and nearly half of those convicted did not go to prison

120Leaks of industrial technology abroad caught from 2021 to July 2026

45Of them in semiconductors, the largest field

36Involving national core technologies

47.5%Share of 162 people sentenced who received a suspended sentence or a fine only

6.5bn wonMaximum fine for leaking core technology abroad since July 2025, up from 1.5bn

5 timesCeiling on damages, up from three times

The section on people describes South Korea’s prosecutions of engineers who took chip technology to China. Figures given to a lawmaker by the industry ministry in October 2026 show the scale. From 2021 to July 2026 the authorities caught 120 cases of industrial technology leaking abroad: 22 in 2021, 20 in 2022, 23 in each of 2023 and 2024, and 19 in 2025. [488]

Thirty-six involved “national core technologies”, the category the state protects most closely. By field, semiconductors led with 45 cases. [488] The same figures show what happened in court. Of 162 people sentenced under the Industrial Technology Protection Act in five years, 62 received suspended sentences and 15 only fines: 47.5% did not serve time. [488]

Parliament had already acted on the penalties. An amendment in force from July 2025 raised the maximum fine for leaking national core technology abroad from 1.5 billion won to 6.5 billion, and changed what must be proved, from an intent to have the technology used abroad to knowledge that it would be. [489]

Technology leaks from South Korea and the 2025 amendment, from a Korean broadcaster’s report of industry ministry figures and press summaries of the law.

Measure	Figure or rule	Source	Reading
Leaks caught	120 from 2021 to July 2026, about 20 a year. [488]	Industry ministry figures, via a lawmaker	steady No decline despite heavier penalties.
By field	Semiconductors 45. [488]	Same	chips first More than a third.
Core technologies	36 of the 120. [488]	Same	the protected tier
Sentences	162 sentenced. 62 suspended, 15 fined. 47.5% without prison. [488]	Same	light Compare ten years in Taiwan’s 2-nanometre case.
Maximum fine	From 1.5 billion won to 6.5 billion for core technology leaked abroad. [489]	Press summary of the amendment	raised
What must be proved	Knowledge that the technology would be used abroad, in place of intent. [489]	Same	easier to convict The old test was the main obstacle.
Brokers	Those who arrange or induce a leak are now punishable. [489]	Same	recruiters reached Korea’s version of Taiwan’s raids.
Damages	Up to five times the loss, from three. [489]	Same	civil

The gap between catching and punishing

The lawmaker who released the figures argued that punishment should be strengthened “as a matter of economic security”. [488] Nearly half of those convicted left court without a prison term. The reason, described in the section on people, was the old requirement to prove that the accused intended the technology to be used abroad, which is hard to show when an engineer simply changes employer. The 2025 amendment lowers that bar to knowledge. [489] The figures here mostly predate it, so they measure the system the amendment was meant to fix.

Twenty a year

The annual count barely moves: between 19 and 23 in each full year. [488] That steadiness suggests either a constant rate of leaking or a constant capacity to detect it. The demand has not changed. Chinese memory makers, described in the sections on their listings, were built in part by engineers from the Korean firms, and they are now large and profitable enough to pay for more. A fine of 6.5 billion won is a deterrent to an individual. To a firm that gains a generation of memory technology, it is a small cost.

Three allies, three approaches

Set beside the Taiwanese and Japanese sections, Korea’s system sits in the middle. Taiwan treats core technology under a national security law and has imposed ten years. Japan has only just created clearances and relies on consent. Korea has a dedicated statute, a defined list of core technologies and frequent prosecutions, and until 2025 a test that let many defendants off. All three are tightening in the same direction, at different speeds, against the same recipient.

South Korea’s numbers are the fullest official count of chip technology leaving an allied country. Forty-five chip cases in five and a half years, and a court record in which almost half of those convicted stayed out of prison. [488]

The amendment of 2025 is the correction. Its effect will show in the sentences of the next few years. Until it does, the Korean record supports the conclusion drawn in the section on penalties: the law against carrying knowledge abroad has been weaker than the incentive to do it.

Limits. The leak and sentencing figures are from a Korean broadcaster’s report of data released by a lawmaker, attributed to the industry ministry; the ministry’s own table was not read, and the report does not say how many cases involved China. The 2025 amendment’s terms and its effective date of 22 July 2025 are from a search summary of press and law-firm accounts, since the pages themselves could not be opened. The statement that Chinese memory makers were built partly by engineers from Korean firms is from general knowledge and the section on people. Comparisons with Taiwan and Japan rely on the other sections of this page.

South Korea · American licences for Samsung’s and SK hynix’s Chinese plants

Since 2026 Samsung and SK hynix must ask Washington each year for permission to send American tools to the memory plants they own in China

3Plants affected: Samsung at Xi’an, SK hynix at Wuxi and Dalian

29 Aug 2025Date the United States announced it would revoke the plants’ general authorisation

120 daysNotice given before the revocation took effect

1,000Extra licence applications a year the commerce department expected

1 yearPeriod covered by each approval under the arrangement adopted in December 2025

Every yearHow often the companies must now apply

Samsung makes flash memory at Xi’an. SK hynix makes DRAM at Wuxi and flash at Dalian. These plants were built before the controls and hold a large part of each firm’s output. Until 2025 they had a status in American law, “validated end user”, that let them bring in American chipmaking equipment without individual licences, subject to security conditions. [497]

On 29 August 2025 the American commerce department announced that it would remove them from that status, with 120 days’ notice. After that every shipment of American equipment would need its own licence. The department expected a thousand more licence applications a year. [496, 498] China’s commerce ministry said the step threatened supply chains and that it would “take necessary measures”. [498]

At the end of December 2025, days before the change took effect, Washington altered the plan. In place of case-by-case licences, each company applies once a year with the equipment and parts it expects to need, and the department approves the year’s shipments together. [497] Korean media called it “the worst avoided”. [499]

American authorisation for Korean memory plants in China, from Korean press reports in 2025.

Stage	Rule	Source	Reading
To 2025	Validated end user status: American equipment imported freely under security conditions. [497]	Korean daily	a standing exemption Granted when the controls began.
August 2025	Status to be revoked for Samsung, SK hynix and one American firm’s Chinese plant. Individual licences required. [496, 498]	Trade press; Korean daily	pressure Announced four days after a summit between the two presidents.
China’s reaction	The commerce ministry warns of harm to supply chains and promises necessary measures. [498]	Korean daily	objection The plants are in China and employ Chinese staff.
Korea’s reaction	The industry ministry says it will keep consulting Washington to limit the effect on Korean firms. [496]	Trade press	quiet diplomacy
December 2025	Annual approval of a year’s equipment and parts, applied for in advance. [497, 499]	Korean daily; broadcaster	a leash Operation allowed, renewal required.
What remains	Uncertainty each year, and limits on upgrading the plants to newer processes. [499]	Broadcaster	frozen in place The plants can run but not advance.

Hostages on both sides

The plants are Korean property on Chinese soil that depend on American tools. Each government has a hold on them. Washington can stop the equipment. Beijing hosts the buildings and the workers, and its ministry’s promise of “necessary measures” was a reminder of that. [498] Seoul owns them and controls neither side’s decision. The annual licence leaves the plants operating and gives the United States a yearly occasion to review them, which is a lever over Korea as well as over China.

Why they were spared

The plants make ordinary memory, the product whose shortage drove prices up in 2026. Closing them would have removed a large share of world supply and hurt American buyers of memory as much as anyone. The annual arrangement keeps that output while preventing the plants from being upgraded, so that the newest memory is made in Korea and not in China. The effect is like Taiwan’s two-generation rule, imposed here by an ally on Korean firms.

What it does to China’s memory makers

Chinese memory makers benefit either way. If the Korean plants in China age without upgrades, the share of advanced memory made in China by foreigners falls, and the domestic makers described in the sections on their listings fill the space at home. In 2026 both listed or applied to list on record profits. The rule that keeps Korean plants in China a generation behind also clears the ground for the Chinese firms growing beside them.

The Korean plants in China show how the controls treat allies. They were not ordered to close, and their owners were not listed. They were placed on a licence that must be renewed every year, which keeps them running and keeps their owners attentive to Washington. [497, 499]

For South Korea this is the uncomfortable centre of its position. Its two largest firms have tens of billions of dollars of plant in the country its ally is trying to contain, and the terms on which they may operate are set each year by neither Seoul nor the firms.

Limits. This section rests on Korean press reports from August and December 2025. The December change was reported from unnamed sources through a foreign news agency, and the American government’s formal notice was not read; whether a licence for 2027 has been granted was not checked. The share of each firm’s output made in China was not found in the reports read and is described only in general terms. The statement that the plants cannot be upgraded, and the reading of the arrangement’s effects on Chinese memory makers, are from the reports’ own analysis and general knowledge. The summit timing is as one Korean report’s headline gives it.

China · enforcement

China polices its own controls with a seven-agency campaign, its spy service and a list that cut off the firm that takes its chips apart

7State bodies at the 9 May 2025 meeting that opened China’s campaign against smuggling of strategic minerals, including the supreme court and the post office

5Minerals named: gallium, germanium, antimony, tungsten, and medium and heavy rare earths

19 Jul 2025Follow-up meeting in Nanning that proposed a joint enforcement centre and listing foreign end users who evade controls

12339State security hotline the public was asked to call with leads on threats to critical minerals

14Foreign entities put on the unreliable entity list on 9 October 2025, among them TechInsights and nine of its affiliates

22 Dec 2025Date the commerce ministry said compliant civilian exports of Nexperia chips were exempted, and told the firms to settle their dispute

China faces the enforcement problem the United States faces, in reverse: its controlled metals leak out. On 9 May 2025 the office of the national export control coordination mechanism gathered seven bodies in Shenzhen to open a special campaign against the smuggling of strategic minerals: the commerce ministry, the public security and state security ministries, customs, the supreme court, the supreme prosecutor’s office and the post office. [372] The meeting named gallium, germanium, antimony, tungsten and medium and heavy rare earths, and three methods: false declaration, concealment and shipment through third countries. [372]

The spy service then published the methods in detail. On 18 July 2025 the Ministry of State Security said a contractor in a key sector of one country, which cannot refine rare metals itself, had repackaged goods with forged labels saying they were not of Chinese origin and shipped them home through other countries. [374] On 9 October 2025, the same day as the rare-earth announcements, China used a different tool on a different target. It put TechInsights, the firm whose teardowns show how advanced Chinese chips are, on its unreliable entity list with thirteen other foreign entities. [375]

How China enforces its own controls, from four Chinese official texts of 2025. The last column sets each beside the American practice described elsewhere on this page.

Tool	What the Chinese text says	Date and source	American counterpart
Joint campaign	Tighten control at the source, link administrative and criminal enforcement, publish cases, dig out the entities and networks behind smuggling, build an intelligent information system, and work with Hong Kong and Macao customs. [372]	9 May 2025, Shenzhen. [372]	interagency task forces
Second phase	Study a joint enforcement coordination centre for dual-use export control. Put foreign end users who evade controls on the control list. Issue compliance guidance for mineral exporters. Have exporters check that goods do not reach military users. [373]	19 July 2025, Nanning. [373]	Entity List for diverters
Results reported	A batch of illegal export cases investigated and a batch of suspects arrested. No numbers given. [373]	19 July 2025. [373]	fewer published figures American penalties are published case by case.
Counter-intelligence	Foreign services and their agents recruit people in China. High-purity dysprosium and terbium were declared as ferro-alloy, nickel powder or solder paste, mixed into ceramic tile material, poured into mannequins and water bottles, and posted in many small parcels. [374]	18 July 2025, Ministry of State Security. [374]	none The United States treats smuggling as a customs and criminal matter, not espionage.
Unreliable entity list	Listed entities may not import or export in connection with China or make new investment there. Organisations and individuals in China may not trade or cooperate with them, in particular by sending them data or sensitive information. [375]	Announcement No. 10 of 2025, 9 October 2025. [375]	Entity List The data clause has no American match.
Exemption by statement	For Nexperia, exports of compliant chips for civilian use are exempted. The Netherlands is told to withdraw its order, and the firms to negotiate over control and supply. [376]	22 December 2025, commerce ministry spokesperson. [376]	licences with conditions

The same leaks, the other way round

The methods the Chinese agencies describe are the ones American investigators describe for chips: goods relabelled as something ordinary, false statements of origin, small parcels, and a third country in the middle. [372, 374] The answers are the same too: a list for foreign buyers who divert, a duty on exporters to check their customers, and a search for the network behind each case. [373] Two governments that accuse each other of abusing export controls have written nearly identical enforcement manuals.

Cutting off the measurement

Most public knowledge of how advanced Chinese chips are comes from one firm’s teardowns. The October 2025 listing bars TechInsights and nine named affiliates from trade and investment involving China and bars anyone in China from sending them data or sensitive information. [375] The announcement cites the foreign trade, national security and anti-foreign sanctions laws. [375] The other thirteen entities are mostly American defence and drone firms. [375] China is controlling evidence as well as metals.

Where security law does the work

The Chinese campaign differs from the American one in who takes part. The state security ministry sits in the coordination meetings and frames smuggling of minerals as foreign espionage, with a public hotline. [372, 374] The supreme court and prosecutor attend as participants, not as independent checks. [372] That gives the campaign speed and reach, and it means a foreign buyer of Chinese minerals can find an export control matter treated as a national security case.

The texts show a control system learning to enforce itself within a year of being written. The 2024 regulation created the lists. By mid-2025 seven agencies were running a campaign, the spy service was publishing cases, and officials were proposing a permanent joint centre. [372, 373, 374] China assembled a joint enforcement effort within months, and it did so by treating export control as a matter of state security.

What the texts leave out is the evidence a reader would want. They give no count of cases, seizures or penalties, and the country in the state security account is not named. [373, 374] The Nexperia exemption was announced by a spokesperson, without a published rule. [376] Chinese enforcement is visible mainly through what the authorities choose to announce, which makes its strength hard to judge from outside.

Limits. The texts were read as follows: the two campaign notices as carried by Xinhua and by The Paper, the state security account through a Yicai report of state television, the unreliable entity announcement as carried by Xinhua, and the Nexperia statement as carried by Xinhua. The October 2025 Nexperia export ban itself and the November 2025 exemption notice were seen only in search summaries and are not cited; the Nexperia case is described more fully under China’s toolkit. The comparisons with American practice, the description of TechInsights’ role and the characterisation of the other listed entities as mostly defence and drone firms are this site’s reading. Whether the joint enforcement centre proposed in July 2025 was set up was not established.

China · export-control penalties by customs, first half of 2026

Chinese customs published at least 373 export-control penalties in the first half of 2026, more than in all of 2025, and over half concerned strategic minerals

373Export-control penalty decisions published by Chinese customs, January to June 2026. All of 2025: 317

57%Share concerning strategic minerals: 213 cases

67Cases involving dysprosium, the largest single item

94%Share of breaches found at export inspection, not by later audit

95%Share in which the penalty was reduced or waived

40% to 1,700%Fines in smuggling cases as a share of the goods’ value

The section on how China enforces describes the campaign against mineral smuggling that began in May 2025. A Chinese law firm has counted its results. Reading the penalty decisions that customs offices across China publish, its lawyers found at least 373 for export-control breaches in the first half of 2026, against 317 in the whole of 2025. [317]

Strategic minerals account for 213 of the 373, or 57%. Rare earths lead with 92 cases, most of them dysprosium, then other metals with 81, led by bismuth and germanium, and graphite with 40. [317] The exporters caught were mostly magnet makers whose products contained a controlled rare earth. The survey notes one case in which goods with 0.01% of a controlled element were still treated as a dual-use item, because the rule turns on which element is present and not on how much. [317]

Almost all were found at the border and almost all were treated lightly. Customs detected 350 of the cases, 94%, in export inspection. In 95% the exporter received a reduced penalty or none. [317]

Export-control penalty decisions published by Chinese customs in the first half of 2026, as counted by a Chinese law firm.

Category	Cases	Detail	What it shows
Rare earths	92. [317]	Dysprosium 67, samarium 15, terbium 14. Mostly magnets containing a controlled element. [317]	the April 2025 control Enforcement falls on the seven elements never paused.
Other metals	81. [317]	Bismuth 20, germanium 18, aluminium alloy 15. Also germanium optics, gallium nitride, gallium arsenide, tungsten, antimony. [317]	chip materials Gallium and germanium compounds appear in the files.
Graphite	40. [317]	Natural and artificial graphite and products such as crucibles and moulds. [317]	battery and furnace inputs
Chemical production equipment	52. [317]	Mostly glass-lined reactors, pumps and tanks. Qingdao customs found 17, Shanghai 13. [317]	non-proliferation The classic dual-use list.
Machine tools	24. [317]	Precision engraving and machining centres. Shenzhen customs found 17. [317]	non-proliferation
Chemicals	30. [317]	Drug precursors 14, chemical-weapon precursors 16. [317]	unrelated to chips
Military items	15. [317]	Uniforms and personal equipment only. [317]	minor
How found	350 at export inspection, 22 by later audit, 1 by voluntary disclosure. [317]	Of 373. [317]	border control The check is physical, at the port.
Outcome	315 reduced, 38 not penalised, 20 ordinary penalties, of which 10 were smuggling. [317]	Confiscation only in smuggling cases. [317]	teaching, not punishing Severe only where concealment is found.

Mistakes, mostly

The survey classifies the typical breach as a compliance failure by an ordinary exporter. A firm assumed small samples were exempt. A firm picked its customs code from an internet search. A firm’s own software matched product names by keyword with no human check. A firm shipped twelve days after its product was listed and had not noticed. A firm copied what competitors declared. [317] These are the errors of an industry that until 2023 did not think of its magnets, metals and graphite as controlled goods at all.

What leniency buys

Customs reduced the penalty where the exporter admitted the breach, cooperated, obtained the licence afterwards and paid a deposit. [317] The effect is to convert exporters into licence applicants. Each case ends with a firm that now files for licences and declares its end users. Thirty-eight cases ended with no penalty, generally where the value was a few thousand yuan. [317] The harsh treatment, fines up to seventeen times the value of the goods, is kept for smuggling, where goods were hidden or falsely declared. [317]

A new channel for informers

The survey records one institutional change. In June 2026 the commerce ministry issued Announcement No. 26 on handling reports of breaches of the controls on strategic minerals, which the lawyers describe as widening the channels of supervision. [317] Competitors and employees can now report an exporter. Combined with the security ministry’s public reporting line, described in the section on secrets cases, the mineral controls are enforced by inspection at the port and by denunciation behind it.

Two conclusions follow for this page. First, the mineral controls are enforced in volume. Two penalty decisions a day is a larger published caseload than the American export-control agency produces in a year, though the American cases are far larger and often criminal. That comparison is this site’s and is rough. China’s system is wide and shallow: many small exporters, checked at the port, corrected and released.

Second, chips themselves are almost absent. The survey lists no category for integrated circuits or chipmaking equipment. [317] China controls what it sells into the chip chain, which is metals and materials, and its enforcement record follows. The enforcement of what goes into China, the American side of the ledger, is described in the sections on enforcement and tracking.

Limits. This section rests on one law firm’s survey, read in full on the firm’s site. The firm says its count is incomplete (“at least”) and based on decisions customs offices chose to publish; unpublished cases, criminal prosecutions and the commerce ministry’s own penalties are outside it. The individual decisions were not read. Announcement No. 26 of 2026 is known here only from the survey. Percentages are the firm’s. The comparison with American enforcement is from general knowledge and is not a measured one. The absence of chip cases means only that the survey reports none.

China · five countermeasures on one day, 5 August 2026

On 5 August 2026 China answered American import bans with five measures at once, and put the electronics industry’s own supply-chain audit body on its sanctions list

5Countermeasures announced on 5 August 2026

6 + 1American entities placed on the countermeasure list by Orders No. 2 and No. 3

40+Chinese entities the United States added to its forced-labour list on 31 July 2026, as the ministry states it

1stTrade national-security investigation in China’s history, opened the same day

The truce reached in November 2025 paused the largest controls on both sides. It did not stop the smaller ones. On 5 August 2026 the commerce minister signed two orders under the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, and the ministry’s spokesperson announced three further steps the same day. [297, 298]

The spokesperson set out the grievance. Since the leaders met at Busan, the American communications regulator had issued restrictions on Chinese telecoms operators, test laboratories, drones, consumer routers and undersea cables, and then on advanced robots and power inverters. On 31 July, a day after a video call between the two sides’ trade leads, the United States added more than forty Chinese entities to its forced-labour import ban list. [298] China’s measures, the spokesperson said, were “restrained on the whole”, and more would follow if the United States added new restrictions. [298]

Order No. 2 lists six American entities for “assisting and supporting” the sanctions over Xinjiang. Three are firms that trace supply chains, and one is the Responsible Business Alliance, the audit body of the world’s electronics and chip companies. [297] Organisations and individuals in China are barred from “relevant transactions and cooperation” with them. [297]

The five Chinese measures of 5 August 2026, from the ministry’s orders and its spokesperson’s statement.

Measure	Legal basis	What it does	Aimed at
Order No. 2: six entities listed	Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law and its 2025 implementing rules, approved by the national coordination mechanism. [297]	Bars organisations and individuals in China from transactions and cooperation with Applied DNA Sciences, Stratum Reservoir, Altana Technologies, the Responsible Business Alliance, Verite and Human Rights in China. [297]	the audit chain The firms and bodies that supply evidence for American import bans.
Order No. 3: one entity listed	Same. [298]	Lists an American compliance testing company for assisting the communications regulator’s measures. [298]	test laboratories An answer to the exclusion of Chinese laboratories.
Drone exports to the United States	Export Control Law and the dual-use regulation. [428]	Case-by-case strict review, no simplified procedures. [428, 298]	drones Described in the section on the 2026 drone rules.
Factory inspections	Decision of the certification regulator. [298]	Suspends the use of American certification bodies for follow-up factory inspections under China’s compulsory product certification. [298]	market access American plants selling certified goods into China.
Printer investigation	Revised Foreign Trade Law, Articles 41 and 42. [289]	Opens a national-security investigation into imported printers and copiers with foreign system software. [289, 298]	embedded software Described in the section on the trade law.

Why the audit body matters for chips

The Responsible Business Alliance is the industry association through which large electronics brands and chipmakers audit labour conditions at their suppliers, using a common code and shared audit reports. That description is from general knowledge, not the order. If entities in China may not cooperate with it, a Chinese factory cannot take part in the audits its foreign customers require, and a customer cannot show that its Chinese supply is clean. The American import ban presumes goods linked to Xinjiang are made with forced labour unless the importer proves otherwise. The order removes one of the main ways of proving it.

Tracing firms as targets

Applied DNA Sciences, Stratum Reservoir and Altana Technologies, as generally described, test the physical origin of materials or map supply chains with data. American customs uses such evidence to decide what to detain. China’s 2025 rules implementing the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law allow countermeasures against those who “assist or support” foreign sanctions. [297] The August order is a use of that clause against the service providers of enforcement, and the same reasoning would reach firms that trace the origin of chips or minerals.

A package that crosses four legal tools

The five measures rest on four different instruments: the sanctions law, used twice, the export control law, the trade law and product certification. [297, 298, 289, 428] They were announced together and tied to one cause. The national coordination mechanism for countering foreign sanctions approved the listings. [297] The ministry now assembles a response across agencies in days, which the 2021 law was written to make possible.

The episode shows how the contest continues under a truce. Neither side touched the paused measures: the American extension of its entity rules to subsidiaries, or the Chinese mineral controls. Each acted in fields the truce did not name: telecoms equipment and forced-labour listings on one side, drones, certification and audit bodies on the other. [298] The headline controls stayed frozen while the lists around them kept growing.

For companies, the order adds a conflict of laws to the supply chain itself. A chipmaker with plants in China is asked by American law to prove the origin of its inputs and is barred by Chinese law from cooperating with the bodies that certify it. The section on lists and blocking describes the 2021 rules that let a Chinese firm sue over compliance with foreign sanctions. This is the same pressure applied from the other end.

Limits. Order No. 2 was read in full, with its list, as carried by a Beijing newspaper; Order No. 3 and the spokesperson’s statement were read in a Chinese newspaper’s report carried on a news portal, not in the ministry’s text, and the name of the testing company is given there only in translation. What each listed entity does is not stated in the orders; those descriptions, and the account of how the American forced-labour law works, are from general knowledge and should be checked. Whether the ban on “relevant transactions and cooperation” has been applied to audits in practice is not known. The American measures are described only as the ministry describes them. The statement that neither side touched the paused measures is this site’s reading of the other sections.

China · trade-secret and state-secret cases in chips and rare earths

China’s courts jailed a former Huawei chip executive for six years, and its spy service now names chips and rare earths as prime targets of foreign intelligence

14Former HiSilicon employees convicted on 28 July 2025

6 yearsSentence of the start-up’s founder, with a fine of 3 million yuan

40Technical points found more than 90% identical to HiSilicon’s trade secrets

317m yuanAssessed value of the information taken, as reported

7State secrets on rare-earth stockpiling passed abroad by one company executive, as the security ministry tells it

12339The security ministry’s public reporting line, printed at the end of each of its articles

The section on people describes how the United States, South Korea and Taiwan prosecute leaks of chip technology, mostly toward China. China runs the same kind of cases in its own courts, with Chinese firms as the victims. The largest concerns Huawei’s chip arm, HiSilicon. On 28 July 2025 a Shanghai court convicted fourteen former HiSilicon employees of infringing trade secrets. [299, 300]

The founder, a former HiSilicon executive, had left in 2021 to set up a wireless chip start-up, hired former colleagues with pay and shares, and had them copy technical information by hand and by screenshot before they resigned. [299] An expert assessment found forty technical points in the new company’s chip that were more than 90% identical to HiSilicon’s secrets. [299] He received six years in prison and a fine of 3 million yuan. Five of the fourteen went to prison, nine received suspended sentences, and fines came to 13.5 million yuan. [299] In April 2026 the national prosecution service published the case first among six model cases on protecting new industries. [300]

Alongside the courts, the Ministry of State Security has taken to publishing. Its public account said in May 2026 that foreign intelligence services target “rare earths, solar, semiconductors, advanced chips and SI” to learn China’s “strategic hand”. [302]

Chip and rare-earth secrecy cases and warnings published by Chinese courts, prosecutors and the Ministry of State Security, 2025 to 2026.

Case or notice	What happened	Outcome	What it shows
HiSilicon wireless chips, Shanghai, 2023 to 2025	Former executives founded a start-up in 2021 and took chip design information with them. Police arrested fourteen people in April 2023, before the chip reached volume production. [299]	Fourteen convicted. One to six years, nine sentences suspended. No appeal. [299, 300]	criminal law Staff movement between Chinese chip firms is now a criminal risk.
The same case as a model	Published by the national prosecution service on 2 April 2026 as the first of six model cases. [300]	Guidance for prosecutors nationwide. [300]	policy Courts and prosecutors name chips as a priority for trade-secret protection.
Semiconductor engineer, published April 2026	A former engineer at a Chinese chip firm gave core production processes to an organisation abroad after leaving. [301]	“Severely punished by law.” No sentence given. [301]	outward leak The mirror image of the Korean and Taiwanese cases.
Rare-earth stockpile, published April 2026	A foreign non-ferrous metals company, through a Chinese employee, paid a deputy general manager of a rare-earth company for seven state secrets on what China stockpiles, how much and at what price. [301]	Both punished. No sentence given. [301]	state secret Stockpile data is classified, and buying it is espionage.
Warning on foreign chips, July 2025	Chips and devices made abroad “may be deliberately fitted with a backdoor at design or manufacture” that lets the maker switch on cameras or collect data. [303]	Advice: sensitive posts should use domestic chips and operating systems. [303]	no case cited A claim of risk, without an example.
Supply-chain guidance, April 2026	Control the admission of chips, servers and industrial controllers, vet suppliers, and remove equipment with security risks. [301]	Addressed to firms and agencies. [301]	procurement The security service speaking on what hardware to buy.

Protecting Huawei the way others protect themselves

The Shanghai case has the features of the Korean and Taiwanese prosecutions described elsewhere on this page: senior engineers leave a national champion, found a rival, and recruit a team that brings files. The difference is that both firms are Chinese and the start-up had well-known Chinese investors. [299] The judgment tells China’s chip engineers that knowledge gained at a leading firm does not travel with them. That protects the leaders. It also slows the spread of skill between firms on which a young industry depends.

Rare-earth numbers as state secrets

The stockpile case explains why so little is known about China’s reserves of the metals it controls. The kinds, quantities and prices of rare earths held in state stockpiles are classified at the second-highest level, and a company officer who sold them was treated as having supplied state secrets abroad. [301] Foreign buyers trying to judge how long a Chinese control could last, or how much the state could release to move prices, are asking for information that is a crime to provide.

The security service and the chip market

The ministry’s warnings carry no case in which a backdoor was found in a foreign chip. [303] They matter for what they recommend: domestic chips and operating systems for sensitive posts, supplier vetting, and removal of risky equipment. [301, 303] State television repeated the message in May 2026 under a title that puns on the word for chip, calling for hardware and software to be “fully under our own control”. [304] The cyberspace regulator’s 2025 questioning of an American chipmaker over alleged backdoors, described elsewhere on this page, used the same argument.

Read with the rest of this page, these cases show China using against leaks the tools that others use against China. It prosecutes the movement of chip knowledge as a crime, classifies the data on its mineral leverage, and warns that foreign hardware may spy. Each government in the contest now treats the engineer’s memory and the supplier’s firmware as matters of national security.

The numbers are small beside the foreign record. South Korea alone tried ninety defendants in the cases counted in the section on people. China’s published cases are chosen to instruct, and the security ministry gives neither names nor sentences. What can be said is that the direction is the same on every side.

Limits. The verdict in the HiSilicon case was read in a Chinese newspaper’s report, which reproduces the sentences and the police account; the judgment itself was not found. The prosecution service’s page on its model cases could not be opened, so the statements that the case was published as the first of six model cases on 2 April 2026, that there was no appeal, and the assessed value of 317 million yuan are from a search summary of that page and of press coverage. The security ministry’s articles were read as carried in full by the science ministry’s newspaper and a financial news site; they give no names, dates, courts or sentences, and none of their cases could be checked against a court record. The comparison with foreign prosecutions relies on the section on people. The description of secrecy levels is from general knowledge of Chinese law.

Emergency powers

Governments hold emergency powers over chips, but in the one real test stocks and diplomacy did the work

12 monthsLongest first term of a declared European Union chip crisis, which the Council must approve by qualified majority, in the 2026 proposal [522]

€300,000Top fine proposed for a firm that answers a crisis information request wrongly or late, Chips Act 2.0 proposal, 2026 [522]

About halfShare of surveyed American firms that could not tell whether their products held chips from Chinese foundries, Commerce Department, December 2024 [527]

16Specified critical materials under Japan’s Economic Security Promotion Act after the December 2025 additions [525]

100 daysAverage stock South Korea plans to hold of twenty key minerals and thirty-five other items [524]

Up to 40%Nexperia’s estimated share of the European automotive market for its chips at the time of the 2025 shortage [523]

Every major chip economy has given itself some tool for a shortage. The European Union can, in a declared crisis, demand information from firms, order chip plants to put certain orders first and buy chips jointly for its members. [522] The United States has the Defense Production Act (DPA), which it has used to survey chip users and to fund gallium and other mineral production. [526, 527] Japan designates critical materials for state support, and South Korea runs an early-warning system and stockpiles. [524, 525] The powers differ, but most of them only start once a shortage has been officially declared.

The Nexperia shortage of late 2025 tested this. Nexperia held about 10 percent of the world market for its kind of chip and up to 40 percent of the European car market. [523] When Beijing halted exports of its Chinese-made chips, large European carmakers had stocks for only a couple of months. [523] None of the sources read for this page records the European crisis stage being activated then or at any other time. Supply resumed after China lifted its restrictions in November 2025. [523] The European Commission proposed a replacement law in June 2026. [522]

What each government can do in a chip or minerals shortage, and what the record shows about use.

Jurisdiction	Tool	What it allows	Record so far
European Union	Chips Act crisis stage	Mandatory information requests, priority-rated orders and joint purchasing once the Council declares a crisis. [522]	No recorded use No source read for this page shows an activation, including during the Nexperia shortage.
European Union	Chips Act 2.0 proposal	Keeps the same crisis definition and trigger, adds fines and a mandatory supply chain platform for supported firms. [522]	Proposed June 2026 Not yet law; a crisis management blueprint is foreseen by the second quarter of 2027. [522]
European Union	Sector duties	The first Act left carmakers outside its strictest duties to share information and prevent shortages; the 2026 draft would make some buy from at least two suppliers. [523]	Gap acknowledged Officials now treat binding rules for carmakers as necessary. [523]
United States	Defense Production Act surveys	Compulsory industry surveys; the Commerce Department used the Act in January 2024 to ask firms where their older chips come from. [527]	Used for mapping More than two-thirds of the surveyed products contained Chinese-origin chips. [527]
United States	Defense Production Act Title III	Grants to create domestic production, such as $29.9 million to ElementUSA for gallium and scandium. [526]	In regular use Applied to minerals; this research found no priority order issued for chips.
Japan	Economic Security Promotion Act	The state designates critical materials, including semiconductors, permanent magnets and critical minerals, and supports their supply. [525]	List keeps growing Eleven materials in December 2022, one in February 2024, four in December 2025. [525]
South Korea	Framework Act on Supporting Supply Chain Stabilization for Economic Security	A ministerial committee, 300 designated items, an early-warning system and a support fund run through the state export bank. [524]	Operating since 2024 The law took effect in June 2024; a master plan is renewed every three years. [524]

Europe’s trigger is hard to pull

The European crisis stage needs two things at once: serious disruption causing significant shortages, and harm to essential products in critical sectors. [522] The Commission must hold concrete and reliable evidence, then persuade a qualified majority of member states. [522] Priority-rated orders are described as a last resort. [522] The 2026 proposal carries the definition over almost word for word, so the trigger stays as hard to pull as before. [522]

Seeing the shortage coming

Most tools depend on knowing who holds what. The American survey showed how little firms knew: about half could not say whether their products contained chips from Chinese foundries. [527] South Korea’s finance ministry runs an early-warning system for items essential to national security. [524] Europe’s proposal would add early-warning indicators and oblige supported firms to join a shared supply chain platform, while leaving others free to stay out. [522]

Stocks as the real buffer

During the Nexperia shortage, time was bought by inventory. European carmakers had only a couple of months of chips in hand. [523] South Korea plans average stocks of 100 days for fifty-five designated minerals and other items. [524] The European proposal contains no stockpiling instrument of its own. Stocks appear in it only as data that firms can be told to report. [522] Europe would know more in a crisis but hold no more.

The Nexperia shortage showed the limits of emergency law. The chips at issue were cheap, older parts made by one firm, and the first European Act had not placed carmakers under its strictest duties. [523] The export halt ended when China lifted it in November 2025, after trade tensions with the United States eased. [523] A power to reorder production is of little use when the missing chips are held up abroad. Priority orders bind plants inside the jurisdiction, and the European ones are addressed to supported firms. [522]

The tools that would have helped are the dull ones: knowing which parts come from a single source, holding stock and qualifying a second supplier in advance. Japan and South Korea have written those habits into law and budget lines. [524, 525] The United States has used its Act to map dependence and pay for new mineral supply. [526, 527] Europe’s 2026 proposal moves the same way, with supplier rules for carmakers and penalties for withholding data, but it is still a proposal. [522, 523]

Limits. The European crisis rules are described from a law firm briefing on the 2026 proposal, not from the regulation itself; the Commission’s proposal PDF timed out and its evaluation of the 2023 Act was not opened. That no European crisis stage has ever been activated is an absence of evidence in the sources read (the law firm briefing, a Bruegel analysis and press reports), not a statement found in any of them. The two-supplier rule comes from a press report on a draft, published before the final text. The statement that this research found no priority-rated order for chips under the Defense Production Act is likewise an absence of evidence; the general description of that Act as allowing priority ratings and compulsory surveys is general knowledge. Seen only in search summaries and left out of cited claims: an $18.1 million award to 5N Plus for germanium refining in Utah, announced 29 or 30 January 2026 (one trade page was opened but did not name the legal authority), the South Korean fund’s size of 10 trillion won, a reported plan to raise South Korea’s designated items to 340, and Japan’s enactment date of May 2022. For Taiwan, searches found only a newspaper editorial saying chipmakers hold one to three months of key materials and a planned special law on medicine supply; no chip supply statute was found, which may reflect the search and not the law. Japan’s list comes from a private explainer, not from the ministry, whose page refused the request. Nexperia’s market shares are estimates quoted by one news outlet.

Has it worked?

The case for, the case against, and what the argument misses

The case that it worked

China’s best home-made chips are about two generations behind and are made at lower yield and higher cost. It has no EUV and is not expected to have it in volume for a decade. Its total stock of advanced computing is a fraction of America’s, and its leading model developers say in public that computing is their main limit. The lead is real and it is measured in years.

The case that it failed

The controls turned China’s chip programme from a subsidy scheme with poor results into a national effort with a guaranteed home market. Huawei, which was meant to be crippled, now designs the leading Chinese accelerator and phone chips. Chinese models stay close behind American ones on far less computing. Smuggling and overseas data centres filled part of the gap. And American firms lost a market worth tens of billions a year. [6] [13]

What both leave out

Both treat the controls as one steady policy. They have not been. The line has moved six times, a major rule was issued and withdrawn within four months, and since 2025 the terms have depended on trade talks. A firm deciding whether to invest ten years in a home-made alternative needs to know one thing: whether the foreign supply can be cut off. The answer it was given, repeatedly, was yes.

This site’s reading. The controls did what such measures can do: they bought time. Whether the time was worth the price depends on what was done with it, and on a question no one can yet answer, which is whether a lead of a few years in computing turns into a lasting military or economic advantage or is simply caught up later.

The clearer finding is about the instrument. A chokepoint is strongest before it is used. Each use teaches the target where it is dependent and gives it a reason to pay for independence that no subsidy could. The United States used its chokepoints early and often, and China has spent six years building around them. China used its own once, hard, in 2025, and got a truce in three weeks; the United States, Japan, Europe and Australia are now paying to build refining outside China. Each side has turned the other’s most reliable customers into future competitors.

For military SI, the result is that the chip war restrains the most concentrated, most visible kind of military SI and barely touches the most widespread kind. It can slow the building of the largest models. It cannot keep a capable seeker out of a cheap drone. That matches what the rest of the site finds: the systems changing war fastest are not the most advanced ones but the cheapest ones that are good enough. See cost-effectiveness on the Projects tab.

China · customs and output figures, 2025 and 2026

China’s chip exports doubled in value in 2026 while the number of chips shipped rose about 3%, and its import bill rose almost as fast

$216.0bnChip exports, January to July 2026, up 99.5% and already above the 2025 total

+137.1%Rise in chip export value in October 2026 on a year earlier

+3.2%Rise in the number of chips exported, January to October 2026, as reported from customs data

$145.8bnDeficit in chip trade, January to July 2026

484.3bnChips made in China in 2025, up 10.9%, a record

300,000+Shortage of chip industry staff in 2025 to 2026 as the industry association counts it, expected to reach 500,000 by 2030

China’s customs service publishes chip trade every month. The 2026 figures are the most striking in the series. In the first seven months China exported integrated circuits worth $216.0 billion, 99.5% more than a year earlier and more than in the whole of 2025. [413, 402] In October alone exports were $39.59 billion, up 137.1%, more than cars and more than phones. [414, 415] In the first half of 2026 chips became China’s largest single export category. [402]

The rise is in price, not volume. Reports of the ten-month customs figures give export value up 111.1% and the number of chips exported up 3.2%. [416] An economist quoted in the Chinese press put the October rise in export prices at 143%. [414] Imports tell the same story from the other side: $361.8 billion in the first seven months, up 58.3%, leaving a deficit in chips of $145.8 billion. [402]

These figures are often read as proof that the controls failed or that China has caught up. They show neither. They show a world price boom in memory and computing chips passing through the world’s largest electronics workshop, which both buys and sells more as prices rise.

China’s trade in integrated circuits, from customs figures as published or reported. Yuan and dollar figures are as given by each source and are not converted.

Period	Exports	Imports	Source and note
2025, full year	$201.9 billion, up 26.8%, the first year above $200 billion. 349.5 billion chips, up 17.4%. 1.444 trillion yuan, up 27.4%. [402, 417]	591.7 billion chips, up 7.8%. 3.036 trillion yuan, up 10.7%. [417]	two sources Dollar figure from the planning commission’s newspaper, yuan and volumes from a trade firm’s summary of customs data.
January and February 2026	304.7 billion yuan, up 68.9%. 52.5 billion chips, up 13.7%. [418]	550.3 billion yuan, up 36.8%. 91.0 billion chips, up 9%. [418]	trade press The report prints the import period as 2025, which appears to be a slip.
January to July 2026	$216.0 billion, up 99.5%. July alone $38.74 billion, up 116.6%. [413, 402]	$361.8 billion, up 58.3%. [402]	official outlets A news service’s report of the customs release and the planning commission’s newspaper.
October 2026	$39.59 billion, up 137.1%. [414, 415]	Not given in the reports read.	two reports Both cite the customs release of 10 November 2026.
January to October 2026	About $341.1 billion, up 111.1%. 302.0 billion chips, up 3.2%. [416]	525.8 billion chips, up 6.5%. 3.886 trillion yuan, up 58%. [416]	not opened From a search summary of a trade publication.

Value per chip, a rough measure

Dividing value by volume gives a crude average price. In 2025 China exported chips at about 4.1 yuan each and imported them at about 5.1 yuan each. [417] In the first ten months of 2026 the average imported chip cost about 7.4 yuan, some 44% more. [416, 417] On the export side, about $341 billion over 302 billion chips is roughly $1.13 each, against about $0.58 in 2025. [416, 402, 417] These divisions are this site’s, they mix sources, and an average over memory, processors and one-cent parts hides the mix. The direction is the point: the chips crossing the border in 2026 are dearer, in both directions.

Who is exporting

A customs figure counts whatever leaves the territory. It includes chips made in China by foreign-owned plants, chips packaged and tested in China for foreign firms, and goods passing through bonded zones. A Chinese trade paper’s analysis of the October figure makes this point itself and warns against reading the total as evidence of progress at the leading edge. [415] A spokesperson for the machinery trade chamber called the rise in chip imports “a mirror of export prosperity, not a general signal of domestic demand”. [414]

What the planning commission’s paper concedes

The most useful Chinese source is an official one. An article in the planning commission’s newspaper celebrates the export record, then lists what has not changed: at 7 nanometres and below a breakthrough remains very hard without the lithography machines under embargo, extreme-ultraviolet photoresist is far from production, and the import bill shows that dependence on foreign advanced chips “is still high”. [402] It reports chip plant investment up 11.5% in the first seven months and foundry utilisation above 90%. [402]

Set beside the studies in the next part, the trade figures answer a narrow question. They cannot show whether the controls slowed China’s leading-edge work, because the leading edge is a small share of chips by number and much of what China needs there never crosses its border lawfully. They do show that five years of controls have not reduced China’s place in the ordinary chip trade. It makes more chips, sells more abroad and buys more from abroad than a year earlier, and it still runs a deficit of about $20 billion a month. [402]

For the next year the figure to watch is volume. If the number of chips exported starts to rise as fast as their value, China is taking share. While value doubles and volume stands still, it is riding a price cycle that will turn.

Limits. The customs service’s own tables were not opened; every figure here is from a Chinese news report, a trade publication or the planning commission’s newspaper citing customs, and the ten-month totals are from a search summary only. Sources mix dollars and yuan, and this page does not convert between them. The 2025 dollar export figure (up 26.8%) and the yuan figure (up 27.4%) come from different sources and differ because of the exchange rate. The per-chip averages are this site’s arithmetic on those mixed figures and are indications only. The statement that the 2026 rise reflects memory and computing chip prices rests on the economists quoted in the Chinese reports, not on a breakdown by product, which was not found. The national statistics bureau’s own output release was not read; the 2025 output figure is from the planning commission’s newspaper.

China · Customs data on chip exports, January to September 2026

China’s chip exports almost doubled in 2026. A Chinese university’s breakdown shows why: memory is 70% of the total, volumes rose 7% and prices rose 83%

+99.1%Growth in China’s chip exports, January to September 2026

$216bnChip exports in the first seven months, more than in all of 2025

70.1%Share of memory in chip exports by value, January to July

+7%Growth in the number of chips exported, first half of 2026

+83.3%Rise in the average export price over the same period

+23.1%Growth in chip output by larger firms, first half of 2026

On 14 October 2026 China’s customs administration reported that exports of integrated circuits in the first nine months of the year were up 99.1% on a year earlier. It was the fastest-growing item it named, ahead of electric cars at 72.3%. The spokesman called chips “the most central hardware carrier of computing power”. [257]

An earlier report gives the dollar figures. In the first seven months exports reached $216 billion, up 99.5%, already more than the $201.9 billion of the whole of 2025. Output by larger firms in the first half was 279.8 billion units, up 23.1%. [258]

The same report quotes a breakdown by a laboratory at a Beijing trade university. Memory was 70.1% of chip exports by value in those seven months and grew 221.7%. In the first half the number of chips exported rose only 7%, while the average price rose 83.3%. The surge “is mainly driven by price”. [258]

What Chinese official and press sources say about the 2026 surge in chip exports, with this site’s reading.

Point	What is reported	Source	This site’s reading
Headline	Exports up 99.1% in nine months. Equipment manufacturing gave nearly nine-tenths of all export growth. [257]	Customs administration	a real number Measured in value.
Cause	A worldwide build-out of computing for SI is raising demand for equipment and the intermediate goods to make it. [259]	Customs spokesman	demand-led The same boom that drives foreign makers’ results.
Related goods	Computer parts up 2.1 times, solid-state drives and other storage parts up 1.3 times, servers up 7.2%. [259]	Customs spokesman	components, not systems China sells the parts more than the finished machine.
Composition	Memory is seven-tenths of the value. Growth is in price, not volume. [258]	University laboratory, via a financial news site	the decisive detail A price cycle, not a shift in capability.
Profits	Listed chip firms’ first-half revenue up 12.8% and net profit up 99%. [258]	Financial news site’s tally	consistent Margins widen when prices rise.
The caution	The industry is cyclical, and fast export growth “does not mean every link of the chain is self-sufficient”. Design, manufacturing, equipment and materials still need strengthening. [259]	State radio commentary	a warning in state media Unusual beside a record figure.

What a memory export from China is

The figure is easy to misread as proof that Chinese chipmaking has broken through. Customs counts what leaves Chinese territory. A substantial part of the memory made in China comes from plants owned by the two Korean makers, whose licences to equip those plants are covered elsewhere in this tab, and more is packaged, tested or assembled into modules there. The sources here do not separate Chinese-owned from foreign-owned production, so the share of the $216 billion earned by the Chinese memory makers cannot be stated from them. What can be said is that a world shortage of memory raised the price of everything shipped from China, whoever made it.

How state media framed it

State radio’s commentary took the positive reading first. Near-doubling “is not a short-term accident” but a repositioning of Chinese manufacturing in the world’s computing supply chain: China “has grown into an indispensable key supplier”, and intermediate goods are more than half of all its exports. Then it turned. The more the sector is in favour, it said, the more the weak links have to be repaired, and the figure is “a bright result, and more than that an important reminder”. [259] That is the supply chain argument a Fudan scholar makes in another section, with the qualification he leaves out.

This site’s reading

Three conclusions follow. The controls have not kept China out of the boom they were partly meant to deny it: its exporters are earning from the same demand. The earnings are concentrated in the one segment, memory, where a price cycle can reverse within a year, and Chinese commentators say so. And the trade figure says nothing about the leading edge. A country can double its chip exports and still be unable to make or buy the processors at the centre of the build-out. For the argument about leverage, the useful number is the one the spokesman gave almost in passing: China supplies the parts, and the servers themselves grew by 7.2%.

The customs spokesman’s own description is of breadth, not height: from “optical modules the size of a fingernail to server cabinets weighing tonnes”, Chinese firms supply “practical, mature and reliable” products for the world’s computing and power build-out. [259]

Limits. The growth figures are official customs data as reported by Chinese newspapers, in value terms, and this site did not consult the customs tables. The memory share and the price and volume split come from a university laboratory quoted by a financial news site, with no method given, and cover seven and six months respectively. None of the sources separates exports by the ownership of the producer or distinguishes chips made in China from chips processed or re-exported there. The statement about Korean-owned plants is from this site’s other sections.

China · Huawei’s published plan for SI processors, 2025 and 2026

Huawei says openly that it cannot match a single Nvidia chip because it cannot use TSMC, and plans instead to join thousands of weaker chips, on a schedule it moved forward in 2026

1,000+Supernodes based on the Ascend 910C deployed by September 2026

3 quartersHow far ahead of the 2025 plan one version of the Ascend 960 is now scheduled

4,096Processors linked in one Atlas 960 supernode

40%+Share of training time lost to communication in a 100,000-card cluster of ordinary eight-card servers, by Huawei’s account

2.75 timesGain in useful computing from building the same cluster out of 4,000-card supernodes, by Huawei’s simulation

11Chips Huawei says it has developed for supernodes: computing, interconnect, storage and management

For years Huawei said little about its chips. In September 2025 its rotating chairman published a three-year plan for the Ascend line of SI processors, and in September 2026 the company updated it. [322, 321] The plan is the clearest statement by any Chinese firm of how it intends to live under the American controls.

The 2025 speech stated the constraint in one sentence. Because of American sanctions Huawei “cannot tape out at TSMC”, so the computing power of a single chip is behind Nvidia’s. [322] The answer is to connect more chips: Huawei, the chairman said, has thirty years of experience in connecting people and machines, and can build “supernodes” of ten thousand cards. [322]

The 2026 update reports progress. More than 1,000 supernodes built on the current 910C processor have been deployed, the 950 generation is in commercial use at scale, and the 960 is ahead of plan: one version is due in the first quarter of 2027, three quarters early. [321] The roadmap now runs to a 980 chip in 2029. [321]

Huawei’s Ascend roadmap as announced in September 2025 and updated in September 2026, from Chinese press reports of the two speeches.

Product	2025 plan	2026 update	Note
Ascend 910C	Released in the first quarter of 2025. 800 teraflops at half precision, 128 GB of high-bandwidth memory. [322]	Over 1,000 supernodes deployed. [321]	current A journalist’s comparison puts Nvidia’s then-newest chip at roughly five times this. [322]
Ascend 950PR	First quarter of 2026, with high-bandwidth memory designed by Huawei. [322]	The 950 supernode is “in commercial use at scale”. [321]	own memory Memory for SI chips is itself under American control.
Ascend 950DT	Fourth quarter of 2026. [322]	Not separately reported.	pending
Ascend 960	Fourth quarter of 2027. [322]	960DT in the first quarter of 2027, 960PR in the third quarter. Performance “doubled”. [321]	ahead By three quarters and one quarter.
Ascend 970	Fourth quarter of 2028. [322]	2028. [321]	on plan
Ascend 980	Not in the plan.	2029. “One generation a year.” [321]	extended
Atlas 960 supernode	Announced.	4,096 processors, liquid cooled, with optics packaged close to the chips, third quarter of 2027. [321]	system, not chip Competition moved to interconnect.

The argument for supernodes

Huawei’s case is that in very large clusters the single chip no longer sets the limit. In a 100,000-card cluster made of ordinary eight-card servers, it says, more than 40% of training time goes on communication between machines. A cluster of the same size made of 4,000-card supernodes delivers 2.75 times the useful computing in its simulation. [321] If that holds, a maker with weaker chips and better interconnect can close part of the gap. The figures are the company’s own and come from simulation.

A constraint stated in public

When Huawei introduced its interconnect standard in 2025 it said that because advanced manufacturing processes “cannot be obtained”, it had to seek a breakthrough from many chips. [321] It is unusual for a company to name its handicap from the stage. It serves two audiences. It tells Chinese customers that the gap per chip is known and has an engineering answer, and it tells the state that system-level work, links, optics, memory, is where support counts. The draft technology catalogue of October 2026 lists large-cluster interconnect among technologies whose export would need a licence.

What the roadmap leaves out

Neither speech, as reported, says where the chips are made, on what process, in what numbers, or at what yield. A count of supernodes is not a count of processors. The memory designed by Huawei is announced, not measured. [321, 322] The section on the measured gap sets outside estimates of Chinese production against these claims. The roadmap is evidence of intent and of schedule, from a firm with a record of meeting announced dates, and nothing more.

This is the industrial result the controls produced. Denied the leading process, China’s main chip designer did not stop. It redefined the product from a chip to a system, in which the scarce input is no longer the transistor but the link between processors. [321, 322] That is a field in which a telecoms equipment maker is strong and in which American controls have less purchase.

The cost is real: more chips, more power and more floor space for the same work. China’s official figures show it paying that cost at national scale, with computing capacity nearly tripling in a year. Whether a system of many weaker chips can train the largest models as well as fewer strong ones is the open technical question on which the value of the controls now rests.

Limits. Both speeches were read in Chinese press reports, not in transcript, and every performance and deployment figure is Huawei’s own claim. The comparison with Nvidia’s processor is a Chinese journalist’s conversion between precision formats and is approximate. The name and title of the speaker in 2026 are as the newspaper gives them. Nothing here was checked against shipments, customer reports or teardown evidence, and no independent test of a supernode was found. The statement that memory for SI chips is under American control, and the remark about Huawei’s record of meeting dates, are from general knowledge.

China · Huawei’s proposed successor to Moore’s law, May 2026

Huawei has proposed replacing Moore’s law with a rule of its own: stop shrinking transistors and shorten the time a signal takes instead, by folding logic into stacked layers

25 May 2026Date Huawei presented the Tao law in Shanghai

381Chips Huawei says it designed and put into production from May 2020 to May 2026

+55%Gain in transistor density from logic folding at a fixed process, by the paper’s account

+41%Gain in energy efficiency in the same test

1.4 nmProcess whose transistor density Huawei says its high-end chips will match by 2031

20%Rise in one Chinese foundry’s shares on the day, the daily limit

On 25 May 2026, at an international circuits conference in Shanghai, the head of Huawei’s semiconductor business, He Tingbo, presented what the company calls the Tao law, written with the Greek letter τ. The same day she published a paper on the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ preprint platform, “A Time Scaling Theory for Multi-Layer Electronic Systems”. [230] Chinese reports describe it as the first time China has proposed a guiding principle for the world chip industry. [230, 231]

The argument starts from a claim about Moore’s law. Smaller transistors mattered, the paper says, because they switched faster and sat closer together: what each generation really delivered was less time. Since the 7-nanometre node, shrinking has stopped paying as it did, and a leading design now costs over a billion dollars. So the thing to optimise should be time itself: a characteristic delay, τ, at every layer from the transistor to the data centre, with shrinking as only one of several ways to reduce it. [230]

The method Huawei offers is “LogicFolding”: dividing digital, analog and memory circuits among active layers stacked vertically, so that signals travel shorter paths. The paper reports that on a phone processor, with the manufacturing process unchanged, this raised transistor density by 55% and energy efficiency by 41%. [230]

Huawei’s Tao law and how Chinese commentators read it, from a Chinese news outlet’s report of the speech and paper and its editorial.

Point	What is claimed or argued	Who says it	This site’s reading
The premise	Moore’s law as an “industry contract” no longer holds after 7 nanometres. A 2-nanometre design costs over $1 billion. [230]	Huawei’s paper	widely shared Not controversial in the industry.
The proposal	Optimise the time constant τ at each layer: device, circuit, chip, system. [230]	Huawei’s paper	a reframing Changes what counts as progress.
The method	Logic folding: circuits split across stacked active layers. First used in the 2026 Kirin phone chip, on two layers. [230]	He Tingbo	packaging and design Uses skills China has, not tools it lacks.
The evidence	55% more density and 41% better efficiency at a fixed node. 381 chips in six years. [230]	Huawei’s paper	unverified The company’s own figures.
The forecast	Density from 155 to over 400 million transistors per square millimetre by 2031, equal to a 1.4-nanometre process. [230]	Huawei	a claim Five years out.
A Chinese analyst	It applies the low-delay principle of communication networks inside the chip, an attempt to get around physical limits when advanced processes are restricted. [230]	Analyst at a research firm, quoted	plays to Huawei’s strength
A foreign analyst	Not wholly new: the industry has been moving to system-level integration and stacking for years. Huawei has distilled the trend into a doctrine. [230]	Consultant quoted in the same report	fair The novelty is the framing.
The editorial line	China is moving from “technology follower” to “rule definer”. The contest shifts from “whose process is more advanced” to “whose system performs better”. [231]	Chinese news outlet’s commentary	the political meaning
The stated limit	It can narrow but not remove the effect of a process gap. For very large SI training chips, physical density still sets the ceiling. [231]	Market observers, in the same commentary	the caveat that matters

Why state the constraint as a law

Huawei has been cut off from the leading foundry since 2020. The paper says so: after access to advanced nodes was restricted, the question became how to keep improving a chip when the process is fixed. [230] A company in that position has two choices. It can describe itself as behind on the accepted measure, or it can argue that the measure is wrong. The Tao law does the second. If progress is counted in nanometres, Huawei trails by several generations. If it is counted in delay through the whole system, the gap is smaller and is closing by Huawei’s own work.

What Chinese commentary takes from it

The Chinese outlet’s editorial draws the policy lesson. Under Moore’s law, it says, catching up was very hard. The Tao law depends on design software, circuit design and advanced packaging, “a good part of which China has or can develop”. It widens the contest to two tracks, catching up on process and innovating at the system level, and “wins valuable time” for domestic lithography. [231] State television’s social media account made the same point that day: China’s chips “have taken a path different from the West’s”, and nine years of pressure show that it cannot be stopped. [232]

What it means for the controls

American controls are written in the terms Huawei proposes to abandon: process nodes, transistor density, the tools that produce them. If performance can be had by stacking and by shortening paths at a fixed node, a control on the node bites less. The same logic runs through the city plans on this page, which fund packaging, open architectures and design tools. The honest limit is in the Chinese commentary itself: for the largest training chips, density still sets the ceiling. [231] The controls were aimed at exactly those chips.

The Tao law is the clearest statement of how China’s leading chip designer intends to compete without what it has been denied. It concedes the process race and proposes a different one, in which packaging, design and system integration count for more than lithography. [230, 231] Whether the industry accepts the new measure matters less than whether Huawei’s chips perform.

The first test is public. Huawei said a Kirin phone chip using full logic folding would be released in autumn 2026, and that the method would spread to chips in volume production from 2027. [230] Independent teardowns of those chips will show whether the density and efficiency gains are as described.

Limits. The speech and the paper were not read; this section rests on a Chinese news outlet’s detailed report of both, its editorial, and a technology site’s report of the state television account’s post. Every performance figure is Huawei’s own and none has been independently tested in the material read. The analysts’ remarks are as quoted in the report. Whether the autumn 2026 phone chip was released as announced, and what teardowns found, was not checked. The reading of the law as a response to the controls, and of its limits, is this site’s, drawing on the Chinese commentary.

China · a leading Chinese chip scientist’s diagnosis, July 2026

China’s best-known chip academic says the country’s SI chips face three walls, in computing, memory and interconnect, and that only a “disruptive” architecture gets over them

3Walls Wei names: computing, memory and communication

75%Share of model training time spent on pre-training, by his account, which is why very large computing power is needed

Weeks, months, yearsHis timescales for change in applications, in models and in chips

14 nmProcess on which he says his company’s chip was built

85%+Computing efficiency he claims for its architecture

All domesticSupply chain he describes as the design’s main value

Wei Shaojun, a Tsinghua University professor who for years led the chip design branch of China’s semiconductor industry association, gave a keynote at the World SI Conference in Shanghai on 18 July 2026. A Chinese investment publication printed part of the transcript. [233] It is the most direct public assessment by a senior Chinese expert of where the country’s SI chips stand.

He begins with dependence. The large models, “including China’s”, were developed in deep attachment to one American company’s chips and software, and the attachment “is still deepening”. He does not blame the model makers: “they have no alternative, because our domestic models and domestic chips have not developed well enough”. But when model development is bound to that company’s chips, he says, the development and use of SI “will be subject to control”. [233]

Then the diagnosis, as three questions. Does China have the advanced process needed for high-performance chips? Does it have memory with large capacity and high access bandwidth? Does it have the high-speed interconnect that keeps a large cluster stable? “These three things are three very large difficulties lying across the road.” He names them the computing wall, the memory wall and the communication wall. [233]

Wei Shaojun’s argument at the World SI Conference, July 2026, from a partial transcript published in China.

Step	What he says	How it compares	This site’s reading
Dependence	Chinese models are bound to one foreign firm’s chips and software, and the binding deepens. [233]	The section on Cambricon shows domestic demand shifting. He says the software tie remains.	candid An admission rarely made in official texts.
Computing wall	The advanced process for high-performance chips is not available. [233]	Huawei’s roadmap and Tao law start from the same fact.	agreed All three Chinese accounts accept it.
Memory wall	Large, fast memory is not available. [233]	The section on stacked memory reports yields of 20% to 30%.	confirmed The binding constraint in 2026.
Communication wall	Interconnect for large stable clusters is lacking. [233]	The industry ministry lists interconnect as a research task.	being worked on
The principle	Raw computing power is “only one parameter”. What counts is the match between computing, memory and interconnect. [233]	Huawei argues the same about clusters.	shared doctrine System balance over peak figures.
The remedy	A new architecture: software-defined, reconfigurable computing, three-dimensional stacking to shorten memory access, and a mixed packaging structure. [233]	Beijing’s plan names the same routes.	his own product He chairs the company that makes it.
The claim	A chip on a 14-nanometre process with memory bandwidth 50% above the best abroad, avoiding advanced processes altogether. [233]	No independent test found.	unverified
The value	“Our most important value is the fully domestic supply chain, not any single indicator.” [233]	The same aim as the five-year plan.	the point Security of supply ranks above performance.

An expert with an interest

The speech must be read with one fact in mind. Wei is chairman of the company whose chip he describes, and the second half of the talk is a presentation of its product. [233] His diagnosis is nonetheless the standard one, and it matches what Huawei and the official plans say. His remedy is the one he sells. The performance figures he gives are his company’s claims, made at an investment forum.

The mismatch of timescales

His most useful observation is about time. Applications change by the week, models by the month, chips by the year, and installed systems last five or ten years. [233] A chip must therefore be flexible enough to serve models that do not yet exist. That is his case for reconfigurable hardware. It is also an argument against judging a chip by benchmark figures at launch, which favours a late entrant: a design that adapts may outlast one that was fastest on the day it shipped.

Where he agrees with the controls’ authors

The three walls are the three things the American controls restrict: leading-edge manufacturing, high-bandwidth memory, and the networking that ties clusters together. A Chinese expert listing his country’s obstacles has reproduced the American list of chokepoints. Both sides agree on where the pressure is. They disagree on whether architecture can relieve it. Wei says it can “completely avoid” advanced processes. The Chinese commentary on the Tao law says more cautiously that for the largest chips it cannot.

Taken with Huawei’s Tao law, this speech shows a consensus among China’s senior chip people in 2026. They accept that the leading process, fast memory and cluster interconnect are out of reach for now, and they argue that the answer is a different architecture built on a domestic supply chain. [233, 230]

The consensus has a commercial side: each proponent has a product. It also has a testable side. If chips built this way train and run large models at a cost customers accept, the argument is won in the market. The inventories and price rises recorded in other sections suggest that in 2026 the walls were still standing.

Limits. This section rests on a partial transcript of the speech published by a Chinese investment publication; passages may be omitted, and the text contains transcription errors that were read in context. The speaker chairs the company whose product he describes, and its performance figures are unverified. His past role at the industry association is from general knowledge. The comparisons in the table draw on other sections of this page. Translations are this site’s.

China · The design industry’s annual report, 2025 and 2026

China’s chip design industry passed $100 billion in sales in 2025, and its own association head says it is still “small, scattered and weak”: 87% of about 3,900 firms have fewer than 100 people

$118bnExpected sales of China’s chip design industry in 2025, as reported in November 2025

About 3,900Chip design firms in China

87%Share of them with fewer than 100 employees

831Firms with sales above 100 million yuan, up from 731

7.7%Share of computer chips in the industry’s sales, against about 25% worldwide

19.6%Compound annual growth over twenty years to 2025

Each November the head of the design branch of China’s semiconductor industry association, Wei Shaojun of Tsinghua University, presents the year’s figures for the firms that design chips without making them. In November 2025, in Chengdu, he reported expected sales of 835.7 billion yuan, up 29.4%, or about $118 billion, the first time above $100 billion. [260]

He set the growth in a long run. Over twenty years to 2025 the industry grew at a compound rate of 19.6% a year and is, he said, the only segment that has never recorded a decline since statistics began. It could reach a trillion yuan before 2030. [260]

Then he gave the other side. The 831 firms with sales above 100 million yuan account for 84% of the total, and by his reckoning concentration “has not improved”: “the basic condition of firms being small, scattered and weak has not changed”. In June 2026 he added the count: about 3,900 design firms, 87% of them with fewer than a hundred employees. [260, 261]

The Chinese chip design industry by its own association’s figures, with this site’s reading.

Measure	Figure	Wei Shaojun’s comment	This site’s reading
Sales, 2025	835.7 billion yuan expected in November 2025. Stated as 826.1 billion, up 24.8%, in June 2026. [260, 261]	A new high point of growth is arriving, driven by SI and electric vehicles.	two figures The later, lower one is presumably the final count.
Number of firms	About 3,900, with 87% under a hundred staff. [261]	The share of very small firms is “too high”.	fragmentation More design firms than the rest of the world needs.
Larger firms	831 above 100 million yuan in sales. Half are in the Yangtze delta. [260]	Their combined share is lower than the year before once integrated makers are excluded.	not consolidating Growth is spread thin.
Product mix	Communications and consumer chips are 66.5% of sales. Computer chips are 7.7%. [260]	“Our chip products are on the whole still at the middle and low end.”	the frank line Processors are where the value and the controls are.
Costs	The high costs of SI chip firms are not yet fully visible and will show as products reach the market or firms list. [260]	Finding ways to cut costs “cannot wait”: raise productivity, raise margins.	a warning Aimed at the accelerator start-ups.
People	Middle and lower-level talent is roughly sufficient. High-end talent is short. [261]	Talent policy should be improved and carried out.	matches the job market The same finding as the business daily’s, covered in another section.

A strong industry made of weak firms

The two halves of the report do not contradict each other. The industry is large because the Chinese market for chips is the world’s largest and because phone, network and appliance makers buy locally. It is fragmented because entry has been cheap: licensed designs, contract manufacturing and, for a decade, local subsidies and easy venture money. The result is thousands of firms making similar power, connectivity and controller chips. Wei has given the same verdict for years, and the 2025 figures let him say that a record year did nothing to change it.

Why it matters for the controls

American export controls bear on a narrow part of this picture: the processors for computing, which are 7.7% of Chinese design sales. That is the part China most wants and where its firms are fewest and newest. The other nine-tenths of the industry is barely touched by the controls and competes on price in mature products, where the pressure comes from each other. This is why the same year can produce both a sales record and, in other sections of this tab, a wave of mergers and reports of idle accelerators from minor makers.

This site’s reading

The figure to watch is not total sales but concentration. Chinese policy since 2024 has encouraged mergers among listed chip firms, and the stock exchange has made listing harder for firms without repeat orders. If those measures work, the share of the largest firms should rise and the count of 3,900 should fall. By the association’s own numbers that had not begun by the end of 2025. Until it does, China’s design sector has scale without the few very large firms that can afford a leading-edge chip, which now costs over a billion dollars to design by the estimate quoted elsewhere in this tab.

Wei’s advice to firms in November 2025 was plain management: raise output per person to spread high costs, and raise the competitiveness of products so that margins cover them. [260]

Limits. The figures are the association’s own estimates, presented by its design branch head and reported by a financial daily and a financial news wire. The November 2025 sales figure was a forecast for the year, and it differs from the figure given in June 2026. Definitions of a design firm and of sales are the association’s. This site has not seen the November 2026 report. The explanation of why the industry is fragmented is this site’s.

China · the leading listed designer of SI processors, 2026

Cambricon, on the American Entity List, doubled its revenue to 9.5 billion yuan in nine months of 2026 and holds 14.7 billion yuan of stock and prepayments, which shows that supply, not demand, is its limit

9.53bn yuanRevenue, January to September 2026, up 106.8%

3.72bn yuanProfit attributable to shareholders in the same period, up 131.5%

11.67bn yuanInventory at the end of September, up 41% since June

99.98%Share of first-half revenue from the cloud processor line

127,700Processor cards produced in 2025, about five times the year before

100bn yuanCumulative revenue the company has set as its target for 2026 to 2028

Huawei does not publish accounts for its chip business. Cambricon does. It is the largest listed Chinese designer of processors for SI, it was placed on the American Entity List in 2022, and it must have its chips made by others. Its third-quarter report of 23 October 2026 gives revenue of 3.53 billion yuan for the quarter, up 104%, and 9.53 billion for the first nine months, up 107%, with profit of 3.72 billion. [345]

The balance sheet is the informative part. At the end of September the company held inventory of 11.67 billion yuan, up 41% in three months, and had paid suppliers 3.04 billion in advance. [345] Together that is 14.7 billion yuan committed to stock and to securing supply, against nine-month revenue of 9.5 billion. [346] Cash from operations in the third quarter was negative, and cash in hand fell to 555 million yuan. [345]

A company in that position is not short of buyers. It is buying every wafer and every memory chip it can obtain.

Cambricon in 2026, from Chinese financial press reports of its quarterly and half-year reports.

Item	Figure	Source	Reading
Revenue	3.11bn yuan in the second quarter, 3.53bn in the third, 9.53bn in nine months. [345]	Third-quarter report, as reported	doubling Record quarters since listing.
Profit	1.40bn yuan in the third quarter, 3.72bn in nine months. [345]	Same	profitable After years of losses.
Stock and prepayments	Inventory 11.67bn, prepayments 3.04bn. [345]	Same	supply-bound More held in stock than sold in nine months.
Cash	Operating cash flow of minus 84 million yuan in the third quarter. Cash 555 million. Liabilities up 56% since June to 7.24bn. [345]	Same	stretched Profit is going into stock.
Product	One line. The flagship entered volume production at the start of 2026: over 700 teraflops at half precision, 196 GB of high-bandwidth memory, double its predecessor. [346]	Press report	near Huawei’s current chip By the companies’ own figures.
Customers	Highly concentrated. One customer was 96.5% of revenue in the first quarter of 2025. A third-party estimate puts one internet company’s 2026 orders at about 20 billion yuan, more than could be delivered. [346]	Press report, citing channel research	demand exceeds supply If the estimate is right, by a factor of two.
A second designer	MetaX forecasts nine-month revenue of 2.5 to 3.1 billion yuan, up 106% to 151%, and a profit. [345]	Results forecast, as reported	a field forming

Where the bottleneck is

The reports do not say who makes the chips. As a listed entity, the company cannot use the leading foreign foundry for advanced processors, and the domestic foundry’s advanced capacity is limited, as the sections on SMIC and the measured gap describe. The high-bandwidth memory beside the processor is also restricted. The inventory and prepayments are consistent with a firm paying ahead for scarce wafers and memory. That is this site’s reading of the balance sheet, and the company’s own explanation, as reported, is only that it is “expanding the market”. [345]

What the controls did to demand

Chinese internet companies bought the American leader’s processors until the controls and, from late 2025, China’s own guidance against them closed that route, as other sections describe. Their spending did not stop. It moved to domestic suppliers. A firm that had revenue of a few hundred million yuan three years ago is on course for well over ten billion in 2026 and has announced a target of 100 billion over three years. [345] The American controls created this company’s market. Whether it can be supplied is the open question.

Scale against the national total

In 2025 the company produced 127,700 processor cards. [346] The section on China’s compute estimates the national installed base as the equivalent of about 2.7 million processors of a similar class. One year of this company’s output is therefore about a twentieth of that. The comparison is rough and mixes sources, and it supports one conclusion only: the listed domestic designers are still a small part of the computing power China reports, and the rest comes from Huawei, from foreign chips bought earlier, and from sources the official figures do not divide.

Cambricon’s accounts are the best public measure of the domestic substitute for the processors China may no longer buy freely. They show strong demand, high margins and rapid growth. They also show a company whose stock and advance payments exceed its sales, which is what a supply ceiling looks like in a set of accounts. [345, 346]

That ceiling is where the controls still bind. The United States cannot stop Chinese firms designing processors or Chinese customers buying them. It can limit the advanced manufacturing and the memory they need. The inventory line in this company’s next reports will show whether that limit is easing.

Limits. The quarterly report was not read; figures are from two Chinese financial press reports of it. The customer concentration, the estimate of one customer’s orders, the product specifications and 2025 output are from one report citing the half-year report and third-party research, and the order estimate is unverified. Who manufactures the chips is not stated in the reports read. The Entity List date, the statements about foundry and memory restrictions, the company’s earlier revenue, and the interpretation of the inventory are from general knowledge and the other sections of this site. The comparison with national computing capacity uses this site’s own rough estimate.

China · high-bandwidth memory, 2026, from Taiwanese press

China’s DRAM maker is reported to be producing stacked memory for SI chips at yields of 20% to 30%, and Chinese chip designers have raised prices by 20% to 50% because memory is short

20% to 30%Reported yield of the Hefei maker’s newest stacked memory in November 2026

12 layersStack height it was reported to be producing in volume from April 2026

about 20%Share of its DRAM capacity reported given over to stacked memory

20% to 50%Reported price rises on Chinese SI chips because of memory cost and supply

within 3 yearsGap to the South Korean leaders, as the April 2026 report puts it

3Firms that make almost all the world’s high-bandwidth memory

An SI processor needs fast memory stacked beside it, known as high-bandwidth memory. Three firms make almost all of it, two South Korean and one American, and since December 2024 American rules have restricted its sale to China. It is the component the section on Cambricon points to when it finds a company holding more stock and prepayments than sales.

China’s answer is its DRAM maker in Hefei. Taiwanese technology and business press, citing foreign and market reports, describe its progress. In April 2026 it was reported to have begun volume production of memory stacked twelve layers high, giving about a fifth of its DRAM capacity to the product, some 60,000 wafers a month. [355] In November 2026 it was reported to be preparing small-volume production of the next grade at a yield of only 20% to 30%, with performance closer to the previous generation. [356]

The Taiwanese business daily reports the consequence on the other side. Huawei, Cambricon and two other Chinese designers of SI chips have raised the prices of some current and coming products by 20% to 50% because of the cost and scarcity of memory. [356]

Reports of China’s progress in high-bandwidth memory in 2026, from Taiwanese technology and business press and Chinese company statements.

Date	Report	Source	Reading
September 2025	Huawei says its Ascend processors from the first quarter of 2026 will use high-bandwidth memory of its own design. [322]	Huawei’s roadmap speech, as reported in China	a claim Who makes it is not stated.
April 2026	The Hefei DRAM maker begins volume production of twelve-layer stacked memory. Yield below the South Korean makers’. Aim is to meet domestic demand. [355]	Taiwanese technology site, citing foreign reports	in production A generation or more behind.
April 2026	About a fifth of its DRAM capacity, some 60,000 wafers a month, said to be assigned to the product. [355]	Same	volume over yield Capacity used to offset low yield.
October 2026	The company announces progress on a denser DRAM cell design and plans a server memory product on it by year-end. Foreign memory shares fall on the news. [356]	Taiwanese business daily	markets take it seriously
November 2026	Small-volume production of the next grade prepared, at 20% to 30% yield, performance near the previous generation. [356]	Same	early Not yet a commercial product.
November 2026	Chinese SI chip designers raise prices 20% to 50% on memory cost and supply. [356]	Same	the bottleneck priced Shortage passed to customers.

Why produce at a quarter yield

A yield of 20% to 30% means most of what is made is scrap, and the Taiwanese daily notes the product may cost more than the foreign one and has no measurable market share. [356] The paper’s explanation is that the firm is not competing for the foreign leaders’ customers. It is supplying Huawei, Cambricon and other Chinese designers who cannot buy elsewhere, “filling the link the domestic SI chip supply chain most lacks”. [356] When the alternative is no memory at all, a costly domestic part is worth making, and a firm that raised 58 billion yuan at listing can afford the scrap while it learns.

The market’s fear

Foreign memory makers’ shares fell on the October announcement, before any volume product existed. [356] The daily gives the reason: memory is cyclical, new capacity can reverse prices quickly, and Chinese firms have shown in solar panels, batteries and electric cars how fast they expand once a process works. [356] The section on silicon carbide records a case where that happened. Investors are pricing the same sequence in memory years before it could occur.

The control that still binds

Of the American controls described on this page, the restriction on high-bandwidth memory is the one whose effect can be seen most directly in 2026. Chinese designers have orders they cannot fill, hold stock and prepayments beyond their sales, and are raising prices. The domestic substitute exists at a quarter yield. That is a control working as designed: it has not stopped the industry, and it has made its key input scarce and expensive for at least the two to three years the reports give as the gap.

Stacked memory is where the contest over SI hardware is tightest in 2026. China can design processors and can make them in limited numbers. It can package them. The memory beside them is the part it makes worst, and every Chinese source on this page that shows strain, in inventories, in prices, in delayed deliveries, traces back to it.

The direction is nonetheless the one seen elsewhere. The Hefei maker began with ordinary memory a generation behind, lost money for years, and is now the world’s fourth-largest. It is applying the same method to stacked memory with far more capital. The reports put the gap at under three years. The control buys that time, and the question for those who set it is what they do with it.

Limits. This section rests on two articles from Taiwanese technology and business press, written in Chinese, which themselves cite foreign media and market reports; the Hefei company has not confirmed the yields or volumes, and a mainland source giving them was not found. A Korean industry association’s estimate of a three-year gap and a 25% yield was seen in a search summary. Reported capacity figures for the product vary widely between reports and the one given is a single report’s. Huawei’s claim of self-designed memory is from its roadmap speech as reported, with no detail on manufacture. The scope and date of the American restriction, and the description of what high-bandwidth memory is, are from general knowledge. The link drawn to Cambricon’s inventory is this site’s inference.

China · SMIC’s quarterly results, 2026

SMIC, the foundry at the centre of the American controls, reported its best quarter on 12 November 2026: $3.19 billion in revenue, a 29.9% gross margin and plants running almost full

$3.19bnRevenue in the third quarter of 2026, up 6.1% on the quarter before

29.9%Gross margin, against 22.0% a year earlier as reported

97.3%Capacity utilisation in the third quarter, as reported

1.0965mMonthly capacity at the end of June 2026, in eight-inch-equivalent wafers

about $8.1bnCapital spending expected for 2026, level with 2025, as analysts report it

16.5%Share of wafer revenue from industrial and automotive customers in the second quarter, up from 10.6% a year earlier

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation has been on the American Entity List since 2020 and cannot buy the most advanced lithography machines. It is also China’s largest foundry and reports every quarter. Its third-quarter report, published on 12 November 2026, gives revenue of $3.19 billion, up 6.1% on the second quarter, and a gross margin of 29.9%, up 4.6 points and above the company’s own forecast of 26% to 28%. [330]

The second quarter had already set a record: $3.006 billion, the first quarter above $3 billion, up 36.1% on a year earlier, with profit attributable to shareholders of $479 million, up 261.7%. [331] Utilisation rose from 93.1% in the first quarter to 93.7% in the second and, as reported, 97.3% in the third. [331, 333]

The company attributes the rise to more wafers sold, higher average prices and a better product mix. [331] It raised prices on scarce products by negotiation from February 2026, and from the third quarter all new wafers carried the higher prices. [332]

SMIC’s 2026 results, from its third-quarter report and Chinese financial press reports of its announcements.

Measure	Second quarter 2026	Third quarter 2026	Reading
Revenue	$3.006bn, up 36.1% on the year and 20.0% on the quarter. [331]	$3.19bn, up 6.1% on the quarter. [330]	record Two successive records.
Gross margin	25.3%. [331]	29.9%. Forecast for the fourth quarter 26% to 28%. [330]	pricing power Price rises outran depreciation.
Utilisation	93.7%. [331]	97.3%, as reported. [333]	full Demand exceeds capacity.
Wafers and capacity	2.869 million wafers sold. Monthly capacity 1.0965 million, up from 1.0783 million. [331]	Not read.	steady expansion About 40,000 twelve-inch wafers a month added in the year. [332]
Where demand comes from	Consumer electronics 44.2%, phones 16.9%, computers 15.6%, industrial and automotive 16.5%, connectivity 6.8%. [331]	Not read.	shift to industry Only the industrial and automotive share rose on both comparisons.
Cost pressure	Depreciation and amortisation of $1.2bn in the quarter, $130m more than in the first. [332]	Management expects costs to keep rising and utilisation to dip in the fourth quarter. [333]	the weight of new plants
Outlook	Third quarter revenue up 2% to 4%. [331]	Fourth quarter revenue up 4% to 6%. Full-year revenue above $12bn, as reported. [330, 333]	about 30% growth

What kind of chips

The demand SMIC describes is not for leading-edge processors. The management said the spillover from SI “brings wide demand for chip manufacturing”, and analysts name the products: power management chips, microcontrollers and image sensors around SI servers, with computer makers buying ahead. [331, 332] These are made on mature processes that no American rule restricts. SMIC’s record year comes from the part of the industry the controls leave alone, tightened by a boom the controls did not prevent.

Substitution at home

Analysts quoted in the Chinese press add a second cause: “deepening domestic substitution”, Chinese customers moving orders to a Chinese foundry. [332] The section on the Nexperia dispute shows why a carmaker would want a domestic source for plain chips, and the section on car chips shows the state lowering the cost of switching. A headline in the Chinese press in November 2026 put SMIC’s domestic sales at 91% of the total. That figure was seen only as a headline and is not relied on here.

The cost of building under controls

SMIC spends about $8 billion a year on plants and equipment, roughly two-thirds of its revenue, and depreciation rises every quarter. [332] A foundry with free access to the best tools would earn more from each plant. The December 2025 capital injection into its advanced-process subsidiary, described in the section on the third national fund, shows who carries that cost. The 2026 margin shows that, at this point in the cycle, customers are carrying part of it too.

SMIC’s results answer a narrow question about the controls. They were meant to keep the firm from the leading edge, and its published results say nothing to suggest they failed at that: the report does not break out advanced processes. They were never meant to stop it being a large, profitable maker of ordinary chips, and it has become one, with plants 97% full and prices rising. [330, 333]

The risk the company names is the cycle. Its forecast for the fourth quarter has margin falling back as depreciation grows and as it runs more engineering and research wafers. [333] Those research wafers are the part of the business the controls target, and the report gives no detail on them.

Limits. The third-quarter report was read in a financial portal’s reproduction, in which the tables did not come through; only the management commentary was read, so revenue, margin and the fourth-quarter forecast are from the report and the other third-quarter figures (utilisation, nine-month totals, the full-year outlook and management’s remarks) are from a search summary of press coverage. Second-quarter figures are from a Chinese financial data service’s report of the announcement, and the capital spending, depreciation and pricing details from a securities firm’s preview. SMIC does not publish revenue by process node in the material read. The Entity List date and the statement about lithography are from general knowledge.

China · domestic chip equipment makers, first half of 2026

China’s 27 listed chip toolmakers sold 56.7 billion yuan of equipment in the first half of 2026, up 31%, and domestic machines are reported at about a third of those installed in Chinese plants

56.7bn yuanCombined first-half 2026 revenue of 27 listed Chinese chip toolmakers, up 31.1%

+94.4%Rise in their combined profit

35%Reported share of domestic machines among those installed in Chinese chip plants in 2025, up from 25% in 2024

23%Reported domestic share of new equipment purchases in 2025

22.6bn yuanCustomer prepayments held by the 27 firms, a guide to orders in hand, up 12.8%

8 of 27Firms whose profit fell. Four made a loss

The American controls rest on tools. If China cannot buy the machines, the argument runs, it cannot make the chips. The counter-move is to make the machines. The half-year reports of the 27 chip equipment makers listed on mainland exchanges give a measure of how far that has gone: combined revenue of 56.69 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, up 31.1%, and combined profit of 13.66 billion yuan, up 94.4%. [334]

The largest, Naura, passed 20 billion yuan in six months. The etch specialist AMEC passed 6.6 billion. [334] A South Korean trade paper’s research, reported in the Chinese press, puts domestic machines at about 23% of what Chinese chipmakers bought in 2025 and about 35% of what is installed in their plants, up from 25% a year earlier. [329]

The same report gives a reason beyond policy. Delivery times from the five largest foreign toolmakers have stretched to one and a half or two times what they were, to about twelve months for etch and deposition tools, as those firms serve the leading foreign chipmakers first. Chinese toolmakers quote nine or ten months. [329]

China’s listed chip equipment makers in the first half of 2026, from a Chinese financial data service’s summary of their half-year reports and a Chinese news site’s report of South Korean research.

Firm or measure	First half of 2026	What it makes	Reading
Naura	Revenue above 20 billion yuan. [334]	Etch, deposition, furnaces, cleaning.	the platform A third of the group’s total.
AMEC	Above 6.6 billion yuan, up about 35%. [334, 329]	Etch.	closest to the frontier Moving from mature to advanced etch. [329]
Piotech	About 2.9 billion yuan, up 49%. Profit of 1.34 billion, up thirteen-fold. [329, 334]	Thin-film deposition.	scale effect Costs spread once a tool is qualified.
ACM Research (Shanghai)	3.72 billion yuan, net margin 26.6%. [334]	Cleaning.	profitable niche
Hwatsing	About 2.6 billion yuan, up 36%. [329]	Polishing.	niche
Changchuan	About 3.4 billion yuan, up 60%. [329]	Test equipment.	back end
The laggards	Eight firms with falling profit, four in loss, mainly in inspection and cleaning. [334]	Crowded segments.	shake-out Price competition among Chinese firms.
South Korean suppliers	Two toolmakers with about 85% of sales in China saw revenue fall 24% and 41% in 2025. [329]	Deposition, inspection.	who loses Mid-tier foreign suppliers are displaced first.

Where domestic tools stop

The Chinese sources are plain about the limit. The head of a Guangdong chipmaker says domestic equipment can now do more and more in mature processes, but that for advanced processes, “especially high-end key equipment, there is still a long way to go”. An academic adds that core components and high-end tools remain the bottleneck and that domestic parts need to come faster. [334] The Korean research notes that extreme-ultraviolet lithography remains out of reach, and that the gains are in etch, deposition and peripheral equipment. [329]

An unintended helper

The lengthening of foreign delivery times is a consequence of the boom in SI chips, not of any control. Foreign toolmakers are serving the three leading chipmakers first, and Chinese plants that could lawfully buy a mature-process tool wait a year or more for it. [329] A Chinese tool that arrives in nine months wins the order. The controls created the motive to qualify domestic tools. The world shortage of 2026 supplied the opportunity.

The economics of qualification

The data service’s analysis explains the profit pattern. A toolmaker carries years of research and customer testing before a tool is accepted. Once it is accepted and reordered, each further unit is cheap to make and profit rises steeply. [334] Chinese plants opening their lines to domestic tools, which the planning commission’s newspaper reported in 2026, moves firms across that threshold. The third national fund’s purchases, described in its section, are aimed at the same point.

A third of installed machines is a large share to reach in five years, and it changes what the controls can do. They still deny China the handful of tools it cannot make, above all advanced lithography. For most other steps a Chinese plant now has a domestic supplier whose sales are growing by a third a year and whose customers have every reason to keep buying. [334, 329]

The cost falls on a group the debate seldom mentions: the second tier of foreign toolmakers, Korean and others, whose China sales are shrinking as American controls and Chinese policy push in the same direction. [329] The section on what the controls cost the sellers measures this for the largest firms. The Chinese half-year reports show it reaching the smaller ones.

Limits. The half-year reports were not read; the totals and firm figures are from a Chinese financial data service’s article, and several firm figures are from a Chinese news site’s report of a South Korean trade paper, which converted them from won. The share estimates are that paper’s citation of a research firm that the Chinese report does not name; another estimate seen in a search summary puts the domestic share of 2025 purchases at 21%. “Domestic share” of installed machines is by count or value as the source does not say. What each firm makes is from general knowledge. The statement that plants open their lines to domestic tools is from the planning commission’s newspaper, cited in another section.

China · official statistics on industrial profits, 2026

China’s statistics bureau says profit in the integrated circuit industry grew 18.5 times over in the first seven months of 2026, and that electronics supplied most of the growth in all industrial profit

18.5 timesGrowth in integrated circuit industry profit, January to July 2026, as the statistics bureau states it

80%+Share of the rise in electronics profit that came from integrated circuits in that period

9.6 pointsContribution of electronics to the 15.5% growth of all industrial profit, January to September

+52%Growth in profit of high-technology manufacturing, January to September

25.5%Share of high-technology manufacturing in all industrial profit, up 6.2 points in a year

2.2 timesGrowth in profit of electronic materials makers, January to September

Every month China’s National Bureau of Statistics publishes the profits of larger industrial firms. In 2026 the electronics industry has carried the series. For January to September, the bureau’s chief industrial statistician wrote, electronics profit “doubled”, and that alone added 9.6 percentage points to the growth of all industrial profit, which was 15.5%. [340]

The bureau was more specific in August. For January to July, electronics profit had risen 1.1 times over. Within it, “the integrated circuit industry, represented by computing chips and memory chips”, saw profit grow 18.5 times over, and accounted for more than 80% of the whole electronics increase. [341] The bureau gave the cause in its own words: demand from SI and computing raised the demand for these products and “pulled up prices”. [341]

On the bureau’s figures, then, about three-fifths of the growth in the profits of all Chinese industry in the first nine months of 2026 came from electronics, and most of that from chips.

Profits of China’s larger industrial firms in 2026, from the National Bureau of Statistics’ releases and its statistician’s commentary.

Measure	January to July	January to September	Reading
All industry	Profit up 17.6%. [341]	Up 15.5%. [340]	strong Double-digit all year.
Electronics	Up 1.1 times over, adding 9.3 points. [341]	Up 1.0 times over, adding 9.6 points. [340]	the engine About three-fifths of all growth.
Integrated circuits	Up 18.5 times over, more than 80% of the electronics rise. [341]	Not given separately in the commentary read.	memory and computing chips From a low base in 2025.
Related sectors	Not read.	Electronic materials up 2.2 times over, discrete semiconductors up 51.7%, optoelectronic devices up 69.8%, circuit boards up 62.5%. [340]	the chain Profit spreading upstream and downstream.
Computing hardware	Not read.	Optical fibre up 5.7 times over. Computer peripherals up 2.8 times over, whole computers up 1.7 times over. [340]	data-centre building
Ownership	State-controlled firms up 16.3%, private firms up 10.9%, foreign-invested firms up 1.2%. [341]	State-controlled up 13.1%, private up 8.7%. [340]	state firms ahead Foreign-invested firms barely shared in it.

Who the profit belongs to

The bureau does not name firms, but the listings described on this page do. The DRAM maker in Hefei reported 33 billion yuan of profit in one quarter and the flash maker in Wuhan 33.5 billion, both from losses or small profits a year before. SMIC reported its best quarters. Two memory makers by themselves account for a large part of an eighteen-fold rise from a low base. They are state-owned. The bureau’s breakdown by ownership agrees: state-controlled firms’ profit grew faster than private firms’, and foreign-invested firms’ hardly at all. [341]

Price, again

The statistics bureau’s explanation is the same as the customs data and the prospectuses give. Demand for computing raised the price of memory and computing chips. [341] Chinese makers of ordinary memory benefited because the three foreign leaders moved capacity to memory for SI servers. A base effect is also at work: memory makers were losing money or barely profitable in early 2025, so any multiple of that is large. An increase of 18.5 times over measures how low the starting point was as much as how high the peak is.

What it means for policy

For a decade China’s chip policy was defended against the charge that it burned money. In 2026 the official statistics show the sector as the main source of industrial profit growth, and state capital can point to listed holdings worth several times what was invested. That changes the politics of subsidy inside China. The five-year plan’s “extraordinary measures” were written before these figures. They now have a result to cite, earned in the segment where the controls were tightest and at a moment when the market leaders looked elsewhere.

These figures are the widest measure on this page of how China’s chip industry fared in 2026, and they come from the state’s own statistics. They do not measure technology. They measure money, and they show an industry that five years of controls were expected to weaken supplying most of the growth in Chinese industrial profit. [340, 341]

The same figures carry their own warning. A sector whose profit can rise eighteen-fold in a year on price can lose it as fast. If memory prices fall in 2027, the series will turn, and the argument inside China over what the subsidies bought will be made again on worse numbers.

Limits. The January to September figures are from the statistics bureau’s published commentary, read in full on its site; the January to July figures are from a financial data service’s reproduction of the bureau’s release. Chinese statistical language gives growth as multiples added (“grew 18.5 times”), which this page renders as “18.5 times over”; the exact base was not published in the material read. The bureau does not define “the integrated circuit industry” in these releases or name firms, so the attribution to memory makers and SMIC is this site’s inference from the company reports described in other sections. The share of all profit growth due to electronics is this site’s arithmetic (9.6 of 15.5 points). No September figure for integrated circuits alone was found.

Taiwan · official trade statistics, October 2026

Taiwan exported $96.8 billion of goods in October 2026, up 59% in a year, and its finance ministry expects the year to pass $900 billion, which would make it the world’s seventh or eighth largest exporter

$96.76bnExports in October 2026, up 58.9%, a record

36 monthsUnbroken run of export growth, the longest recorded

$758.3bnExports, January to October 2026, up 47.7%

about 80%Share of exports that is electronic components and information and communication products

31.7%Share of exports going to the United States in the first ten months, a 36-year high, as reported

$27.9bnTrade surplus in October, a record

The section on China’s chip trade shows a price boom passing through the mainland’s customs figures. Taiwan’s are more striking. On 9 November 2026 the finance ministry reported exports of $96.76 billion for October, the first month above $90 billion, up 58.9% on a year earlier and the thirty-sixth month of growth in a row, the longest run on record. [593]

Two categories carry it. Information and communication products, which is mainly servers and graphics cards, were $47.6 billion, up 72.9%. Electronic components, which is mainly chips, were $32.68 billion, up 61.4%. [593] Together they are about four-fifths of everything Taiwan sells abroad. [595]

For January to October exports were $758.29 billion, up 47.7%, and the ministry’s chief statistician said the year would pass $900 billion “without any doubt”. That would lift Taiwan from its best previous world ranking, ninth in the 1980s, to seventh or eighth, behind only mainland China, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and South Korea. [593, 594]

Taiwan’s trade in October 2026 and the year to date, from the finance ministry’s release as reported by Taiwan’s news agency and a business daily.

Measure	Figure	Source	Reading
Exports, October	$96.76 billion, up 58.9%. [593]	Finance ministry	record First month above $90 billion.
Imports, October	$68.89 billion, up 75.1%, also a record. [593]	Finance ministry	equipment and parts Imports rising faster than exports.
Information and communication products	$47.6 billion, up 72.9%. Servers and graphics cards at record highs. Storage, switches and routers multiplied. [593]	Ministry’s chief statistician	SI hardware Assembled systems now exceed chips.
Electronic components	$32.68 billion, up 61.4%. High-end chips, expanded advanced capacity, and tight memory supply. [593]	Same	chips Integrated circuits alone about $31.2 billion, as reported. [595]
Year to date	$758.29 billion, up 47.7%. Over $800 billion expected by November and $900 billion by December. [593, 594]	Same	unprecedented In the ministry’s words, never seen in Taiwan’s export history.
World rank	Seventh or eighth, from a previous best of ninth in 1984 to 1987. [594]	Same	above its weight An economy of 23 million people.
Destination	United States 31.7% of exports in the first ten months. [595]	Reported from the release	shift The United States has replaced mainland China and Hong Kong as the largest market.

From chips to systems

The detail that matters is which category leads. Information and communication products, at $47.6 billion, are now well ahead of electronic components at $32.7 billion. [593] Taiwan no longer only makes the processor. It assembles the server around it and ships the finished machine, mostly to American buyers. That is why the United States takes nearly a third of exports. The chips still go into those servers, so the customs line for chips understates how much of the total depends on them.

The move away from China

A decade ago mainland China and Hong Kong together took about two-fifths of Taiwan’s exports, a matter of general knowledge. The ministry’s release, as reported, has the United States at 31.7% for the first ten months of 2026, a 36-year high. [595] The controls contributed: the most advanced chips cannot go to China, and they are what is growing. So did tariffs and the build-out of American data centres. The effect is that Taiwan’s prosperity now rests on American demand for SI hardware far more than on the mainland market.

What it does to the security argument

The section on the Taiwan Strait describes the “silicon shield”, the idea that the world needs Taiwan’s output too much to let it be cut off. These figures give its size in 2026: about $900 billion a year of exports, four-fifths of it electronics, a third of it to the United States. The January 2026 agreement with Washington, described in its own section, moves some future capacity to American soil. For now the dependence runs the other way, and it has never been larger.

Taiwan’s trade figures are the plainest measure of who gained from the first four years of the contest. Exports up by nearly half in a year, a record surplus, and a place among the world’s seven or eight largest exporters, almost all of it from chips and the machines built around them. [593, 594] The controls kept the leading edge in the hands of Taiwan and its customers, and the boom in SI computing did the rest.

As with every figure of this kind on this page, the cycle will turn. Imports rose even faster than exports in October, which includes equipment and parts for capacity still being built. When demand for SI hardware slows, Taiwan will feel it first and most.

Limits. The finance ministry’s release was not read; figures are from Taiwan’s news agency as carried by a broadcaster and from a business daily. The integrated circuit figure, the four-fifths share and the 31.7% American share are from a search summary of other reports of the same release. The share going to mainland China and Hong Kong in 2026 was not found, so the statement that the United States has replaced them as the largest market is an inference from the American share and general knowledge of earlier years. The earlier two-fifths figure and the population are from general knowledge.

Part 5

What the studies found

Measurements, not opinions: what the controls cost the firms that sell, what listing did to the firms that were listed, what the toolmakers’ own sales records show, how wide the gap is when it is measured, what happened when Japan tried a control on South Korea, what the subsidies bought, what security investigations did to scientists, and what forty-five years of Cold War controls achieved.

Evidence · the sellers

The one causal study of American suppliers finds they lost their Chinese customers and did not replace them

$130 billionFall in the market value of affected American suppliers after their Chinese customers were listed, New York Fed staff report (revised February 2025)

2.5%Abnormal fall in an affected supplier’s share price in the twenty days after a listing, same study

$857 millionLoss of market value for the average affected supplier, same study

3 yearsPeriod after a control in which the study found no new customers at home or in allied countries

50 to 75%Rise in ended relationships with any customer in the target’s country, in the authors’ April 2024 summary

$77 billionFirst-year sales American chip firms would lose if cut off from China entirely, in a model by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (November 2025). A projection, not a measurement

Most claims about what the controls cost American firms come from the firms themselves. One study measures it from outside. Four economists, two of them at the Federal Reserve, hand-collected every case in which a Chinese company was added to the Commerce Department’s export control lists and matched it to data on who supplies whom. [451] They then compared American suppliers of the listed companies with similar suppliers, in the same industry and of the same size, whose Chinese customers were not listed. [451] The affected suppliers stopped selling to the listed firms, as the rule intends, and then also pulled back from Chinese customers that were not listed. [451]

The second finding is the one that matters for policy. In the three years after a control was imposed, the affected suppliers did not form new relationships with customers at home or in politically aligned countries. [451] The authors found no evidence of reshoring or friendshoring on the American side. [451] The share price reaction was a 2.5% abnormal fall in the twenty days after each announcement, which the authors put at $857 million for the average affected supplier and $130 billion for all of them together. [451, 452] Revenue, profitability, employment and bank lending fell. Capital spending did not. [451]

What has been measured about the cost to the selling side, and what has only been modelled. The last column rates the kind of evidence, not the conclusion.

Source	Method	Finding	Kind of evidence
New York Fed Staff Report 1096	Compares affected and unaffected American suppliers in the same industry and size group, before and after each listing. [451]	A broad retreat from Chinese customers, no replacement customers within three years, and a $130 billion fall in market value. [451]	measured Observed outcomes with a comparison group.
Same authors, April 2024 summary	Supplier-to-customer links before and after each listing. [452]	Ended relationships with customers in the target’s country rose by 50 to 75%. New relationships there fell by 60 to 68%. [452]	measured From the first version of the paper.
Same study, lending data	Confidential loan records that large American banks report to the Federal Reserve. [451]	Affected suppliers faced tighter bank lending after the controls. [451]	measured Data not open to outside researchers.
Same study, foreign suppliers	Revenue of non-American firms that supply the listed Chinese companies. [451]	Their revenue rose after the American controls. The authors give ASML’s lithography sales as the example. [451]	measured Fits the company data in the next section but one.
ITIF model, November 2025	Four assumed levels of lost Chinese sales, with research spending held at 17.7% of revenue and jobs moving in line with revenue. [453]	Full separation: about $77 billion of sales, about $14 billion (24%) of research spending and over 80,000 industry jobs in the first year. A 10% loss: about $7.7 billion. [453]	modelled The loss rates are inputs chosen by the author, not results.
House committee data, October 2025	Sales records supplied by the five largest equipment makers. [457]	Their combined sales to China rose 66% between 2022 and 2024, to $38 billion. [457]	company data Shows the cost fell on some sellers and not others.

Why suppliers left unlisted customers too

The retreat went beyond the letter of the rule. The authors’ explanation is legal risk: an American exporter can be liable if its customer passes the goods on to a listed firm, so the safe course is to drop the customer’s neighbours as well. [451] A list that names a few hundred companies therefore works on a much larger group. That is a strength if the aim is to cut contact, and a cost that no impact assessment had counted.

What the listed firms did

The same study follows the Chinese side. Listed firms replaced their American suppliers with new Chinese ones, and bought more from foreign suppliers the American rules did not reach. [451] The paper notes that the Dutch government limited ASML’s exports only several years later, after American pressure. [451] A control that binds one country’s firms moves the sale to another country’s firms until that government acts too.

What a model can and cannot show

The ITIF figures are the ones most often quoted in Washington, and they are arithmetic on assumptions. The model takes American firms’ $77 billion of 2024 sales in China, removes a chosen share, and scales research spending and jobs in proportion. [453] It does not estimate how much would be lost under any actual rule, and it leaves out the security benefit the controls are meant to buy. [453]

Read together, the measured evidence says three things. Entity listing works as a cut: suppliers comply and go further than required. [451] The cost is real and falls on the firms that make the protected technology. [451] And the market did not rearrange itself around allies, at least within three years. [451] None of this says the controls were a mistake. It says the cost side of the ledger now has a number, and the benefit side still does not. The authors themselves note the absence of any systematic comparison of the two. [451]

The $130 billion figure needs care. It is a fall in share prices over twenty days, summed across firms, not lost sales, and markets can overreact or recover. The authors’ own suggestion is modest: if controls stay, pair them with demand at home for the same products, which is what the CHIPS and Science Act was meant to supply. [451]

Limits. The New York Fed paper’s abstract, introduction and data section were read in its February 2025 revision, not every table; the 50 to 75% and 60 to 68% figures come from the authors’ April 2024 summary of the first version and may have changed in revision. The paper’s sample ends around the August 2023 investment order, so it does not cover the December 2024 rules, the 2025 licence deals or the affiliates rule. Staff reports are not peer reviewed in the journal sense. The ITIF report was read on its web page; its baseline figures come from the Semiconductor Industry Association. No published study was found that measures the cost to Dutch, Japanese or Korean suppliers in the same way.

Evidence · the targets

Studies of listed Chinese firms find fewer patents and more state support, and they disagree on research spending

9.9%Fall in patent output of a Chinese firm after it is placed on the Entity List, World Bank working paper (October 2024)

14.0%The same fall when patents are weighted by quality

182Listed Chinese firms matched to patent records in that study

3 to 345Chinese firms on the Entity List in 1997 and in 2022, as counted by the World Bank authors

16.58%Rise in research spending relative to sales the year after listing, in a 2024 journal study of Chinese listed manufacturers

0Rise in research spending found by a January 2025 Japanese study of the same question, on 2015 to 2022 data

The usual argument about the Entity List is whether it weakens Chinese firms or pushes them to invent their own technology. Three studies test this on firm data, and they do not give the same answer. A World Bank working paper matched 182 listed Chinese firms to similar unlisted ones in a worldwide patent database. [454] Listing cut a firm’s patent output by 9.9%, and by 14.0% when patents are weighted by quality. [454] The fall came entirely from firms that had previously worked with inventors in the United States. [454]

Two studies of research spending point in different directions. Economists at Jinan University found that listing raised research spending relative to sales by 16.58% in the following year among Chinese listed manufacturers, driven by subsidies, stockpiling and risk-taking, with little or negative effect on innovation output. [455] A Japanese study using matched firm data for 2015 to 2022 found no rise in research spending or its intensity, while the listed firms’ total assets fell. [456] It found that firms under looser licence review built up inventories, and firms under stricter review received more government money. [456]

Four studies of what listing does to the firm that is listed. They use different samples and different outcomes, which is part of why they differ.

Study	Outcome measured	Finding	Reading
Cao, de Nicola, Mattoo and Timmis, World Bank (2024)	Patent filings and citations, 182 listed firms against matched unlisted firms. [454]	Patents down 9.9%, quality-weighted patents down 14.0%, international filings hit hardest. [454]	listing slows invention Strongest design of the four.
Same study, by type of firm	The same, split by a firm’s earlier patent stock and by how close its field is to the American frontier. [454]	Firms with more patents to begin with, and fields nearer the frontier, lost less. [454]	the strong are hurt least The firms the list most wants to stop.
Same study, neighbouring fields	Patents of unlisted firms in the same and in linked technology fields. [454]	A modest fall for other Chinese firms in the same field and in fields that use its output. A modest rise in fields that supply it. [454]	some substitution upstream The first sign of a home-grown supply base.
Hu, Yang, Zeng and Zhang (2024)	Research spending relative to sales at listed Chinese manufacturers. [455]	Up 16.58% the next year, more for state-owned firms. Output of innovation flat or down. [455]	more money, not more results
Hayakawa and Yang, IDE (2025)	Research spending and intensity, matched firms, 2015 to 2022. [456]	No increase. Total assets fell. More inventory or more state funding, depending on how strict the licence review was. [456]	no research surge Contradicts the study above on inputs.
Crosignani and others, New York Fed (2025)	The supplier networks of listed firms. [451]	Listed firms formed new links with Chinese suppliers and bought more from foreign suppliers outside the American rules. [451]	supply rebuilt at home

The channel is people, not parts

The World Bank authors find that Chinese firms’ patenting tracks joint work with American inventors more than with European or East Asian ones, and that listing cuts that joint work. [454] The loss shows up only in firms that had such partners. [454] It also runs the other way: when a field is sanctioned, American firms with Chinese collaborators patent less too. [454] The list works by ending collaboration, which costs both sides.

Where the state steps in

All three firm studies find the Chinese state in the result. Subsidies explain part of the rise in research spending in one study. [455] In another, the firms under the strictest American review are the ones that received more government support. [456] The effect was strongest in state-owned firms. [455] Listing a firm in Washington appears to move it up the queue for funding in Beijing.

What patents do not show

A patent count is a narrow measure. It does not record a firm learning to run an older machine harder, which is how SMIC reached its current process, and firms under sanctions may choose secrecy over filing. The data in the two studies that state their period end in 2022, before the largest Chinese chip and equipment programmes had time to show results. The findings are best read as the short-run effect on formal invention.

The studies agree on more than they seem to. Listing hurts formal invention at the listed firm, mainly by cutting it off from American collaborators. [454] It brings state money and stockpiling in response. [455, 456] And it redirects buying to Chinese and non-American suppliers. [451] The evidence does not support the claim that sanctions made the listed firms more inventive. It supports the claim that they made China’s supply base larger. Those are different things, and the second is the one that matters over ten years.

The pattern by firm strength deserves attention. The firms that lost least were those with the deepest patent stock and those closest to the frontier. [454] Huawei and SMIC fit that description. The list does most damage to weaker firms that depended on foreign partners, and least to the national champions it was written for.

Limits. The World Bank paper’s abstract, introduction, main results and conclusion were read; it is a working paper, not a journal article. The Jinan University and IDE studies were read as abstracts only, so their samples and methods are described from the authors’ own summaries. A fourth study, presented at a Chinese economics conference in 2025 and reported in a search summary as finding higher patent output at listed firms, could not be opened and is not cited. None of the studies isolates chip firms, and none is known to cover the period after 2022. The remarks on SMIC and secrecy in the third card are this site’s reasoning, not findings of the studies.

Evidence · China’s own research

Chinese economists studying the Entity List find less invention at first, more research spending, more work with universities and more state support

11.26%Average rise in joint patenting with universities and institutes at firms placed on the Entity List, China Industrial Economics (2025)

16.07%Rise in the digitalisation measure of firms hit by American controls, Journal of Finance and Economics (2025)

86%Approval rate for American export licences to China in 2018, down from 96 to 98% in 2014 to 2017, as cited in the 2023 study

50% to 31%Share of joint Chinese-American patents at its 2014 peak and after 2019, as cited in the 2023 study from World Intellectual Property Organization data

about 30%China’s self-sufficiency in chips in 2019, as cited in the 2023 study

45% to 55%Research staff as a share of Huawei’s workforce before and after its 2019 listing, as cited in the 2025 digitalisation study

The studies in this part so far were written outside China. Chinese economists have run the same tests on the same question in Chinese journals, using listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges. A 2023 paper in the Journal of Finance and Economics matched American Entity List and control list data to manufacturing firms for 2013 to 2021. [389] It finds a double effect: the controls reduced the firms’ innovation output, an effect that faded with time, and raised their innovation spending, an effect that appeared at once and lasted. [389] The fall in output came through blocked flows of knowledge. [389]

Two later papers look at what listed firms did next. A 2025 study in China Industrial Economics, a leading Chinese journal in the field, used the listings as a natural experiment on 2013 to 2022 data and found that listed firms raised their joint patenting with universities and research institutes by an average of 11.26%. [390] The same firms received more government research subsidy and paid less in taxes and surcharges. [390] A second 2025 paper found that firms hit by the controls raised their level of digitalisation by about 16.07%, helped by local subsidies. [391]

Three Chinese journal studies of what American controls did to Chinese listed firms, set beside the foreign studies earlier in this part.

Study	Data and method	Finding	Against the foreign studies
Liu and Li, Journal of Finance and Economics, December 2023	Manufacturing firms listed in China, 2013 to 2021, matched to the Entity List and the American control list. [389]	Innovation output down, fading over time. Innovation spending up at once and lasting. Firms turn to in-house innovation and cut low-quality output. [389]	agrees Fewer patents, as the World Bank found. [454] More spending, as the Jinan study found. [455]
Same study, mechanism	Channels tested separately. [389]	Output falls because knowledge flows are blocked. Spending rises because firms are more motivated to innovate. [389]	agrees The World Bank’s channel was lost American collaborators. [454]
Ni, Peng and Zhong, China Industrial Economics, August 2025	Listed firms, 2013 to 2022, about 25,000 firm-years, with firm, year and province-industry effects. [390]	Joint patents with universities and institutes up 11.26% on average, mainly invention patents with universities. Design patents fall. [390]	adds a channel Foreign partners are replaced by domestic academic ones.
Same study, who responds	Split by productivity, supplier concentration, sector and ownership. [390]	The effect is stronger in more productive firms, firms with concentrated suppliers, high-technology firms and state-owned firms. [390]	agrees The strongest firms adapt best. [454]
Same study, the state	Government research subsidy and taxes paid. [390]	Listed firms get more research subsidy and pay less tax, and they report more awareness of supply-chain risk. [390]	agrees The Japanese study found more state support for the most strictly sanctioned. [456]
Ma, Liang, Zhao and Wu, Journal of Finance and Economics, April 2025	Listed firms, with hand-collected Entity List data. [391]	Digitalisation up about 16.07%, more in regions with stronger talent, markets and digital policy, with gains in resilience and overseas market position. [391]	new outcome No foreign study measures this.

The same facts, a different conclusion

The Chinese and foreign studies largely agree on what happened: output of invention fell at the listed firm, spending rose, and the state stepped in. [389, 390, 454, 456] They differ in how they read it. The foreign papers ask whether the controls slowed China. The Chinese papers ask how firms can respond, and treat the results as evidence that they can. The 2023 paper opens by asking whether the United States can achieve its aim. [389]

Universities as the substitute

The most useful new finding is where the replacement knowledge comes from. Listed firms did not only spend more. They filed more invention patents jointly with Chinese universities and research institutes. [390] The World Bank found that listing cut joint work with American inventors. [454] Put together, the two results describe one movement: research partnerships cut across the Pacific were rebuilt at home, with public institutions.

What these studies cannot say

All three use listed companies, so they leave out Huawei, most chip start-ups and the state laboratories. They measure patents, spending and text-based indexes, not whether a firm can make a product it could not make before. They are also written inside a system where the expected answer is that sanctions fail, and the policy sections recommend more subsidy. [391] The direction of the findings matches the foreign work, which is the reason to take them seriously.

Adding the Chinese research changes the weight of the evidence more than its direction. Seven studies, Chinese and foreign, using different data, now agree that listing cut formal invention in the short run, raised research spending or state support, and pushed firms to rebuild supply and partnerships inside China. [451, 454, 455, 456, 389, 390, 391] None finds that the listed firms were stopped. The 2023 Chinese study adds that the loss of output shrank each year after the shock. [389]

That fading is the finding to watch. If the damage from a listing is front-loaded and the response builds over time, then the balance of a control worsens for its author with every year it stays in place. That matches the conclusion Lind and Mastanduno drew from the Cold War, that chokepoint controls work best before the target has adjusted. [461]

Limits. The three papers were read from the journals’ own open files: the abstract, data description, main results and conclusions of each, not every robustness table. Chinese studies of this question are numerous; these three were the ones that could be opened, so the selection is not systematic, and two other papers seen in a search summary (one finding a U-shaped effect on patent quality, one finding lower research spending in the first periods after listing) could not be read and are not cited. The figures in the tiles that the studies cite from other sources (licence approval rates, joint patent shares, chip self-sufficiency, Huawei’s research staff) were not checked against those sources. The count of seven studies refers to those described in this part. Translations and the readings in the cards are this site’s.

China · a Peking University scholar’s account of American policy, 2024

A Peking University scholar divides American policy toward China into three aims and three stages, and concludes that the American goals were not met but that China does not hold the advantage

3American strategic aims in Lei’s account, one for each kind of industry

3Stages of American policy since 2018

June 2024Date of the paper

40%Rise in China’s mature-chip capacity in early 2024 that he cites, from a Hong Kong newspaper

2Charges he predicts the West will use next: “overcapacity” and “debt trap”

3rdChina’s rank among American goods export markets, which he cites from an American business group

The studies in this part measure effects. Chinese scholars have also written interpretations of what the United States is trying to do. One of the clearest is a short paper of June 2024 by Lei Shaohua, an associate professor at Peking University’s School of International Studies, published as a briefing of the university’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies. [234]

Lei sorts American measures by the kind of industry they hit. Against labour-intensive industry, high tariffs and accusations of forced labour, to move factories out of China and so deprive it of the profits that fund its newer industries. Against capital-intensive industry, such as telecoms equipment and electric cars, exclusion from Western markets on security grounds. Against technology-intensive industry, above all chips and SI, “technology blockade and limits on investment”, applied through an alliance of the countries that hold the technology, because those Chinese industries “are still growing”. [234]

He then gives three stages. From 2018, decoupling and tariffs to bring factories home. Under the next administration, the “small yard, high fence” and a technology alliance to stop China’s industrial upgrading. And from 2024, a third stage built on the charge of “overcapacity”, aimed at protecting American manufacturing from Chinese electric cars, solar panels and batteries. [234]

Lei Shaohua’s account of American economic policy toward China, 2018 to 2024, from a Peking University institute briefing.

Element	His account	His evidence	Set against this page
Aim, labour-intensive industry	Push it out of China by tariffs and stigma, cutting the revenue that funds newer industries. [234]	Tariffs on $200 billion of goods; forced-labour rules.	his inference The link to funding technology is his own.
Aim, capital-intensive industry	Deny market access by treating products as security risks. [234]	Telecoms equipment barred from American certification.	matches The August 2026 package answered such measures.
Aim, technology-intensive industry	Blockade technology and restrict investment while the Chinese industry is young. [234]	The ban on the Taiwanese foundry serving Huawei; Dutch and Japanese tool limits; the American subsidy law.	matches The controls described throughout this page.
Stage one	Decoupling and tariffs for reshoring. Defeated, he says, by China’s manufacturing capacity during the pandemic. [234]	Demand for Chinese goods in 2020 and 2021.	partly Reshoring did not occur at scale.
Stage two	Small yard, high fence. Not able to stop China’s upgrading. [234]	Huawei’s 2023 phone; Chinese mature-chip capacity up 40%.	contested The evidence part finds slowing at the leading edge and growth elsewhere.
Stage three	Overcapacity as the new charge. Protection of Western car industries. [234]	The May 2024 American rule on battery content.	borne out The investigations into older chips and silicon carbide followed.
Conclusion	American aims were not achieved. “That does not mean the United States will abandon its strategy, nor that China is in the stronger position.” A stalemate. [234]	His judgment.	measured More cautious than official statements.

A prediction that came true

Writing in June 2024, Lei forecast that Western media, scholars and governments would “go all out” to argue that China has overcapacity and is dumping, and that this would become the main means of resisting Chinese industrial upgrading. [234] Within months the United States had opened an investigation into Chinese older chips, and the section on silicon carbide records an American leader in bankruptcy after a price war. Whether one calls it overcapacity or competitiveness, he identified the next front correctly.

The view of the controls

For Lei the chip controls are one instrument among three, each matched to a type of industry, and the logic is to stop China climbing to the top of the world’s industrial structure. [234] This differs from the American account, which presents the controls as narrow measures for military and security reasons. It is close to the reading in China’s 2021 white paper. The difference matters for negotiation: if the controls are about security, they can be bounded. If they are about rank, as this account holds, no concession on security will end them.

What he does not claim

The paper does not say the controls failed. It says the stated aims were not reached and that the two countries are in “an unprecedented stalemate” in trade, industry and high technology. It notes that America “maintains an absolute research advantage” in SI, not yet turned into an industrial one. [234] It ends by calling for cooperation in farming, services and electric cars, citing an American car maker’s Chinese plant. This is a scholar arguing for coexistence, and the caution sets it apart from the triumphant tone of some 2026 commentary.

Lei’s framework is useful because it places the chip controls inside a larger design, as China’s policy community sees it. On that reading the controls are the upper tier of a three-tier effort to hold China below the top of world industry, and the response is to climb in all three tiers at once. [234] The plans and funds described on this page are that response.

Two years on, his stalemate has held in outline. China has gained in mature chips, memory and materials, the United States keeps the leading edge and the tools, and each has added lists and counter-lists. His warning that China is not in the stronger position is the part least repeated in China since.

Limits. The briefing was read in full from the institute’s published file. It is one scholar’s interpretation, published by a university institute, and is not an official position. Its factual claims, including the capacity figure and the trade ranking, are as he cites them and were not checked. An earlier and longer report from the same institute, of January 2022, which foreign press described as concluding that China would lose more from technological decoupling, could not be found in an openable form and is not used. The comparison column draws on other sections of this page. Translations are this site’s.

China · A Fudan essay on the American chip-export debate, December 2025

A Fudan University essay reads Washington’s chip policy as a contest between two camps, and concludes that once a president trades chips at the table, “national security” stops working as a reason

2Camps the essay sees in Washington: national security, and technology stack dominance

9 Apr 2025Date the essay gives for the halt on Nvidia’s H20 sales to China

15 Jul 2025Date it gives for the licences being restored

15%Share of H20 and MI308 sales the essay says the US government asked for

25%Share of H200 sales the president said would go to the US government

30 monthsPeriod for which a Senate bill would bar anything more advanced than the H20

On 10 December 2025, two days after President Trump said he would allow Nvidia’s H200 chip to be sold to China, Fudan University’s development institute published an essay in its “America Watch” series by Lin Heping. It is one of the clearer Chinese accounts of how Washington decides what China may buy. [235]

The essay starts from a point of agreement. Holding back China’s technology and keeping the American lead is, it says, a consensus in Washington. The disagreement is over the route. One camp, which it calls the national security camp, holds that an American lead in computing power becomes a lead in SI, so no advanced computing should reach China, directly or through friendly third countries. The other, the “technology stack dominance” camp, holds that controls push China to build its own chips and hand the Chinese market to Huawei, and that it is better to keep Chinese developers on American chips and software. [235]

The essay’s conclusion is the part Chinese readers will remember: by linking the H200 decision to a leaders’ meeting, the president turned export control into a bargaining chip, and “if the American president can put advanced computing chips on the negotiating table, the past reason of national security no longer makes sense”. [235]

The Fudan essay’s account of Washington’s chip-export decisions in 2025, with this site’s reading. Dates and figures are as the essay gives them.

Step	What the essay says happened	How the essay reads it	This site’s reading
The diffusion rule	The previous administration’s three-tier rule on SI chip exports was revoked on 13 May 2025, two days before it took effect. Deals with Gulf states followed. [235]	A win for Silicon Valley and for officials who found the rule unworkable.	descriptive Little dispute on the facts.
The H20 halt	The Commerce Department’s export bureau stopped H20 and AMD’s MI308 sales to China on 9 April 2025. [235]	The security camp still held the bureau.	descriptive
The H20 return	Licences came back on 15 July after the London talks, with 15% of sales to go to the US government. [235]	“Rare earths for chips”, and in effect an export tax. A precedent with no American parallel.	the key step China’s leverage is named as the cause.
Two ministers, two stories	The Treasury Secretary told the Senate there was no rare-earths-for-chips deal. The Commerce Secretary later confirmed there was, and said the aim was to get China “addicted” to American technology. [235]	Evidence of a split inside the cabinet.	well observed Both statements are on record, by the essay’s account.
A hawk removed	A nominee for the export-control post, known for a hard line on China, had his nomination withdrawn in September. [235]	The hardest hawks were being sidelined.	one data point Reported at second hand.
Blackwell held back	Before the leaders’ meeting the president hinted at selling a cut-down Blackwell chip. Congress and three cabinet members objected, and it was dropped. [235]	The two-party consensus “still restrains the president at key moments”.	the limit of the shift
The H200 decision	On 8 December the president allowed H200 sales with 25% to the government. The chip exceeds the 2022 thresholds. [235]	The earlier limits are “in effect abolished”, and so is the logic of denying China any advanced computing.	strong claim True of the threshold, not of the top tier.
The Senate bill	A bill introduced on 4 December would bar anything above the H20 for 30 months. [235]	A fight between Congress and the White House over who holds the control power.	open The essay gives no outcome.

What is new in this reading

Chinese official statements treat American controls as one policy with one purpose, “containment and suppression”. This essay does something more useful for a Chinese planner. It treats the policy as the output of a contest, names the people on each side, and describes how the contest is fought: face-to-face lobbying of the president by chip executives at fund-raising events, an adviser inside the White House, and a Congress that can still say no. [235] That is a map of where pressure can be applied.

The “addiction” argument is taken seriously

The essay does not present the looser camp as China’s friend. It says the stated aim is to sell China technology that is already behind, keep Chinese developers on American software, “and so strangle domestic SI chips and their ecosystem”. [235] On that reading the looser policy is a different way of holding China back, and arguably a more effective one. The same worry lies behind the Chinese regulator’s summons of Nvidia over the H20 in 2025, covered elsewhere in this tab.

This site’s reading

The essay’s last point matters beyond chips. Export controls rest on a claim that the items are too dangerous to sell at any price. A revenue share is a price. Once a government has named one, every other controlled item invites the question of what its price would be, and allies asked to forgo sales have a fair complaint. The essay stops short of saying this helps China, and it should: by its own account the top tier stayed closed, and a Congress that writes the limit into law would remove the president’s room to trade at all. [235]

The essay’s own summary is modest. First-tier chips will not be sold to China in any form. On second-tier chips such as the H200 the looser camp has won “a stage victory”. Whether the security camp returns through legislation, it says, depends on Congress. [235]

Limits. This is one essay by one author in a university institute’s commentary series, written two days after the event. It is not a peer-reviewed study and it relies on American press reports that this site has not checked one by one. A few product names in it are misspelt, which suggests fast writing. It ends in December 2025 and says nothing about what happened to the Senate bill or to H200 licences afterwards. The author’s position at the university is not stated on the page.

China · A Chinese strategist on American technology barriers, September 2025

A Fudan and Tsinghua researcher describes the American controls as a “compound blockade” of chips, computing, models and algorithms, and is unusually frank about what it has cost China

4Parts of the “compound blockade”: chips, computing, models, algorithms

90%+Share of the world design-software market held by three Western firms, as the article puts it

$500bnSize of the American “Stargate” programme the article cites

3State-led priorities proposed: SI chips, base algorithms and frameworks, SI operating systems

3Weaknesses named at home: scattered research, shallow industry links, a thin ecosystem

2025Year of publication, in the fifth issue of the journal

In 2025 Liu Dian, an associate researcher at Fudan University’s China Institute who also directs a programme at Tsinghua University’s institute for SI governance, published a long article in a Chinese information security journal. It was reposted in September 2025. [237]

He is careful about his own term. The “American technology barrier strategy”, he writes, is not a name found in any American document. It is an analytical construct for a series of restrictions that look scattered but share an intent. He groups them as a “compound blockade”: a chip embargo, limits on computing power, a blockade of models and the isolation of algorithms. [237]

What sets the article apart is the middle section. Most Chinese public writing says the controls have failed. Liu says they have “substantively lengthened and delayed” the window for China’s core SI work, and lists how. [237]

What the article says the controls have done to China and what it proposes, with this site’s reading.

Area	What the article says	What it proposes	This site’s reading
Training	A model with over 100 billion parameters needs thousands of high-end processors for weeks or months. A computing bottleneck lengthens tuning cycles and makes robustness hard to verify. [237]	State-led concentration on SI chips.	a real admission Rare in a journal of this kind.
Software fit	Without mainstream foreign chips, existing frameworks fit less well, and moving algorithms and deploying them is slower. [237]	Base algorithms, frameworks and an SI operating system as national priorities.	the ecosystem point Matches what Chinese chip designers say.
Cloud	Limits on overseas cloud services cut off the route of renting computing abroad. [237]	A national platform for shared computing and industry data.	partly true Overseas rental continued in practice, by other accounts.
Domestic chips	Progress, but not yet a broad substitute. Industry reports gaps in performance, compatibility and integration. [237]	Government purchase of first units and opening of large use cases.	candid
Design tools	Three firms hold over 90% of the market. Some SI chip projects were forced to stop when tools were cut. [237]	Long-term, stable funding with more autonomy for lead institutes.	no project named The claim of stopped projects is not sourced.
Private firms	Controls combined with tight finance left some firms “stuck on technology, cut off from funds, without orders”. [237]	A state venture fund for high-risk technology, and “patient capital”.	plausible No figures given.
Abroad	Cooperation channels are squeezed by American-led alliances. [237]	Funds and joint centres with the global South. A “buffer zone” of cooperation with Europe, Japan and South Korea in non-sensitive fields.	the usual list

The diagnosis of China’s own system

The recommendations begin with criticism at home. Research on the real chokepoints, the article says, is “scattered” and “short”: resources are divided among bodies and lack long-term, high-intensity focus. Cooperation between universities and industry is often “surface” work, with results that do not match what industry needs. The ecosystem is “weak” and “lopsided”, with too little high-end supply alongside low-level duplication. [237] These are the same faults that the national chip fund’s corruption cases and the complaints of chip designers, covered elsewhere in this tab, point to from other directions.

On the model that changed the argument

Liu treats the rise of the Chinese model DeepSeek as the turning point. Its success, he writes, means “the bankruptcy of American technology restrictions” and the failure of the earlier policy logic, and it is why the second Trump administration moved from “partial restriction” to “systematic containment”, with model weights and cloud services brought under control for the first time. [237] Read with the middle section, the claim is narrower than it sounds. Controls did not stop a capable model. They did, on his own account, slow training, break software fit and stop projects.

This site’s reading

The article appeared in the journal’s fifth issue of 2025, soon after the H20 was halted, and it forecasts a full escalation. The Fudan essay in the previous section shows what followed: the H20 came back in July and a more capable chip was approved in December. A forecast of tightening that was followed by loosening is a useful reminder that Chinese analysts, like others, read Washington as more coherent than it is. The diagnosis of China’s own weaknesses has aged better than the forecast.

The policy line the article supports is the one Beijing has taken since: treat computing, frameworks and system software as one stack to be built at home, and use state purchasing to give domestic products their first customers. [237]

Limits. The article is an opinion piece by one researcher. It gives no sources for its figures in the version this site read, a repost by a Chinese security news site of the journal text. Several claims, including stopped chip projects and firms left without orders, name no company. Its account of American policy predates the reversals of mid and late 2025. The frankness about costs sits inside an argument for more state direction, which is the article’s purpose.

China · A Fudan centre on the May 2026 summit and the H200

A Fudan research centre explains why approved American chips had not been delivered: accepting them on Washington’s terms would concede the right to set the rules of China’s computing supply

About 10Chinese firms reported approved to buy the H200

75,000Chips each approved buyer could purchase, by the same report

0H200 chips delivered to Chinese firms at the time of writing, by the centre’s account

41%Domestic share of China’s SI accelerator shipments in 2025, as the centre cites it

About 5%China’s share of Nvidia’s revenue, down from over 20%, as cited

2.7%Lead of the top American model over the top Chinese one on one benchmark in March 2026, as cited

On 20 May 2026, five days after President Trump’s state visit to Beijing, the research office of Fudan University’s centre for SI governance published a long reading of what the summit meant for chips and for talks on SI. [243]

It gives the American shift a name: from “unlimited encirclement” to “limited release”. During the summit, it notes, a news agency reported that the Commerce Department had approved about ten Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s H200, up to 75,000 chips each, under rules of January 2026 that send a share of the revenue to the US government and route the chips through testing on American soil. [243]

And yet, the centre writes, no H200 had been delivered. Its explanation is that the hesitation is China’s as well as America’s: to accept a purchase that carries a levy and one-sided testing is to accept that the United States may draw income from China’s computing build-out and may interpret the rules of the supply chain. [243]

The Fudan centre’s reading of the chip question after the May 2026 summit, with this site’s reading.

Question	What the centre says	Its interpretation	This site’s reading
What Washington offered	Licences for a second-tier chip, with a revenue share and testing in the United States. [243]	A compromise by a government unwilling either to give up the Chinese market or to give China a stable source of computing. Not a turn to moderation.	consistent Matches the December 2025 essay covered above.
What Washington said	The trade representative said chips were not a main topic. The president first said they were not discussed, then that they were, “because China needs it”. [243]	A contradiction between keeping the lead and earning from the market.	descriptive
Who was blamed for no sales	American statements put it down to whether China is willing to buy. [243]	“Reversing cause and effect”: it leaves out the licence terms and security review.	both are true The centre itself gives Chinese reasons for not buying.
Why China holds back	The levy and testing imply American control of the rules. Testing abroad raises fears of tampering and back doors. [243]	China “will not accept conditional release in place of fair access”, and will not rest key computing on supply that is unstable, uncontrollable and unsafe.	the core claim Stated as China’s position, not as a quoted policy.
The domestic alternative	Domestic chips passed 41% of shipments in 2025. A leading Chinese model was adapted to eight domestic chips. [243]	Domestic SI chips are at “an inflection point of scale”.	supporting Share figures come from outside estimates.
What comes next	Neither side expects a single, complete relaxation. [243]	Technical talks, item by item and batch by batch.	plausible A forecast, made before the September visit.

The refusal as policy

For three years the Chinese complaint was that the United States would not sell. The centre’s account marks the point where the complaint changes: the United States will sell, on terms, and China declines. The terms it objects to are specific. A share of revenue paid to a foreign treasury is a tax on Chinese computing collected abroad. Testing in the seller’s country, before delivery, is an opening for the tampering that China’s regulator had already raised with Nvidia over an earlier chip, a case covered elsewhere in this tab. [243]

What the centre concedes

The piece is not triumphant. It cites an American index showing the United States with about 23 times China’s private investment in SI, and a widening gap. It says the real American worry is no longer whether China can produce a leading lab but that China may be first to deploy at scale, and that Chinese open models are changing whom developers elsewhere depend on. [243] The argument for refusing the H200 rests on that judgement: that China’s advantage lies in deployment and in a home-grown stack, and both are weakened by rebuilding dependence on a supplier that can be switched off.

This site’s reading

This is the mirror image of the “addiction” argument made by the American Commerce Secretary in 2025 and recorded in the Fudan essay above. Washington’s looser camp wants China to stay on American chips so that Chinese alternatives never reach scale. Chinese analysts have read that argument, believe it, and draw the opposite conclusion from the same premise. The result is a market that both governments have, for different reasons, made hard to reopen. The cost of the Chinese choice falls on Chinese firms that would have bought the chips, a group the centre mentions only as having “reasonable purchasing needs”.

On the talks themselves the centre is cautious. The summit agreed to restart government talks on SI. The American Treasury Secretary described their aim as keeping advanced models from non-state actors. The centre’s judgement is that the meeting “did not change the fundamentals” of the contest but changed how it is managed. [243]

Limits. The piece is by a university centre’s research office, five named researchers, and relies on foreign press reports for the licence numbers, which this site did not verify. It presents China’s reasons for not buying as analysis, without citing a Chinese government statement to that effect. It was written in May 2026 and does not cover what followed, including the leaders’ meeting in September. Market share and benchmark figures are quoted from third parties.

China · A Tsinghua strategist on American SI policy, October 2026

A Tsinghua strategist says the question for China is no longer whether Washington will contain it, but which of four logics is winning in each field at each moment

1 + 3One master logic and three subordinate logics in the framework

23 Jul 2025Date of the American action plan that made “winning the race” the top aim

3Pillars of that plan: faster innovation, data centres and energy, diplomacy and security

2Kinds of “open ecosystem” advocate: open to all, and open to trusted partners only

2Main lines of American strategy she identifies: limit China, expand America

Sep 2026Month the two leaders agreed to set up a dialogue on SI

In October 2026, after the leaders of the two countries agreed in Washington to set up a dialogue on SI, Xiao Qian, deputy head of Tsinghua University’s institute for SI governance and of its centre for strategy and security, published an analysis of how the American government thinks about the contest. [244]

Her framework has one master logic and three subordinate ones. The master logic is “competition first”: keeping the lead over China is itself the goal, and every policy on regulation, technology and cooperation is judged by it. Beneath it sit a national security logic, “make China run slower”; a technology acceleration logic, “make America run faster”; and an open ecosystem logic, “make the world run on American technology”. [244]

The three do not map onto fixed camps, she writes. The same firm or official can hold two or three at once, and their weights shift with technical breakthroughs and safety incidents. [244]

Xiao Qian’s four logics of American policy toward China on SI, with this site’s reading.

Logic	Aim, in her words	Who holds it	Where it dominates	This site’s reading
Competition first	Keeping the lead is the priority goal. Safety, regulation and cooperation are bounded by it. [244]	The president and his cabinet, by their public statements.	Everywhere, as a constraint on the other three.	the constant The part of the analysis least likely to date.
National security	Advanced SI is a strategic asset. Delay China through chip controls, investment limits, entity listing and cloud rules. [244]	A House committee, the export bureau, parts of the defence and security staff, and some frontier labs.	Top chips, very large computing, military use, high-risk model capabilities.	where chip controls sit
Technology acceleration	Win by running faster: less regulation, private capital, data centres and energy. [244]	White House technology advisers and venture investors.	Domestic regulation.	indifferent to China Opposes broad controls mainly as a cost.
Open ecosystem	Whoever’s chips, cloud, tools and standards become the world’s infrastructure wins in the long run. [244]	Chip, cloud and platform firms. Split between “open to all” and “open to the trusted”.	Cloud services, developer tools, business applications, standards.	China’s opening The only logic with room for Chinese buyers.

An advance on the two-camp model

The Fudan essay of December 2025, covered above, saw two camps. Xiao’s scheme is richer in three ways. It separates those who want to sell abroad from those who simply want fewer rules at home. It notes an ideological element in the security logic: some American officials and company heads frame the contest as one between democracy and “digital authoritarianism”, which makes it a question of what political order the technology will serve and not only of commercial or military advantage. And it observes that security concern has widened in 2026 from rivals gaining capability to the dangers of frontier systems themselves, which she calls a move from “external” to “internal” risk. [244]

The prediction worth keeping

She expects American policy not to choose between acceleration and safety, or openness and restriction, but to keep re-sorting the three under the fixed goal. And she names a trigger: “once a Chinese model quickly narrows the gap in some field, the security camp and leading American firms may form a temporary alliance” to demand investigations of model distillation, limits on model access or stronger technology protection. [244] That is a forecast that controls will move from chips toward models, driven by American firms as much as by officials.

This site’s reading

The closing advice is to stop asking whether the United States will go on containing China and to ask which logic has the upper hand in which field, so as to find the “space that still exists” for markets, governance and cooperation. [244] That is a more operational stance than most Chinese commentary. It treats American policy as something to be worked on from outside, field by field, and it implies that China gains when the open ecosystem logic prevails. It sits awkwardly beside the Fudan centre’s case, in the previous section, for declining American chips: one analyst looks for openings in the American system while another advises against walking through the one that has appeared.

Her own summary of the American problem is balanced. Too much restriction cuts the revenue and reach of American firms. Too much openness speeds the spread of capability. “The real difficulty of American policy is finding a balance between a technological moat and a global ecosystem.” [244]

Limits. This is a commentary by one scholar, first published on a bilateral-relations account and read here as reposted by a Beijing research community site. It cites American statements and documents this site did not check individually, and it assigns named people and firms to logics on the strength of their public remarks. Several events it mentions from mid 2026 are reported at second hand. It describes American thinking, and it offers no evidence about how Chinese officials use the framework.

China · A Shanghai scholar in a Tsinghua report, June 2026

A Chinese scholar describes two roads to general-purpose SI: America’s runs through the model, China’s through infrastructure. The second is also the road that needs fewer of the chips China cannot buy

2Roads in the comparison: model-centric, and general infrastructure

14Rounds of unofficial dialogue the Tsinghua project has held with an American think tank since 2019

2017Year of the Chinese plan that set the frame of technology, industry and governance

4American executive orders of July 2025 that he reads as one policy package

Jan 2026Date of China’s opinion on SI in manufacturing, cited as the latest step

0Times China’s strategy documents name general SI as a goal, by his account

In June 2026 Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy published a short collection on SI between China and the United States, written by members of a project that has held fourteen rounds of unofficial dialogue with an American think tank since 2019. One chapter, by Lu Chuanying of Tongji University in Shanghai, compares how the two states are pursuing general-purpose SI. [246]

He calls the American approach the “model-centric road”. General SI is the final goal, resources are concentrated on pushing model capability, and the lead is meant to set de facto world standards. The government plans, funds research and regulates, and the work depends on a few very large firms. [246]

China’s approach he calls the “general infrastructure road”. Its strategy documents do not name general SI as a goal. The capability is to be built into the national development system through computing networks, data, application scenarios and coordination, with the state as organiser, so that many technical routes have room to survive. [246]

Lu Chuanying’s comparison of the American and Chinese roads to general-purpose SI, with this site’s reading.

Feature	American road	Chinese road	This site’s reading
What general SI is	The end point of technical innovation. [246]	A base capability to be embedded in the development system, not a single end point. [246]	the core contrast
Where resources go	Concentrated on model capability: very large data centres and computing hubs. [246]	Spread across computing networks, data systems, scenarios and organisation. [246]	chips matter less on the second road Diffusion runs on inference, which domestic chips can serve.
Role of the state	Planning, research funding, safety regulation. Firms do the work. [246]	A more active coordinator: infrastructure, opened scenarios, cross-ministry work. [246]	as described
Strength	Breakthrough potential and international competitive edge in the short term. [246]	Stability and controllability. Lower overall risk. [246]	his judgement
Weakness	Lock-in on one technical path. Concentrated computing and data. Little room to adjust if the route hits a wall. [246]	Rising coordination costs and uncertain speed of breakthrough. [246]	even-handed He names a weakness on his own side.
Use of export controls	Infrastructure investment and export controls together are meant to keep a generational lead. [246]	Not discussed.	the gap in the chapter

The argument about the state

Lu’s starting point is that both sides of the technical debate, those who think scaling current models will reach general SI and those who think it will not, share an assumption: that the process is driven by technology and industry, with the state only supporting or regulating. He thinks that is inadequate for something so uncertain, so costly and with such wide effects. The state’s task, in his words, is not to choose the technology in place of the market but to arrange things so that exploration under deep uncertainty is “economically sustainable, politically acceptable and socially controllable in risk”. [246]

“Neither is simply better”

The chapter declines to rank the two. Each is “a rational choice” under a country’s institutions, stage of development and strategic aims. [246] That restraint is partly the genre: the collection was written for a dialogue with Americans. It is also a real position in Chinese debate, against commentators who treat the American concentration on a few firms as a bubble and those who treat China’s lack of a frontier lab on the American scale as a failure.

This site’s reading

The chapter does not mention chips, and that is what makes it relevant here. A strategy that bets on the largest models needs the most advanced processors in the largest numbers, which is exactly what American controls deny China. A strategy that bets on spreading adequate models through factories, services and government needs many more chips of lower grade, most of them for running models and not for training them. China can make those. Whether the infrastructure road was chosen on its merits or adopted because the other was closed, the chapter does not say. The earliest document Lu cites dates from 2017, before the controls, which supports the first reading. The emphasis on it since 2022 fits the second.

He ends on a claim that outlasts the question of who gets there first: whether or not general SI is achieved, the attempt “has become an important field for testing a state’s capacity for institutional coordination”. [246]

Limits. This is a four-page chapter in a university centre’s collection, written for an unofficial dialogue, and it argues by summary of policy documents, not from data on spending or computing. The connection to chip supply is this site’s inference and is not made by the author. Chinese firms do pursue frontier models, so “road” describes state strategy as he reads it, not everything done in China.

China · Fudan’s Wu Xinbo on supply chains and Taiwan’s chips, 2026

A leading Chinese America-watcher says China is irreplaceable along the whole supply chain, that decoupling will shrink to about 1% of trade, and that Taiwan lowers its own value by building chip plants in America

3Stages of the supply chain where he says the US depends on China: upstream, midstream, downstream

1%Share of trade where he thinks decoupling is both necessary to Washington and achievable

$265bnInvestment the leading Taiwanese chipmaker has planned in the US, as the interviewer cites it

3Areas of SI where he says the two countries already cooperate: development, application, governance

3 yearsMinimum period he expects the new stability to last

Nov 2026Month for the next exchange under the agreed SI dialogue, as the interview states

Wu Xinbo is dean of Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies and director of its Center for American Studies, and one of the Chinese scholars most often consulted on Washington. In May 2026 he wrote for a Chinese newspaper after attending the state dinner for the American president, and in October he gave a long interview to a Chinese news site. [247, 248]

His reading of 2025 is that the calm since the leaders met that October was “tactical stability”: the American side, having swung tariffs and sanctions and met a strong Chinese response, “had to call a temporary truce to get breathing space”. The agreement of May 2026 on a “constructive strategic stability relationship” is meant to be more durable. He is blunt about the cause: the improvement “is not the result of the American side showing kindness” but was “won by the Chinese side through hard struggle”. [247]

In the interview he states the economic basis. China’s irreplaceability “runs through the upstream, midstream and downstream of the supply chain” and “far exceeds what we imagined”. The United States, he says, is realising this “more and more clearly, even painfully”. [248]

Wu Xinbo’s arguments in 2026 on leverage, decoupling, Taiwan’s chips and SI, with this site’s reading.

Subject	What he says	This site’s reading
Why relations steadied	China’s counter-measures in 2025 forced a truce, and the American president came to see China’s strength and resolve. [247]	leverage, stated openly The rare earth controls are the unnamed instrument.
Upstream dependence	Rare earths, critical minerals and pharmaceutical ingredients. [248]	well documented
Midstream dependence	Intermediate goods. The thousands of data centres America is building for SI need computing and electrical equipment imported from China. [248]	partly true Electrical gear and components, yes. The processors, no.
Downstream dependence	Robots and drones. [248]	asserted No figures given.
Where decoupling ends	Washington will sort trade into what it must and can cut, what it wants to cut but cannot, and what needs no cut. Perhaps 1% falls in the first group. [248]	optimistic The 1% figure is borrowed from an American official’s remark. Advanced chips sit inside it.
Taiwan’s chip plants in America	If enough chips for the American market are made in America, “Taiwan’s value to the United States falls sharply”. Taiwan sought more protection and is lowering its own worth. [248]	the sharpest claim A direct statement of how Beijing reads the “silicon shield”.
SI	Cooperation already exists in development, application and governance. American firms increasingly use Chinese open models. The obstacle is an American “zero-sum mindset”. [248]	one-sided Says nothing of Chinese limits on access.

The silicon shield, read from Beijing

Taiwanese debate, covered in the Taiwan sections of this tab, asks whether moving advanced production to America weakens the island’s protection. Wu answers from the other side, and without hedging. Washington’s interest in Taiwan was once geopolitical, he says, but for the present administration it is mainly about high-end chips. Once supply is assured at home, the reasoning runs, “who cares” what happens to Taiwan. Taiwan, he says, will have lost the hen and the rice used to lure it. [248] Whatever its accuracy about Washington, this is evidence of what an influential Chinese analyst believes, and it implies that Beijing sees the transfer of chip plants as working in its favour over time.

Leverage as the lesson of 2025

The two texts together give the Chinese mainstream account of the trade war’s outcome. Pressure failed because China could answer in kind. The answer worked because the dependence runs both ways and is wider than either side had measured. And the appropriate conclusion is confidence: “China’s capacity to shape the relationship will only grow”. [247] There is no mention in either text of the cost to China of the controls it imposed, or of the efforts by America and its allies to build other sources of rare earths, which are the main risk to that leverage.

This site’s reading

Wu’s claim about data centres deserves a closer look, because it is where his argument touches chips. It is true that American data centre construction draws on Chinese-made transformers, power equipment, circuit boards and components. It is not true of the processors that define those centres, which are the item America withholds from China. So the dependence is mutual but not symmetrical in kind: each side holds something the other cannot quickly replace. His forecast of a negotiated boundary, with a small fenced area and open trade outside it, is the outcome that asymmetry would predict. It is also what the American security camp described in earlier sections is trying to prevent by writing the limits into law.

He does not expect smooth progress. American “hegemonic thinking and domestic politics” remain the sources of instability, hawks will go on working against the relationship, and the mid-term elections add a new variable. In the interview’s headline he says he worries more about one American party than the other. [247, 248]

Limits. One text is a newspaper commentary and the other an interview, both by a scholar who attended the state dinner he describes and who presents the Chinese position favourably. Neither gives data for the dependence claims. The investment figure is the interviewer’s. This site read the interview for its sections on Taiwan’s chip industry, supply chains and SI and did not use the parts on the Middle East. His reading of American motives toward Taiwan is his opinion, and no American source is cited for it.

Evidence · the machines

The five big toolmakers’ own records show China bought $38 billion of their machines in 2024, two-thirds more than in 2022

$38 billionSpent by China with the five largest toolmakers in their 2024 financial years, House committee report (October 2025)

39%Share of the five toolmakers’ worldwide revenue that came from China in 2024

+66%Rise in China’s purchases from the five between 2022 and 2024

70%Share of ASML’s immersion lithography machines, by number, sold to China in 2024. It was 26% in 2022

69%Share of the toolmakers’ 2024 China revenue that came from state-owned enterprises

149 of 262Licence applications to ship to SMIC or its affiliates that Washington approved for two toolmakers from January 2021 to late 2024

Controls on chipmaking machines are usually judged by what China cannot buy. In October 2025 a committee of the United States House of Representatives published what China did buy. It obtained sales records from the five largest equipment makers, which together hold an estimated 80 to 85% of the market: Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA of the United States, ASML of the Netherlands and Tokyo Electron of Japan. [457] China spent $38 billion with the five in their 2024 financial years, 39% of their worldwide revenue and 66% more than in 2022. [457] All five cooperated, and the committee states that it does not claim any of them broke American, Dutch or Japanese law. [457]

The records show who bought. Five Chinese chipmakers on American restricted lists were among the top thirty Chinese customers of every one of the five toolmakers from 2022 to 2024: SMIC, SwaySure, Pengxinxu, SiEn and Yangtze Memory. [457] State-owned enterprises accounted for 69% of the toolmakers’ 2024 revenue from China. [457] And the records show what was bought. ASML sold 70% of its immersion lithography machines, by number, to China in 2024, up from 26% in 2022. [457] These are the machines one step below the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems that the Netherlands has never licensed for China.

What the toolmakers’ sales records show, by finding. All figures are from the House committee’s October 2025 report and refer to the companies’ financial years.

Question	What the records show	What it means for the rules
How much did China buy?	$38 billion in 2024, 39% of the five firms’ worldwide revenue, up 66% on 2022. [457]	volume not limited The rules restrict the most advanced machines only.
Who bought?	Five restricted chipmakers were top-thirty customers of all five toolmakers. For four of the five toolmakers, 45% of 2022 to 2024 China revenue came from companies that are now restricted. [457]	listed firms kept buying Listing came after the sale, or covered only some items.
Did American and foreign firms sell alike?	No. In 2024 the three American firms together sold $786 million to entities restricted at the time of sale. Tokyo Electron sold $1.23 billion and ASML $2.98 billion. [457]	American rules bind Americans The American firms’ sales of this kind fell 56% from 2022 to 2024. The others’ more than tripled. [457]
Which lithography machines?	ASML’s sales to China by number: immersion machines 26%, 45% and 70% in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Dry machines 36%, 52% and 64%. All lithography 29%, 44% and 59%. [457]	older machines flow freely By revenue China was 36% of ASML’s 2024 sales, because the machines sold there cost less. [457]
Is the buyer the state?	69% of 2024 China revenue came from state-owned enterprises, and each toolmaker more than doubled the share of its worldwide revenue from them between 2022 and 2024. [457]	no private market to separate
Were licences refused?	One toolmaker asked for 196 licences for SMIC and its affiliates from January 2021 to December 2024: 110 approved, 22 denied, 32 returned and 32 pending. Another asked for 66: 39 approved and 5 denied. [457]	listing was not a ban SMIC was listed in December 2020 with denial presumed only for items uniquely required at 10 nanometres and below. [457]
How far have Chinese toolmakers come?	Their share of the Chinese market rose from 6% in 2020 to 14% in 2023, and of the world market from 1.3% to 3.2%. [457]	rising from a low base No commercially viable Chinese immersion or EUV machine yet, by the committee’s account. [457]

The gap between allies

The widest difference in the data is between sellers. As Washington listed more Chinese chipmakers, its own toolmakers’ sales to those firms fell by more than half. [457] The Dutch and Japanese firms, mostly not bound by American rules, sold more. [457] The New York Fed study found the same pattern from the other side: foreign suppliers of listed Chinese firms gained revenue after American controls. [451] A rule written for one country’s firms transfers the business to its allies’ firms.

Substitute buyers

The committee reports that between 2023 and 2024 Lam may have moved sales away from buyers that were already restricted and towards newer Chinese entities that were not restricted until later, possibly December 2024. [457] SwaySure, SiEn and Pengxinxu, all named in the report as part of Huawei’s supplier network, were added to American lists only in December 2024. [457] A list of names is always behind the companies it is chasing.

What the committee asks for

Nine recommendations follow. The main ones: align Dutch and Japanese controls with American ones; ban sales to the whole of China, and not to named firms only, for all machines that process 300-millimetre wafers, including older immersion lithography; restrict the components that go into machines; and bar factories worldwide that use American and allied machines from also using Chinese ones. [457] These are proposals. None was law when the report appeared.

This is the best public evidence on the machine controls, because it comes from the sellers’ books and not from estimates. It shows a control with a narrow edge and a wide gap. The edge holds: no EUV machine has been sold to China. Below it, China became the largest buyer of every other class of machine while the rules were in force. [457] The controls set a ceiling on what China could buy, not a limit on how much, and China bought up to the ceiling.

Two readings are possible, and the report takes one of them. The committee sees a failure that wider bans would mend. [457] The other reading is that these sales were the price of keeping the Dutch and Japanese governments inside the arrangement at all, and that the $38 billion paid for research at the firms the West depends on. The records cannot settle that. They do show that the service and spare-parts relationship still exists for every machine sold, which is why the argument has moved to servicing.

Limits. The report’s summary, key findings and recommendations were read from the committee’s file; the appendices were not. It is a political document written to support tighter controls, and it relies on data the companies supplied and the committee did not audit. Company-level tables are partly redacted. The report gives both a 66% rise in China’s purchases and a 56% rise in China’s share of the toolmakers’ revenue between 2022 and 2024; this page uses the first. The licence figures cover two unnamed toolmakers only, and the report says the approved exports were very likely not advanced machines. The alternative reading in the last paragraph is this site’s, not the committee’s. Sales after early 2025 are not covered.

Evidence · the gap

Measured by teardown and by output, China’s best chip keeps improving while its share of the world’s computing stays in single figures

N+3SMIC process confirmed in Huawei’s Kirin 9030 by TechInsights (December 2025): denser than before, still well short of 5-nanometre processes abroad

under 4%Huawei’s computing output as a share of Nvidia’s in 2026, Epoch AI (September 2026)

5 timesLead of the best American SI chip over the best Chinese one by advertised performance, Council on Foreign Relations (December 2025). Projected to be 17 times by late 2027

3 to 4 yearsHow far Huawei’s chips trail Nvidia’s, expected to last until at least 2030, Epoch AI

113 v. 224Million transistors per square millimetre on SMIC’s N+3 and on TSMC’s N3P, as given by Epoch AI

2 of 22Notable models developed wholly in China by 2025 that were trained on Chinese chips, Center for a New American Security (June 2025)

Whether the controls worked is argued mostly by assertion. Three kinds of measurement exist. The first is the teardown. In December 2025 TechInsights, a Canadian firm that takes chips apart, confirmed that Huawei’s Kirin 9030 phone processor is made on a new SMIC process called N+3, which it describes as a scaled evolution of SMIC’s 7-nanometre-class technology. [458] Its measurements found real gains in density, and a process still significantly less scaled than the 5-nanometre processes of TSMC and Samsung. [458] SMIC got there without EUV machines.

The second measurement is output. An analysis for the Council on Foreign Relations in December 2025 multiplied each chip’s advertised performance by the number made. Even on assumptions it called aggressive, Huawei would produce about 5% of Nvidia’s total computing power in 2025, 4% in 2026 and 2% in 2027. [459] Epoch AI, a research group, reached a similar figure by a different route in September 2026: under 4% of Nvidia’s output this year. [460] The third measurement is use. Of 22 notable models developed wholly in China by 2025, two were trained on Chinese chips. [556]

Three ways of measuring the gap. Each row gives the measure, the result and who made it. Projections are marked.

Measure	Result	Source and method	Status
Process in China’s best phone chip	SMIC N+3, a scaled 7-nanometre-class process, significantly less scaled than 5-nanometre processes from TSMC and Samsung. [458]	TechInsights, physical measurement of a chip bought on the market (December 2025). [458]	measured
Transistor density	SMIC N+3 at 113 million per square millimetre, about half of TSMC’s N3P at 224 million. The next SMIC step, N+4, at about 137 million. [460]	Epoch AI, from published and reported figures (September 2026). [460]	compiled The N+4 figure is an expectation.
Chips made in 2025	Huawei about 800,000 Ascend chips. Nvidia about 4.5 million. [460]	Epoch AI, from trade reporting. [460] The Council on Foreign Relations analysis uses the same two figures in its high case. [459]	estimated
Computing output in 2026	Huawei about 0.9 million H100-equivalents, Nvidia about 23 million: under 4%, or about 6% at the edge of the ranges. [460]	Epoch AI model. An H100-equivalent converts any chip into the computing power of one Nvidia H100. [460]	modelled
Best chip against best chip	American lead of about 5 times now, 17 times by the second half of 2027. [459]	Council on Foreign Relations, from the two firms’ published roadmaps and advertised performance. [459]	projection Rests on both firms meeting their roadmaps.
What limits Huawei	The supply of high-bandwidth memory. On Chinese-made memory alone, output could stay near 1% of Nvidia’s through 2028. [460]	Epoch AI, from estimates of memory production at CXMT. [460]	modelled The memory control of December 2024 at work.
What Chinese developers train on	Two of 22 notable China-only models by 2025 used Chinese chips. [556]	Center for a New American Security count (June 2025). [556]	counted Smuggled and pre-control Nvidia chips fill the rest.

The constraint moved from machines to memory

Epoch AI’s finding is that Huawei is held back less by SMIC’s wafers than by stacked memory. Huawei built a stock of more than 10 million foreign memory stacks before the December 2024 controls, enough for one to two million chips, and it is expected to run out in 2026. [460] After that the ceiling is Chinese memory output. [460] The control that binds hardest today is one of the newest and least discussed.

Better chips, falling share

Both things are true together. SMIC’s process is improving, as the teardown shows. [458] Huawei’s share of computing output falls in the projection anyway, from 5% to 2% in two years, because Nvidia’s chips improve faster and its volume grows. [459] Huawei’s own 2026 chips have lower advertised performance than its current best. [459] Progress measured against China’s past and progress measured against the frontier give opposite headlines.

What these measures leave out

All three count hardware. None measures what is done with it. The output comparisons cover Nvidia and Huawei only, use advertised and not tested performance, and exclude other American and Chinese chip designers. [459] The H100-equivalent ignores memory, software and workload. [460] And none counts computing that Chinese firms rent abroad or the chips that were smuggled in, which other estimates put in the hundreds of thousands. [557]

The measured record supports a narrower claim than either side makes. The controls did not stop SMIC advancing: it has gone from 7-nanometre-class to something denser without the machines it was denied. [458] They did keep China’s home-made share of advanced computing small, and the gap in output is projected to widen, not close, through 2027. [459, 460] The controls failed to freeze China’s technology and succeeded in limiting its volume. Volume is what training the largest models needs.

That result depends on things the measurements do not hold fixed. The share figures assume the memory control keeps holding and that Nvidia’s chips stay out of China, and in December 2025 Washington chose to allow sales of one of them. [459] A gap created by a rule can be closed by changing the rule. Epoch AI expects Huawei’s limit to shift from memory supply towards chip performance by 2028, which would bring the machine controls back to the centre. [460]

Limits. TechInsights publishes only a summary; its measurements are behind a paywall, so the gate and fin dimensions reported elsewhere are not used. The Council on Foreign Relations article argues for keeping the controls, and its 5%, 4% and 2% figures are for its high production case. Epoch AI’s figures are model outputs built on third-party reporting, and it calls its smuggling scenario highly speculative; the last 6% of its page was not read. The Epoch AI and Council figures agree on 2025 unit counts because they draw on the same trade reporting, so they are not independent. Chinese designers other than Huawei, such as Cambricon, are outside all three measures.

Evidence · a natural experiment

When Japan restricted three chip chemicals to South Korea in 2019, one trade collapsed, two did not, and Korea rebuilt its supply

87.9%Fall in the value of Japanese hydrogen fluoride exports to South Korea after the July 2019 controls, RIETI discussion paper (March 2023)

97.5%Fall in the quantity of those exports

0 of 2Of the other two restricted chemicals, photoresist and fluorinated polyimide, the number that showed a comparable fall

+94.6%Rise in Japanese hydrogen fluoride exports to the United States over the same period

over 90%Japan’s share of South Korea’s imports of two of the three chemicals before the controls

2021The fall in hydrogen fluoride trade was still present two years on, the last year in the data

The cleanest test of a chip export control between advanced economies was run by Japan. In July 2019 Tokyo announced that exports to South Korea of three chemicals used in chipmaking would need an individual licence for each contract in place of a bulk licence: hydrogen fluoride, photoresist and fluorinated polyimide. [463] Japanese firms supplied more than 90% of Korea’s imports of two of the three. [463] Two economists at Japan’s Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry measured what happened next, comparing the restricted products with other products and other destinations from January 2017 to May 2021. [463]

Japanese exports of hydrogen fluoride to South Korea fell by 87.9% in value and 97.5% in quantity, and had not recovered by 2021. [463] Exports of the other two chemicals showed no such fall. [463] Japanese makers lost little: their exports of hydrogen fluoride to the United States rose by 94.6%, and Korean imports from the United States rose too, which the authors read as possible roundabout trade. [463] Korea turned to Belgium, the United States and Taiwan, and production inside Korea rose, both by Korean firms and by the local plants of Japanese ones. [463]

The five findings of the Makioka and Zhang study of Japan’s 2019 controls, and what each suggests about controls in general. The third column is this site’s reading.

Finding	Evidence	What it suggests	Strength
One of three controlled goods stopped flowing	Hydrogen fluoride exports to Korea fell 87.9% in value. Photoresist and fluorinated polyimide did not fall. [463]	The same legal step has very different effects by product. What decides it is whether the buyer has another source.	measured
The seller found other buyers	Japanese exports of hydrogen fluoride to the United States rose 94.6%, and Japanese output of chip-related products did not fall. [463]	The controlling country paid little in the short run. Some of the trade may have gone round through a third country. [463]	measured
The buyer found other sellers	Korea shifted its sourcing of the restricted goods to Belgium, the United States and Taiwan. [463]	A control with one government behind it is a control with gaps.	measured
Production moved into the buyer’s country	Output in Korea rose, by Korean firms and by Japanese firms’ Korean plants. [463] The Korean government raised subsidies for home production. [463]	The lasting effect was a competitor, partly built by the controlling country’s own companies.	measured
The chain shifted further down	Korean exports of chipmaking equipment to China rose, which the authors read as some Korean chip production moving there. [463]	A control on inputs can push the buyer’s production abroad, to a place the controller likes less.	authors’ inference

Why only one chemical

The study does not settle why hydrogen fluoride fell and the other two did not, but the data point to substitutes. In 2018 Korea already bought hydrogen fluoride from China, Taiwan and others as well as Japan, so the highest grades were the only part that needed replacing. [463] Photoresist imports from Japan spiked in July 2019 as buyers rushed to stock up, dipped for several months and then recovered. [463] Where no alternative existed, the trade continued under licence.

A small control with lasting effects

Japan did not ban anything. It changed the type of licence, so that exporters had to report the end user, the specification and the technology for each contract. [463] That administrative cost was enough to end most of one trade for at least two years. [463] The lesson for the larger contest is that a control does not have to be a prohibition to redirect a supply chain, and that the redirection outlasts the dispute.

What it means for the chokepoints

Japan held a far stronger position over Korea in these chemicals than the allies hold over China in most machines: over 90% of supply in two products. [463] Within two years the buyer had new foreign sources and more production at home. [463] Korea is a rich ally with a deep chemical industry, which made that easier. China has more money and a larger home market, and has had since 2019 to do the same.

This episode is the nearest thing to a controlled trial in the field, and its result is uncomfortable for those who rely on chokepoints. A near-monopoly supplier used its position once, on an ally, and lost part of the market for good while the buyer became less dependent.

It also shows what the seller kept. Japanese producers redirected their sales and their own output did not fall, and their Korean plants gained business. [463] The firms adapted faster than either government. That is the same pattern the New York Fed study found for American controls on China, seen from the other side: the trade reroutes, and the costs and gains fall on firms that had no part in the decision. [451]

Limits. The paper’s abstract, introduction, data description and conclusion were read, along with its main coefficients; the robustness tables were not. It is a discussion paper, later presented at an NBER conference, and not yet a journal article as far as this site could establish. Its data end in May 2021, so it does not cover the lifting of the controls, which this site has not researched. The paper measures trade values and quantities, not chip output or prices. The paper notes the controls were officially justified by Korea’s handling of strategic goods and were reportedly tied to the dispute over wartime labour. The comparisons with China in the third card and the first sentence of the conclusion are this site’s reasoning.

Evidence · the subsidies

The first full audit of the CHIPS Act finds it will build the fabs, at about $185,000 per job a year, and probably not reach its own 20% target without more money

$185,000Average subsidy per job per year under the CHIPS Act, about twice the industry’s average pay of about $90,000, Peterson Institute (January 2025)

about $200 billionThe authors’ estimate of the law’s subsidy cost once the tax credit is counted, against a headline of $76 billion

43,000Permanent jobs expected, with about 93,000 temporary construction jobs

29.6%Government support to Chinese chip firms as a share of their revenue, 2014 to 2018, in OECD data on 21 firms as arranged by the Peterson Institute. For American firms, 4.2%

over $50 billionTotal government support to those 21 firms in 2014 to 2018, as the OECD reported it in December 2019

30 to 40%Share of a fab’s ten-year cost covered by incentives in China as of 2020, in an industry estimate. In the United States before the Act, 10 to 15%

The other half of chip policy is paying for factories at home, and it has been assessed less than it has been announced. In January 2025 the Peterson Institute for International Economics published an 87-page review of the manufacturing part of the United States CHIPS and Science Act. [464] Its first finding favours the law: the subsidies will sharply increase production of advanced chips on American soil, beyond what the market would have built. [464] Its second is that more production may not be the best security for the money, because Congress never weighed other ways to spend what the authors put at about $200 billion. [464]

The cost is larger than the headline. The law authorised $39 billion in production grants and $11 billion for research, but its 25% investment tax credit, budgeted at $26 billion, is likely to reach $100 billion. [464] The authors count about 93,000 temporary construction jobs and 43,000 permanent ones, at an average subsidy of $185,000 for each job in each year, about twice the average pay in the industry. [464] On the law’s own target of making 20% of the world’s leading-edge logic chips by 2030, their answer is maybe, and only with further subsidies. [464]

The Peterson Institute’s five questions about the CHIPS Act and its answers, January 2025.

Question	Answer	Reasoning given	Verdict
Would the firms have built in the United States anyway?	No. [464]	Grants had to be shown to change the investment decision, and some 150 experts were recruited to test that. [464]	the subsidy mattered
Will it improve economic and national security?	Yes, if more production means more security. [464]	Production on American territory will almost certainly rise. Stockpiles, or paying users or foreign makers to hold inventory in the United States, were never debated. [464]	untested against alternatives
Will it cut dependence on imported chips?	The report is sceptical. [464]	Imports of mature chips are likely to stay large, and the subsidies are not big enough to match the cost advantages of South Korea and Taiwan. [464]	unlikely
Will the United States make 20% of leading-edge chips by 2030?	Maybe. [464]	Further subsidies are probably needed, and significant obstacles remain even then. [464]	needs more money
How many jobs, at what cost?	About 93,000 construction and 43,000 permanent jobs, at $185,000 per job-year. [464]	The authors call jobs a makeweight argument: the same money in almost any other programme would create more well-paid work. [464]	poor value as a jobs plan

Who was already subsidising

The Act answered support abroad that had been measured before it passed. The OECD studied 21 large chip firms for 2014 to 2018 and found total government support above $50 billion, with below-market loans and equity especially large and concentrated in one jurisdiction. [465] Arranged by home country, support came to 29.6% of revenue for the Chinese firms, 11.1% for Japanese, 4.2% for American and 1.1% for Korean. [464] Every one of the 21 firms received research or investment incentives. [465]

The cost gap the subsidies must close

An industry study from 2020, quoted in the review, put the share of a new fab’s ten-year cost covered by incentives at 30 to 40% in China, 25 to 30% in South Korea and Taiwan, about 15% in Japan and 10 to 15% in the United States and Germany. [464] The Act was written to close that gap. The reviewers judge that even after it, American subsidies do not confer the cost advantages that South Korea and Taiwan enjoy. [464]

What history says works

An earlier study by one of the authors scored fifty years of American industrial policy and found it worked best when it paid for industry research, not production. [464] The review adds a caution about the present round: in earlier decades subsidies clearly sped up chip technology, and the same cannot be said with confidence of the subsidies since 2020, in the United States or anywhere else. [464] Paying for a factory moves where a chip is made. It does not make the chip better.

The review supports the law’s central claim and questions nearly everything around it. The fabs would not have been built without the money, and they are being built. [464] But the policy was designed around a place, American territory, and judged against a goal, security of supply, that could have been bought in other ways that were never costed. A stockpile does not need a workforce or a customer.

Read with the rest of this part, the two halves of chip policy have the same weakness. Controls impose a measured cost on sellers for a benefit nobody has quantified. Subsidies carry a measured cost per job and per fab for a security gain nobody has quantified either. The OECD figures explain why governments act anyway: every large producer was already paying, and the one paying most was the one the others fear. [465]

Limits. The Peterson Institute report’s summary, its five questions and its subsidy tables were read from the file; the country chapters were skimmed. It is a preliminary report dated January 2025 and does not cover the changes made to the programme after that, including Washington’s equity stake in Intel. Its $185,000 figure assumes that no subsidised fab would have been built otherwise, which the authors call a strong assumption, and leaves out indirect jobs. The OECD paper could not be opened; its over $50 billion total is from its published abstract, and the shares of revenue are from the Peterson Institute’s rearrangement of the OECD data, whose total (about $107 billion) differs from the OECD’s headline because it is built differently. One reviewer quoted in the report says the OECD understates Chinese subsidies. The fab cost figures are from a 2020 study by Boston Consulting Group for the Semiconductor Industry Association, an interested party.

Evidence · the people

Investigations of scientists with ties to China cut the output of American researchers, and most Chinese-origin faculty surveyed had thought about leaving

10.1%Fall in citation-weighted output of American life scientists with collaborators in China after 2018, NBER working paper (revised February 2023)

2.1%Fall in the number of their papers

113,000Scientists whose publication records the study followed, 2015 to 2021

214Scientists in disclosed investigations by July 2021, at 93 institutions

61%Chinese-origin faculty at American universities who had thought about leaving the country, survey of 1,304 (2021 to 2022)

45%Of those who had held federal grants, the share who now wished to avoid applying for them, same survey

Controls on people have been measured too, though not in chips. From 2018 the United States Justice Department ran its China Initiative, and the National Institutes of Health began investigating hundreds of grant holders, mostly for undisclosed foreign funding. [466] By July 2021 the disclosed cases involved at least 214 scientists at 93 institutions. [466] Four researchers at the University of California San Diego tracked the publications of more than 113,000 American life scientists from 2015 to 2021 and compared those who had collaborators in China with those whose foreign collaborators were elsewhere. [466]

After 2018 the scientists with collaborators in China published 2.1% fewer papers and, weighted by citations, 10.1% less. [466] The fall was sharper for scientists of Asian origin and in fields that depended most on federal funding and on joint work with China, and it appeared across most institutions, not only those in the news. [466] A separate survey of 1,304 Chinese-origin faculty at American universities, taken between December 2021 and March 2022, found that 72% did not feel safe as academic researchers and 61% had thought about leaving the United States. [467]

What two studies found about the effect of security investigations on scientists in the United States.

Measure	Finding	Source and method	Kind of evidence
Papers published	Down 2.1% for scientists with earlier collaborators in China, against those with collaborators elsewhere. [466]	Publication records of over 113,000 scientists, before and after 2018. [466]	measured
Papers weighted by citations	Down 10.1%. For work outside the main medical database, citations down 5.7%. [466]	Same study. [466]	measured
Who was most affected	Scientists of Asian origin, and fields with more federal funding and more joint work with China. [466]	Same study, by group and by field. [466]	measured
Return migration	A steady rise in Chinese-origin scientists moving from the United States to China, faster after 2018. [467]	Affiliations on more than 2.3 million scientific papers. [467]	measured Those who left remain a very small share of the total. [467]
Sense of safety	72% did not feel safe as academic researchers. 42% were fearful of conducting research. 65% were worried about collaborations with China. [467]	Online survey of 1,304 Chinese-origin faculty, December 2021 to March 2022. [467]	survey Not a random sample. [467]
Intentions	61% had thought about leaving the United States. 45% of past grant holders wished to avoid federal grants. 89% still wanted to contribute to American leadership in science. [467]	Same survey. [467]	survey Intentions, not actions.

Why this belongs on a page about chips

Neither study is about semiconductors. They are here because the mechanism is the same one the World Bank found for listed Chinese firms: when joint work across the Pacific is cut, output falls on both sides. [454] The life sciences are where the effect on the American side has been measured. Chip research draws on the same pool of people. In the survey, faculty in engineering and computer science were among the most likely to consider avoiding federal grants. [467]

A small number of cases, a wide effect

The investigations touched a few hundred people. [466] The fall in output was measured across tens of thousands, at most institutions. [466] The authors conclude that scientific research may be very sensitive to political tension. [466] This is the pattern the New York Fed found in trade, where suppliers dropped unlisted Chinese customers as well as listed ones. [451] A rule aimed at a few changes the behaviour of everyone who might be mistaken for them.

Where the people go

The migration data show the direction of travel. Returns to China by Chinese-origin scientists had been rising for years and picked up speed after 2018, in most fields. [467] The authors stress that the great majority prefer to stay. [467] The risk they identify is double: talent that leaves, and talent that stays but stops applying for the grants that fund its research. [467]

The evidence on people matches the evidence on firms. Security measures aimed at a narrow group reduced the output of a much larger one, and the loss fell on the country applying them as well as on the target. [466, 454] For a contest that every government on this page says will be decided by engineers, this is the measured cost that receives the least attention.

The findings should not be stretched. A 2.1% fall in papers is small, the larger effect is in citations, and the studies cannot say what the investigations prevented, since the benefit of a security measure is the harm that did not happen. The Justice Department ended the China Initiative in 2022, and the authors note that funding agencies’ investigations continued. [466] What the studies establish is that the cost exists, has a size, and was not counted when the policy was made.

Limits. Both papers were read in their freely available versions: the NBER working paper as revised in February 2023 (abstract, introduction and conclusions) and the preprint of the survey study, which was later published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2023. The published versions may differ in detail. The first study covers the life sciences only, and its design shows that the decline coincided with the investigations without proving they caused it. The survey was run for an advocacy group, the Asian American Scholar Forum, and its authors call it a convenience sample. No comparable study of chip engineers or of company researchers was found. The link drawn to chip research in the first card is this site’s reasoning.

Evidence · the precedent

Forty-five years of controls on the Soviet Union bought a lead of a few years, leaked throughout, and strained the alliance that ran them

1949 to 1994Life of CoCom, the Western arrangement that controlled technology exports to the Soviet bloc

17Members at its largest, after Spain joined in 1985 and Australia in 1989. It was never a treaty

2 to 5 yearsAmerican lead in electronics credited to the controls by the Pentagon’s export control chief in 1978

10–12 to 4–6Years of American lead in microelectronics in the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, by a Defense Department calculation

about 1,000KGB officers worldwide tasked with acquiring foreign technology by the early 1980s

10% at mostShare of CoCom members’ trade that was with the Warsaw Pact. China’s share of its controllers’ trade today is far larger

There is one long test of what technology controls can do against a rival great power. The Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, known as CoCom, ran from 1949 to 1994. [461] It was an informal arrangement with no treaty behind it, and it grew to seventeen members: the United States, most of its NATO allies, Japan and later Spain and Australia. [461] It denied computers, telecommunications equipment, machine tools and other goods with civil and military uses to the Soviet Union and its allies, and to China through a sister body. [461] In 2025 two Dartmouth scholars, Jennifer Lind and Michael Mastanduno, set its record against today’s chip controls. [461]

The best contemporary estimates of what CoCom achieved in electronics are measured in years, not decades. The official who ran the Pentagon’s export control effort estimated in 1978 that controls on Soviet electronics added about two to five years to the American lead. [461] The Defense Department later calculated, from documents supplied by a defector, that Soviet acquisition had cut the American lead in microelectronics from ten to twelve years to four to six between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. [461] The lead was real. It was also shrinking while the controls were in force.

Three lessons Lind and Mastanduno draw from CoCom, the Cold War evidence for each, and what they see in the chip controls. The last row gives the opposing reading.

Lesson	Cold War evidence	In the chip controls	Assessment
The controlled list grows, and enforcement weakens as it does	Members could ask for exceptions for items judged militarily insignificant. During the détente of the 1970s the exceptions ran into the thousands a year. [461]	The second Trump administration added eighty more Chinese firms to the Entity List in its first few months and tightened the limits on chips that may be sold to China without a licence. [461]	already repeating
The target gets the technology anyway	The KGB set up a directorate to acquire Western technology in 1963. The Soviet Union used smuggling, espionage and shipment through third countries. [461]	The authors call the current regime similarly porous and China a more adept target. [461] Estimates of smuggled chips run to hundreds of thousands. [557]	leaks then, leaks now
Enforcement turns allies against each other	In 1987 Toshiba of Japan and Kongsberg of Norway were found to have sold the Soviet Union milling machines that made its submarine propellers quieter. [461] After Poland declared martial law in 1981, Washington extended its sanctions to European firms working on a Soviet gas pipeline, and the British prime minister said her country had been deeply wounded by a friend. [461]	The authors expect partner conflicts to return as controls widen and enforcement weakens. [461] The House committee already asks for American rules to be applied to Dutch and Japanese machines. [457]	under way
Conditions were easier then	Trade with the Warsaw Pact was at most 10% of members’ trade, and the allies still quarrelled. [461]	China is a central trading partner for every controlling state, and it can retaliate through its own chokepoints. [461]	harder now
The opposing reading: it worked	CoCom managed Soviet access for 45 years. Soviet computers rarely sold even inside the Eastern bloc, and the Soviet Union never produced a computing firm that could compete abroad. [462]	The same writer warns that enforcement was the weak point throughout and could not be made perfect even in near-ideal conditions. [462]	a qualified yes

Why the Soviet Union fell behind

Lind and Mastanduno’s reading is that the Soviet Union did not lag because it could not obtain Western technology. It obtained a great deal. [461] The account of CoCom’s success points the same way: Soviet ministries fought each other for imported computers, and one IBM machine was sought by a truck plant, military sites, the state tourist agency and the Olympic committee. [462] The weakness was in using and spreading technology, which is not a weakness China shares.

Leaks that mattered

The record names cases. A smuggling ring moved semiconductor equipment east between 1977 and 1980, and a VAX computer was diverted in 1983. [462] The Nixon administration itself allowed the sale of precision grinding machines for ball bearings that probably improved Soviet missile guidance. [461] In the Toshiba case the suppliers went on updating the machines’ software from 1982 to 1984. [462] Then as now, the service relationship was where control was won or lost.

What the authors advise

Their conclusion is restraint. Chokepoint controls work best in the short term, before the target adapts, so they should be few. [461] Keeping the allies on side requires a small list and no extraterritorial sanctions, which Washington did not manage under CoCom. [461] They advise against rebuilding a CoCom-style body, because many partners are too tied to China to choose sides. [461] They also warn that controls may speed China’s overall advance in the long run. [461]

The precedent sets the scale of what to expect. With a weaker target, a smaller trade relationship and a tighter alliance, the West held a lead in electronics that its own officials put at a few years and saw narrow. [461] Nothing in that record suggests today’s controls can do more than delay, and several things suggest they will find it harder. A delay of a few years can still be worth having, if it is used.

The comparison has limits of its own. The Soviet Union never had a chip industry that sold to the world, and it was not the main customer of the firms being restrained. China is both. And the estimates of the lead come from American officials with an interest in showing that enforcement needed more resources. The point that survives is structural: a control regime is a coalition, and the coalition is the first thing to wear out.

Limits. The Lind and Mastanduno article was read on the journal’s page and its figures checked against the journal’s file; it is a peer-reviewed argument by scholars who are sceptical of broad controls, and one of them wrote the standard history of CoCom. The ChinaTalk essay is a commentary read on its web page, used for the opposing view and for cases the article does not give. The lead estimates of 1978 and the 1980s are quoted from the article, not from the original documents. The remark that China does not share the Soviet weakness in using technology, and the last paragraph, are this site’s reasoning.

Part 6

Chips in war

Why armies run on ordinary chips, what has been found inside the weapons used in Ukraine and elsewhere, how the embargo leaks, and the drone, radio and space wars.

The argument · written 13 November 2026

Armies run on ordinary chips, and that decides what controls can do

The chips that export controls were written for, the accelerators in large data centres, are a small part of what a military uses. A weapon is mostly made of the other kind: cheap, old, and sold by the billion. An American official told the Senate in 2022 that each Javelin launcher holds more than 250 chips; its maker says an F-35 holds more than 3,000. [120] Hardly any of them are advanced. They are the same parts that go into cars and washing machines, made on processes ten to thirty years old.

That fact organises everything on this tab. It means controls can slow an adversary’s most advanced computing but cannot stop it building weapons, and the war in Ukraine has tested this at scale. It means the materials inside those ordinary chips and motors, where China holds the lever, matter to armies more than the leading edge does. And it means the one place where the two worlds now meet, small SI computers fitted to drones and missiles, is the place to watch.

Reach against weight

The rules reach furthest where the fighting needs them least

Eight kinds of item, placed by two judgments. Across: how far export controls actually reach the item. Up: how much it matters in the wars being fought now. Black dots are Western-controlled, amber are beyond control, red is controlled by China. Positions are this site’s judgment from the evidence in this part.

The picture has an empty corner. Nothing sits at the top right, where an item would be both decisive on the battlefield and firmly under Western control. The items Western rules hold best, the lithography machine and the data-centre accelerator, sit low: they shape the next decade’s computing, not this year’s fighting. The items that decide this year’s fighting sit at the top left, in the open market.

The one item near the top right is not held by the West. Gallium and rare-earth magnets go into radars, jammers and every motor that steers a weapon, and China controls their refining. The rest of this part follows from that picture: what is found inside weapons, how the embargo leaks, what armies do about their own supply, and where the two largest powers stand.

War in numbers

Sixteen figures from the sections that follow

Each figure is taken from one of the sections in the two war parts, where its source is cited and its limits are stated. Select a figure to go to that section.

In the weapons

all but 15Of more than 1,400 identifiable parts in 20 Shahed-136 type drones, 2022 to 2024, the number that were not foreign.Iran and others →290+Foreign electronic components in one North Korean missile fired at Kharkiv on 2 January 2024.Iran and others →75 to 85%China’s share of Russia’s war-critical imports in the 2026 tracker, against 25 to 30% before the war.Sanctions routes →about 300%Premium Russia paid China for war-critical goods in 2025, compared with China’s other customers.Sanctions routes →

In the fight

60%Share of Russian small attack drones on fibre-optic cable in certain key sectors, by one analyst’s estimate, August 2026Electronic warfare →328,000 milesOptical fibre shipped from China to Russia in August 2025, up from 119,000 miles in May 2025Electronic warfare →Up to 80%Loss of effectiveness of one type of US-supplied guided munition under Russian jamming in eastern Ukraine, 2023 to 2024Space and navigation →70+SI and computer-vision systems Ukraine says are striking targets, August 2026Allied armies →

In the supply

98%Share of assembly, packaging and testing of all microelectronics done overseas, DOD estimate cited by GAO, July 2025Munitions →Nearly 1 millionMilitary GPS chips in the bulk buy planned from 2019 and ordered in 2021 and 2022 before the line closedMunitions →16 of 16Parts bought by the GAO’s fictitious company in 2012 that were not legitimateSabotage and fakes →2049Year the US Army expects to finish fitting M-code receivers across its aircraft, GAO, October 2026Space and navigation →

Between the powers

10 daysTime for Taiwan’s natural gas to run out in most CSIS blockade games, July 2025.Taiwan strait →$10.6tnFirst-year cost to the world of a war over Taiwan, 9.6% of world GDP. Bloomberg Economics, February 2026.Taiwan strait →16Export-controlled Nvidia H100 chips requested by one PLA laboratory in May 2025.China’s army →about 2.2 exaflopsBenchmark result of LineShine in Shenzhen, first on the June 2026 Top500 list of the world’s fastest computersSupercomputers →

Who supplies whom

Half the flows start in one country, and it is in neither war

Eight flows of chips and materials, 2022 to 2026. Amber arrows start in China, black in the West or Taiwan, red are flows that work against the West. The numbers match the table.

Flow	What the sections found	Reading
1. China → Russia	China supplies 75 to 85% of Russia’s war-critical imports, against 25 to 30% before the war, at a premium of about 300%. [699] Chinese electronics are 60 to 65% of the Geran-2 drone. [112] Optical fibre shipments reached 328,000 miles in August 2025. [681]	The main artery
2. Western brands → Russia, through traders	Parts are sold lawfully and then diverted by distributors in third countries. [704] Ukraine counts 5,816 foreign components in 202 Russian weapon systems. [108]	Cut, not closed
3. China → Ukraine	Ukrainian drones are built largely from Chinese parts, and China has restricted some of them. [114] One maker built a drone with no Chinese parts in March 2026, not yet in quantity. [115]	Can be squeezed
4. United States and allies → Ukraine	Ukraine says more than 70 SI and computer-vision systems are striking targets. [677] No source read here names the chips inside them. Western supply to Ukraine is open, not controlled.	Open
5. China and the Gulf → Iran and its partners	95% of the Emirates’ direct non-oil exports to Iran in 2024 were goods made elsewhere, and a 2026 study names China as the most likely supplier of first resort. [712]	Re-forms after sanctions
6. Iran → Russia	The Shahed design. Russia was building about 3,000 drones of this type a month by the end of 2025. [705]	Now made in Russia
7. Taiwan → United States and allies	Taiwan makes 62% of the world’s most advanced logic chips in the model used for the February 2026 cost estimate. [727] The Pentagon estimates that 88% of microelectronics production is overseas. [685]	Single point of failure
8. China → United States and allies	Gallium, germanium and rare-earth magnets. The ban on sales to military users stayed in force when the wider ban was suspended. [169]	Held by China

Four of the eight arrows start in China and none of them is under Western control. China sells to Russia at a premium, sells to Ukraine and restricts it, is the supplier of first resort for Iran, and holds the metals in allied radars and motors. The West governs its own exports. China, without joining either war, governs the supply of both sides.

The Western arrows are of a different kind. One is a leak the embargo has narrowed and made expensive. One is open support. One runs through an island that can be blockaded. The readings in the last column are this site’s judgment.

War timeline

Fourteen dates that show the pattern, 2022 to 2026

When	What happened	What it showed	Section
February 2022	The widest chip embargo ever tried is placed on Russia.	The test case for everything in these two parts.
October 2022	Washington restricts advanced chips for China, citing military supercomputers.	The controls begin from a weapons argument. [716]	Read →
2 January 2024	A North Korean missile that hit Kharkiv is found to hold more than 290 foreign electronic components. [708]	Seventeen years of United Nations sanctions did not keep recent parts out.	Read →
17 September 2024	Pagers sold through an intermediary company explode in Lebanon. [723]	A supply chain taken over, not only infiltrated.	Read →
30 October 2024	The US Treasury sanctions 275 people and firms in 17 jurisdictions for supplying Russia. [703]	Enforcement falls on the middlemen.	Read →
December 2024	China bans gallium, germanium and antimony sales to the United States. [169]	The pressure starts to run the other way.	Read →
June 2025	The 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Iran sets out to rebuild with imported parts. [710]	War raises the need for imports.	Read →
July 2025	The Pentagon signs four contracts with SI companies, each with a $200 million ceiling. [671]	Armies rent the leading edge.	Read →
August 2025	Chinese optical fibre shipments to Russia reach 328,000 miles in a month. [681]	The answer to jamming was to change the medium.	Read →
29 to 31 December 2025	China’s exercise Justice Mission 2025 rehearses blockades of ports. [734]	The blockade is being practised, not only the landing.	Read →
February 2026	SpaceX blocks unregistered Starlink terminals after Russian units used them on strike drones. [695]	A commercial operator, not a state, closed the gap.	Read →
March 2026	A Ukrainian maker builds a drone with no Chinese parts. [115]	Possible, but not yet cheap enough to make in quantity.	Read →
June 2026	A Chinese machine on home-designed processors leads the world supercomputer ranking. [717]	The controls changed how China builds these machines.	Read →
August 2026	Ukraine’s tally reaches 5,816 foreign components in 202 Russian weapon systems, and a small SI computer is found in a cruise missile. [108, 110]	Four years on, the embargo leaks and the controlled technology has arrived as a kit.	Read →

Dates and figures are from the sections linked in the last column. The first row is general knowledge.

Why chips matter in war

Three kinds of chip, three kinds of military dependence

Chips that train

The largest SI models are trained on tens or hundreds of thousands of accelerators in one place, each costing as much as a car. A handful of designs, nearly all from one American firm and nearly all made by one Taiwanese one, do this work. These are the chips the controls were written for. They matter to militaries indirectly: the models behind decision support, data fusion and simulation come out of this computing, and so does the commercial lead that pays for the next generation.

Chips that run at the edge

A drone that finds its own target, a radar that sorts its own returns, and a missile seeker all carry a small processor that runs a trained model on a few watts. These are less advanced and far more widely made. Ukrainian military intelligence has reported finding commercial computing modules of this kind in Russian drones. They are sold for robots and cameras, cost a few hundred dollars, and are bought through distributors.

Chips that are merely necessary

Most chips in a weapon are old designs: power regulators, microcontrollers, signal converters, memory. A single shoulder-fired missile holds a few hundred. They are made on production lines that are twenty years old, and China is building more of these lines than anyone else. A shortage of them stops production as surely as a shortage of advanced chips, as carmakers learned in 2021 and again in 2025. [21]

The three kinds have different chokepoints, different holders, and different remedies. Most public argument is about the first. Most weapons depend on the second and third. See also computing infrastructure on the Technologies tab.

Figure · chips along the chain from sensing to striking

Six stages, and only one of them is where the controls bite

Stage 1
Sense
Chips
Image sensors, radar chips
Kind
Mature; gallium compounds for radar
From
Japan, US, Europe
Hardly controlled
Stage 2
Navigate
Chips
Satellite-navigation receivers, anti-jam antennas
Kind
Mature
From
US, Europe, China
Hardly controlled
Stage 3
Process
Chips
Microcontrollers; small SI modules
Kind
Mature; SI modules more advanced
From
US designs, made in Asia
Controlled on paper
Stage 4
Communicate
Chips
Radios, mesh modems
Kind
Mature
From
China, US
Hardly controlled
Stage 5
Decide
Chips
Data-centre accelerators, command software
Kind
Leading edge
From
US designs, made in Taiwan
Controls bite
Stage 6
Strike
Chips
Motor and power chips, magnets
Kind
Mature; rare earths
From
China for magnets and metals
China holds the lever

Only one of the six stages runs on the leading-edge chips the controls were written for.

The ratings are this site’s judgment. “Hardly controlled” means the chips are mature, made in many places and sold through ordinary distributors.

Follow a strike from start to finish. A sensor sees; a receiver fixes position; a small processor on board interprets; a radio reports; somewhere far away, large computers and staff decide; a motor steers the weapon in. Five of those six stages run on mature chips. Only the fifth, deciding, depends on the data-centre accelerators that Washington restricts, and that stage is on the ground at home, not in the weapon. The sixth stage runs the other way: the magnets in every motor and the metals in every radar are refined mostly in China.

Evidence · what has been found inside weapons

The teardowns from Ukraine, 2022 to 2026

Weapon	What was found	What it shows
202 Russian weapon systems tally to August 2026	Ukraine’s defence intelligence counts 5,816 foreign-made components across missiles, drones and armoured vehicles, and says most of the electronics in them are foreign. [108]	Four years of sanctions have not removed foreign chips from Russian weapons.
Cruise and ballistic missiles Kh-101, Iskander, Kalibr, Kinzhal	Repeated findings of Western microcontrollers, memory and power-management chips. Russia replaced an American processor in one missile’s computer with a domestic one in 2023; newer missiles are reported to use American processors again.	Substitution is possible but costs performance, so the foreign part comes back when it can be had.
Geran-2 (Shahed-type) attack drone	Chinese-made electronics have risen to 60 to 65% of the components, pushing American parts into second place. In a newer anti-jamming antenna, 2 of 15 components were American. [112]	The dependence has not ended. It has moved to China.
Geran-5 jet-powered drone	Chips made with Western technology, the largest share from one American analog chipmaker; a Chinese mesh-network modem; a Chinese turbojet. [109]	A new design, built in 2026, still starts from the same catalogue of ordinary Western parts.
Upgraded Geran-2 and the S-71 cruise missile	A small SI computer from Nvidia’s Jetson range, sold as a developer kit, used for machine vision and target recognition. [110, 111]	The first clear case of SI hardware in a weapon. It is a consumer product, not a restricted accelerator.
Ukrainian first-person-view drones	About five million drones built in 2025 and a target of seven million for 2026. At the start of 2024 nearly 90% of imported drone parts came straight from China; in the first eight months of 2026, 28%. [113, 114]	The defender depends on the same supplier as the attacker, and is working to end it.

Share of Ukraine’s imported drone parts that came directly from China. Ukrainian customs data. [114]

Early 2024nearly 90%

January to August 202628%

Share of Chinese-made electronics in Russia’s Geran-2 drone. Ukrainian intelligence. [112]

Chinese componentsnow the largest group60 to 65%

American and othersecond placethe rest

These figures come from the Ukrainian government, which has an interest in showing that sanctions leak, and component shares differ between reports. The pattern across them is consistent, though, and independent teardowns since 2022 agree with it.

Inside, by origin

Three weapons opened up: how much was made somewhere else

Share of parts by where they were made. The three bars measure different things and come from different investigators, so compare the pattern, not the exact lengths. [704, 112]

5,816Foreign components counted in 202 Russian weapon systems to August 2026 [108]

294Foreign components in one drone built at Russia’s Alabuga plant [705]

290+Foreign electronic components in one North Korean missile fired at Kharkiv, January 2024 [708]

48%Share of components in Iranian drones and North Korean missiles carrying American companies’ marks, September 2025 report [704]

The three bars tell one story at three stages. Iran’s drone is almost entirely foreign parts, because Iran has no chip industry and built the weapon from the open market. [704] Russia’s cruise missile shows what substitution can reach after two years of effort: about half. [704] Russia’s copy of the Iranian drone shows where the rest went. The foreign share did not fall. It changed country. [112]

Sanctions change the address on the parts more readily than they change the number of parts. A weapon designed around commercial electronics will be filled from whichever market is open, and since 2022 that has been China’s.

Chips in weapons

What the war in Ukraine showed about stopping them

Russia was placed under the widest chip embargo ever tried in February 2022. It has no advanced chip industry of its own. Its missile and drone production has since risen.

The record of what is inside the weapons is unusually good, because Ukraine collects and publishes it. A study in January 2024 examined almost 2,800 foreign parts taken from Russian weapons and found Western components in nearly every system, from more than 250 Western companies. [27] Ukrainian inspectors have found Western microcontrollers, memory and power chips in the main Russian cruise and ballistic missiles. One report put Russia’s imports of such chips in 2023 at more than $1 billion. [26]

Three features of these chips explain it. They are ordinary: the same part goes into a washing machine. They are small and are sold by the million through distributors, who sell to traders, who sell to shell companies in third countries. And they are old, so many plants make them. The routes found run through Turkey, the Gulf, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and above all China and Hong Kong. [26]

The lesson for the larger contest is specific. Controls work best where the item is scarce, large, costly, made by a few firms, and needs the maker’s continuing help, which describes an EUV machine. They work worst where it is common, small, cheap, made by many, and needs no help, which describes the chips in a cruise missile. Accelerators sit between the two. They are scarce and costly, but small and easy to resell, and the smuggling cases of 2026 concern exactly these. [22]

This also limits what the chip war can do to China’s forces. The People’s Liberation Army does not need frontier chips for most of what it fields, and what it needs in military quantities is small beside commercial demand. A study of its purchasing records, made before the controls tightened, found it buying American-designed chips through intermediaries with little difficulty. The stronger effect is the indirect one: on the size of the computing clusters available to train the models that planning, targeting and command systems will use, and on the commercial industry that pays for progress.

The embargo on Russia

The chip embargo on Russia cut the flow and raised the price, but it leaks through traders in countries that never joined it

50Types of war-critical goods on the allied common high priority list, in six tiers, as described in the July 2026 tracker. [699]

$8.7bnHigh-priority battlefield goods imported by Russia in January to October 2023, from a January 2024 study of customs records. [701]

75 to 85%China’s share of Russia’s CHP imports in the 2026 tracker, against 25 to 30% before the war. [699]

about 300%Premium Russia paid China for CHP goods in 2025, compared with China’s other customers. [699]

275People and firms in 17 jurisdictions sanctioned by the US Treasury on 30 October 2024 for supplying Russia with technology. [703]

58.7%Russia’s revised 2030 target for domestic hardware in state technology projects, cut from 80% in July 2026. [706]

The embargo on chips for Russia is run through a shared list. The European Union, the United States, Britain and Japan agreed a common high priority (CHP) list of 50 types of war-critical goods in six tiers, with integrated circuits in Tier 1. [699] A wider Global Export Control Coalition of 39 countries applies the controls. [704] The list covers the right parts: less than 10% of the components that investigators sampled in Russian, Iranian and North Korean weapons fell outside it. [704] The weakness is the seller, not the list. One chipmaker notes that only about 60 countries support the sanctions. [705]

Direct sales from allied countries have almost stopped, yet the goods still arrive. One study of Russian customs records put imports of high-priority battlefield goods at $8.7 billion for January to October 2023, and all war-critical components at $22.2 billion. [701] A newer tracker built on exporters’ own data finds that Russia’s CHP imports fell by more than half in value for an extended period and have not returned to pre-war levels. [699, 700] China now supplies about 75 to 85% of them, up from 25 to 30% before the war. [699] In 2025 Russia paid China a premium of about 300% over what China’s other customers paid. [699]

How each route to Russia appears in published studies, official statements and press investigations, and how well the embargo holds on it.

Route	What the sources report	How the embargo holds
Mainland China	About 75% of reported CHP exports to Russia, and 95% of reported static converter exports in 2025. [699] Chinese firms also carry Western parts inside finished units such as engines and servo drives. [705]	wide open China is outside the coalition and imports so much from it that re-exports cannot be seen in aggregate data. [700]
Hong Kong	The largest source of Russia’s Tier 1 chips after 2022. [700] Hong Kong consignors shipped $750 million of high-priority items in August to December 2023. [702]	main chip hub Shipments of listed items through Hong Kong fell 28% in January to May 2024, but US officials still called it a hub. [702]
Turkey	Named with China and Hong Kong as a base of wholesalers that shipped Infineon parts to Russian traders in 2024 without the maker’s consent. [705] Turkey was among the jurisdictions named in the October 2024 US sanctions. [703]	partly policed Coalition exports to Turkey are too large to separate lawful trade from re-export. [700]
United Arab Emirates	About 5% of Russia’s CHP imports in 2023, according to an earlier customs-data study. [700]	no data The country publishes no product-level trade statistics, so the route cannot be tracked. [700]
Central Asia	Kazakhstan is the most common destination in suspected schemes inside Russia’s customs union. [699] Kyrgyzstan appears in customs records for smaller volumes. [705]	small but opaque The tracker finds little evidence of diversion at scale, but Kazakhstan’s data stop in February 2024. [699, 700]
South Caucasus	Press reporting based on Ukrainian intelligence data describes shell companies in the South Caucasus that re-export parts as general-purpose electronics. [707]	little measured No study found here puts a value on this route.
India	Exports of Tier 3.A electronics to Russia jumped to $137 million in August 2024, second only to China. [700]	pressure worked They fell back to $7 million by September 2024 after a US warning to Indian banks. [700]
Malaysia and Thailand	Malaysian exports of Tier 3.B parts peaked at $20 million in August 2024. [700] Thailand’s last reported month, February 2025, was its highest on record at $32 million. [700]	uneven Malaysia’s flow collapsed to under $1 million a month in most of 2025, while Thailand stopped reporting. [700]

Enforcement targets the middlemen

Sanctions fall mainly on traders. On 30 October 2024 the US Treasury sanctioned 275 people and firms in 17 jurisdictions, including Hong Kong chip distributors such as Allparts Trading and Align Trading. [703] A December 2023 US order also threatens foreign banks that handle such payments. [699] The European Union adopted its eighteenth package on 18 July 2025. [704] Estonian intelligence reported in February 2026 that Russian military intelligence runs its own front companies. [706]

Chipmakers trace, but only after the fact

Investigators found no evidence that the branded makers shipped parts to Russia themselves. [704] Parts are sold lawfully, then diverted by distributors. [704] Infineon says every delivery note carries a ban on shipment to Russia, yet more than 20 Russian traders imported its products in 2024. [705] Makers help trace recovered parts, and some turn out to be counterfeit. [704] In one case an Austrian sensor sold to Hong Kong in July 2024 reached a Russian drone. [705]

Russia makes simple parts, not advanced chips

Russia has replaced some basic parts. In one Kh-69 cruise missile recovered in August 2024, almost half of 466 components were Russian-made. [704] Advanced chips are another matter. Russian specialists say more than 60% localisation is impossible without domestic production at 28 nanometres and below, which sanctions put out of reach. [706] Funding for the main state programme fell from $338.4 million in 2024 to $62.6 million in 2026. [706]

The evidence supports a mixed verdict. The embargo ended direct supply, shrank the total and made Russia pay far more, mostly to China. [699] It did not stop production. Russia was building about 3,000 Shahed-type drones a month by the end of 2025, and one drone built at Alabuga held 294 foreign components. [705] Controls on the goods work better than controls on the people who trade them. Where Washington threatened banks, as with India in 2024, flows dropped within weeks. [700]

Three things changed in 2025 and 2026. Dependence on China deepened, and with it the price Russia pays, although the July 2026 tracker notes that the overall premium appears to have eased in recent months. [699] Russia admitted limits at home by cutting its 2030 target for domestic hardware from 80% to 58.7% in July 2026. [706] Researchers also shifted the debate from adding list items to holding distributors accountable and checking end use. [704] The route through China and Hong Kong remains the gap that no listing has closed. [699, 704]

Limits. No source found gives a dollar total of CHP imports for 2024, 2025 or 2026; the 2026 trackers report shares and trends, and their figures come from exporters’ reports, which the authors say undercount. The 2023 dollar figures come from a campaign group’s summary of the January 2024 Kyiv School of Economics study, not from the study itself; search summaries of that study also gave $8.77 billion and a monthly average of $932 million against $1.04 billion before the invasion, only 10% lower, which conflicts with the later finding of a fall by more than half because the datasets differ. The July 2026 date for the second tracker is taken from its file path. A 2024 US Senate inquiry into four chipmakers, whose parts it put at over 40% of components in Russian weapons, was seen only in a secondary summary and is not cited. No source found reports fines or criminal convictions of distributors in 2025 or 2026, so none is claimed. Figures on Russian process nodes of 65 and 90 nanometres appeared only in search summaries. The Russian electronics figures are from Ukrainian and Estonian intelligence as reported by one outlet.

Iran, North Korea and armed groups

Iran, North Korea and the Houthis all build weapons on commercial electronics made abroad, and decades of sanctions have not cut that supply

all but 15Of more than 1,400 identifiable parts in 20 Shahed-136 type drones, 2022 to 2024, the number that were not foreign. [704]

48%Share of components in Iranian drones and North Korean missiles bearing US-owned companies’ marks, in a September 2025 report. [704]

290+Foreign electronic components in one North Korean missile fired at Kharkiv on 2 January 2024. [708]

800+Missile and drone components bound for the Houthis and recovered in Red Sea seizures in 2024 and 2025. [709]

32People and firms in eight countries sanctioned by the US Treasury on 12 November 2025 for supplying Iran’s missile and drone programmes. [710]

Sanctioned states do not make the chips in their own weapons. Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a British group that documents weapons in war zones, examined nearly 2,000 components from 20 Shahed-136 type drones recovered in Ukraine between 2022 and 2024. [704] Of more than 1,400 parts with an identifiable maker, all but 15 were foreign, from companies based in 13 countries other than Russia or Iran. [704] US-owned companies’ marks appear on 48% of the components documented in Iranian drones and North Korean ballistic missiles. [704] The makers named in Ukraine’s public database include Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Xilinx, Maxim Integrated, STMicroelectronics and u-blox. [707]

The pattern repeats in each case. A North Korean missile that hit Kharkiv on 2 January 2024 held more than 290 foreign electronic components, 75% of them tied to US companies. [708] CAR has found no evidence that North Korea makes its own microchips for weapons. [704] More than 800 missile and drone components seized on the way to the Houthis in Yemen came from 17 countries and territories, with only about 5% from Iran. [709] In every case the parts are ordinary commercial goods, sold lawfully at first and diverted later through intermediaries, most often in China and Hong Kong. [704]

What investigators found inside the weapons of Iran, North Korea and the Houthis, how the parts arrived, and how well controls held.

Weapon or programme	What was found	Route reported	How controls held
Iranian Shahed-136 type drones	Nearly 2,000 components in 20 drones; almost every identifiable part foreign, and more than 25% in the top tier of the allied priority list. [704]	Reliable procurement networks; one part made in January 2023 was in a drone recovered on 22 April 2023. [704]	three-month lag New parts reach the front within months.
Shahed-107 and Shahed-136 in Ukraine’s database	At least 31 foreign electronic components in the Shahed-107 and at least 75 in the Shahed-136, the largest share from US makers. [707]	Lawful sale to distributors, then re-export through shell companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Central Asia and the South Caucasus. [707]	not controlled goods Most parts are not classed as military items. [707]
North Korean missile, Kharkiv	More than 290 foreign components from 26 companies in eight jurisdictions; 75% US, 16% European, 9% Asian. [708]	Not traced in this report; many parts were made within the previous three years. [708]	sanctions since 2006 United Nations sanctions since 2006 did not block recent parts. [704]
North Korean missile navigation units	Parts from a European company in three missiles used in March and September 2024. [704]	Exported lawfully to a Hong Kong distributor, then to wholesalers in China, one with long ties to North Korea. [704]	traceable The maker’s records let investigators map the chain.
Houthi missiles and drones	More than 800 components and at least ten missile types; electronics made in the last two years. [709]	Sea shipments of labelled self-assembly kits, part of 750 tonnes seized in 2025. [709]	seizures bite Interdiction works, but CAR calls the networks robust and persistent. [709]
Shared drone part, Iran and Yemen	A Japanese-made component in a Shahed-136 in Ukraine in 2023 matched one seen in drones used against Saudi Arabia in 2019. [704]	Same production batch, sent in 2017 to a Hong Kong company with a firm in China named as end user. [704]	false end user The declared buyer was not the real one.
Iran’s missile and drone inputs, 2025	Propellant chemicals, drone engines, navigation sensors and a machine tool for making fibre-optic gyroscopes. [710]	Networks across Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, China, Hong Kong, India, Germany and Ukraine. [710]	sanctioned after Designations followed the trade, on 12 November 2025. [710]
Iran’s drone servomotors, 2026	Thousands of servomotors of a kind recovered from downed Shahed-136 drones. [711]	A supplier to the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace arm, with firms in China and Hong Kong among ten targets. [711]	supply continued The same Iranian buyer had first been sanctioned in 2023. [711]

Sanctions chase networks that re-form

The US Treasury sanctioned 32 people and firms on 12 November 2025, after United Nations sanctions on Iran were reimposed on 27 September 2025. [710] It said Iran was trying to rebuild capabilities destroyed in the 12-Day War of June 2025. [710] On 8 May 2026 it named ten more. [711] In the three years to 2025, firms in China and Hong Kong were the only non-Iranian targets designated for Iran’s ballistic missile programme. [704]

What the wars showed

War raised Iran’s need for imports. A June 2026 study says US and Israeli strikes in 2026 left Iran with about 70% of its pre-war missiles and about 40% of its drones. [712] To rebuild, it says, Iran still imports navigation sensors and microelectronics for drones. [712] A March 2026 report says Iranian Shahed drones reached Dubai and a British base in Cyprus, and that the type relies on the same Western parts found in Ukraine. [707]

The Gulf and China are the gateways

Iran’s imports run through two doors. The first is re-export: 95% of the United Arab Emirates’ direct non-oil exports to Iran in 2024 were goods made elsewhere. [712] The second is China, which the June 2026 study calls the most likely supplier of first resort and a key source of Western-origin drone electronics. [712] Its authors urge allies to extend the Russia rules, including the no re-export clause, to Iran. [712]

The conclusion is the same for all three. None of these actors has an advanced chip industry, and none has needed one. Their weapons run on small commercial parts such as navigation modules, converters and microcontrollers that are sold in huge volumes for civilian use. [704] North Korea has been under United Nations sanctions since 2006 and still fits parts made in recent years. [704, 708] Sanctions raise cost and delay, and seizures at sea remove real quantities, but the supply has adapted each time. [709]

The 2025 and 2026 fighting made the dependence plain. Iran launched about 6,770 drones and missiles by 1 April 2026 and must now replace them with imported electronics and engines. [712] That makes the supply chain a point of leverage after the shooting stops. The practical lesson drawn by researchers is to watch distributors and end users in China, Hong Kong, Turkey and the Gulf, because the controlled lists already name most of the parts. [704, 712]

Limits. Little was found on electronics in the June 2025 Israel-Iran war itself; the Treasury text only names it as the 12-Day War and says Iran is rebuilding, and the detailed evidence concerns the 2026 conflict. A Washington Institute estimate that Chinese firms source over 60% of Shahed electronics, a claimed tenfold rise in Iranian output, a February 2025 Treasury action on Hong Kong front companies and a reported September 2026 action against ten more targets were seen only in search summaries or could not be opened in full, so they are not cited. The North Korean and Houthi findings are taken from press accounts of CAR reports, not the reports themselves; CAR’s own page confirms only the figure of more than 800 components. The makers named come from a Ukrainian state media outlet quoting Ukraine’s intelligence database; a maker’s mark does not prove where a chip was made or that the maker knew of the sale, and some parts are counterfeit. That the Houthis are an Iran-backed armed group in Yemen is general knowledge. Shares differ between sources because samples differ: 48% US-marked across Iranian and North Korean weapons, 75% in the single Kharkiv missile.

South Asia, May 2025

Four days of fighting showed that both armies fight with other countries’ electronics

4 daysLength of the fighting that began with India’s strikes on 7 May 2025. [629]

63%Share of China’s arms exports that went to Pakistan in 2020 to 2024. [630]

About 400Drones from Indian vendors that an Indian Army review found to contain Chinese components, as reported in July 2025. [632]

20 billion rupeesSize of the three-year drone incentive India planned in July 2025, about $234 million. [631]

40%Share of key drone components India wants made at home by the end of fiscal year 2028. [631]

600+Drone makers and related firms in India, as reported in July 2025. [631]

The May 2025 conflict between India and Pakistan was short and it was a test of imported electronics. India struck sites in Pakistan on 7 May 2025, and for four days both sides used precision strikes, drones and long-range missiles. [629] Pakistan flew Chinese-made J-10 fighters carrying Chinese PL-15 missiles, and India flew French-built Rafale fighters. [629] Neither side fought mainly with electronics it had designed and made at home. India’s defence secretary said drones, loitering munitions and kamikaze drones were used by both sides. [631] A loitering munition is a drone that circles and then dives on its target.

The supply lines were easy to read. Pakistan took 63% of China’s arms exports in 2020 to 2024, and its three layers of air defence missiles are all Chinese. [630] India’s equipment is a mix of Russian and Western systems, with some of its own. [630] India has mainly bought its military drones from Israel, while Pakistan’s drone programme rests on help from China and Türkiye. [631] After the ceasefire the argument in India turned to a smaller object: the Chinese motor, sensor or autopilot inside a drone that is sold as Indian. [631, 633]

The main systems reported in the May 2025 fighting, sorted by who used them and who made them.

System	Used by	Made in	What was reported
J-10C fighter with PL-15 missile	Pakistan	China	worked as a set Pakistan claimed five Indian jets shot down. At least two Indian losses were independently confirmed, and India has neither confirmed nor denied them. [629]
HQ-9, LY-80 and FM-90 air defence missiles	Pakistan	China	single supplier Long, medium and short range layers all come from one country. [630]
Saab 2000 Erieye radar aircraft	Pakistan	Europe (Saab)	unconfirmed role Reported to have worked with the Chinese jets. Whether it guided the missiles is not confirmed. [629]
Attack and decoy drones	Pakistan	Türkiye and others	imported design Pakistan used a large number of drones, including Turkish-developed ones. India said 26 sites were attacked. [629]
Rafale fighter with Meteor missile	India	France and Europe	losses reported Wreckage consistent with a Rafale and a Mirage 2000 was identified by a newspaper analysis. [629]
S-400 and Akash air defence	India	Russia and India	mixed fleet India fields Russian and home-made systems side by side. [630]
Loitering munitions	India	Israel	imported India launched dozens of drones, including Israeli-made loitering munitions, to draw out and strike air defences. [629]
Parts inside Indian-assembled drones	India	China	exposed India still relied on China for motors, sensors and imaging systems in July 2025. [631]

Pakistan: one supplier, one system

Pakistan’s dependence on China is deep and deliberate. Chinese arms sales to Pakistan have reached $8.2 billion since 2015. [630] More than half of its 400 or so fighters are Chinese designs, mainly the JF-17 and also the J-10C. [630] The gain is that aircraft, missiles and air defences come from one source. The cost is that spare parts, software and upgrades all depend on one government’s decisions.

India: the ban on Chinese parts

In July 2025 the head of the Army Design Bureau announced a complete ban on Chinese-made components in home-built drones and military equipment. [632] The Army said it would audit equipment and require written certificates from suppliers. [632] The problem predates the fighting. Contracts for 400 logistics drones worth over 230 crore rupees, signed in 2023, were scrapped over Chinese electronics, as reported in February 2025. [634]

India: rules and money

A framework reported in July 2025 requires full disclosure of where drone hardware, embedded software and third-party firmware come from, with regular audits of drones in service. [633] It is to be part of the review of the Defence Acquisition Procedure. [633] On the supply side, India planned a three-year incentive of 20 billion rupees for drones, components, software and counter-drone systems. [631] A larger five-year scheme was reported in December 2025. [635]

The lesson India drew was about parts, not platforms. A drone assembled in India is only as trustworthy as the cheapest board inside it. India bans imports of finished drones but not of their components, so the dependence moved down a level and stayed. [631] The Army’s answer is paperwork and audits: declare every part, prove where it came from, and lose the contract if a Chinese part is found. [632, 633] The government’s answer is money for local component makers, with a 40% local target by fiscal year 2028. [631]

Both answers take time. In December 2025 officials were reported to be preparing a five-year scheme of nearly 10,000 crore rupees that would require 50% to 60% local value in each drone. [635] That report describes a plan, not a finished programme. Pakistan has made the opposite choice and accepted one foreign supplier in return for a system whose parts fit together. [630] The four days in May 2025 did not show which choice is safer. They showed that both countries’ arsenals depend on electronics decided elsewhere.

Limits. Battlefield claims here come from analysis articles and from statements by the two governments, and many are disputed. The number of aircraft lost, the role of electronic jamming and the role of the Saab radar aircraft are not confirmed. [629] Figures that India gave for Pakistani drones (300 to 400 drones over 36 sites) and Pakistani counts of Indian drones shot down were seen only on a Wikipedia page and are left out of the cited text. The Army ban on Chinese parts rests on one specialist outlet quoting an officer at an industry event and unnamed officials; no published order was found. [632] The drone incentive figures conflict: 20 billion rupees over three years in July 2025, nearly 10,000 crore rupees over five years in a December 2025 report, and 16 to 18 billion rupees in March 2026 reports seen only in search summaries. No source was found confirming that any of these schemes has been formally approved. Nothing was found in this session on India’s wider electronics-component scheme or on defence-electronics production figures, so they are not covered. That Israel’s loitering munition is called Harop, and that the S-400 is Russian, is general knowledge consistent with the sources.

The cheap end

The drone war is a chip war that controls cannot reach

A first-person-view drone is a flight controller, four motor drivers, a radio, a camera and a battery. Every chip in it is mature and costs a few dollars. Ukraine built about five million such drones in 2025; no licensing system can follow parts in those numbers, and none has. [113] What has changed the supply is price and politics. Ukrainian makers now build most parts at home, and in March 2026 one produced a drone with nothing imported from China. It is not yet made in quantity, because the Chinese parts are much cheaper; motors, optical fibre for jam-proof control lines, and thermal cameras are the hardest to replace. [115, 114]

Russia has moved the other way. As American parts became harder to buy, Chinese ones took their place, and China now supplies the majority of the electronics in Russia’s main attack drone as well as its engines and modems. [112, 109] One country is the main outside supplier of electronics to both armies in Europe’s largest war. That is a kind of leverage that no rule in Washington created and none can remove: Beijing can tighten or loosen what each side receives, and has already restricted drone parts to Ukraine while Russian purchases continue.

Who makes the drones

China makes most of the world’s small drones and their parts, and both Beijing and Washington now use that fact as a weapon

About 90%China’s share of the global commercial drone market, Drone Industry Insights estimate reported in May 2025; other estimates give 70 to 80%

1 per droneBattery ration Skydio imposed on customers after Chinese sanctions, 30 October 2024

2xRise in prices Chinese suppliers charged foreign buyers for drone parts, reported June 2025

22 Dec 2025Date the American regulator added foreign-made drones and critical parts to its Covered List

23 of 300+Companies selected for the Pentagon’s approved drone list out of submissions in 2025, as reported in April 2025

3%Global market share each of Skydio (America) and Parrot (France), June 2024 estimate

One country supplies most of the world’s small drones. Drone Industry Insights, a research firm, puts China’s share of the global commercial drone market at about 90%, and other estimates run from 70% to 80%. [615, 616, 617] The share of parts matters more than the share of finished drones. Motors, flight controllers, lithium-ion batteries, sensors, cameras, propellers and frames are made almost exclusively in China. [615] A drone assembled in America or Europe is therefore often a Chinese drone in its parts. Skydio, the largest American maker, depended on Chinese components for years. [615]

Both governments have turned this dependence into policy. China first put export controls on small commercial drones in 2023, and later pressed its suppliers to cut sales of batteries, motors and flight controllers to buyers in America, Europe and Ukraine. [616, 619] The United States moved the other way. On 22 December 2025 its telecoms regulator barred new foreign-made drones and key drone parts from approval for sale. [622] Each side is closing a door the other relied on. The side with the factories loses less, because it can still build.

Who holds each link of the small-drone supply chain, and how far the alternatives have come, from sources dated 2024 to 2026.

Link in the chain	Who controls it	What has happened	Position outside China
Finished commercial drones	China, about 80 to 90% of the world market; DJI alone is put at 70 to 80%. [615, 616]	DJI cut prices by 70% in 2015, which an American official later named as a reason the United States has no drone industrial base. [616]	very small share Skydio and Parrot each held about 3% of the world market. [616]
Batteries	Made almost exclusively in China. [615]	China’s sanctions cut Skydio off from its battery supply in October 2024. [618]	exposed Batteries were among the few parts Skydio had not yet moved out of China. [618]
Motors and magnets	Motors made almost exclusively in China. [615]	China halted exports of rare earth magnets, which drone motors need, in spring 2025. [620]	exposed No alternative supply at scale found in the sources read.
Flight controllers	Made almost exclusively in China. [615]	Chinese firms reduced or halted sales to America, Europe and Ukraine by December 2024. [619]	some approved parts Parts from ModalAI and ARK Electronics were cleared by the American regulator in January 2026. [621]
Thermal cameras	Chinese suppliers are the low-cost source; exports need a licence. [617]	Suppliers doubled prices for foreign customers and freight agents charged double for restricted parts. [617]	costly alternatives A French military drone maker put its technology three years behind Chinese rivals. [617]
Radio modules	Often assembled in China even for Western brands. [620]	Orqa, a drone maker, had contracts suspended after its radio modules were found to be assembled in China. [620]	hard to verify Hidden Chinese assembly kept firms off the Pentagon list. [620]
American market access	The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), through its Covered List. [622]	New foreign-made models cannot be approved; models already approved stay legal. [622]	temporary exemptions Approved-list and domestic products are exempt until 1 January 2027. [621]
Military approval	The Pentagon’s approved list, known as Blue UAS (uncrewed aircraft systems). [621]	More than 300 submissions in 2025 and 23 companies selected. [620]	narrow but growing Parrot, Teledyne FLIR, Neros, Auterion and AeroVironment models are among those cleared for import. [621]

Beijing’s lever: parts

China sanctioned Skydio in October 2024 over drone sales to Taiwan, where its only customer was the fire service. [618] Skydio then rationed batteries to one per drone and expected no new supplier until spring 2025. [618] On 5 December 2024 China sanctioned 13 more companies, including the American drone firms BRINC and RapidFlight. [619] Skydio’s chief executive said China would use supply chains as a weapon. [618]

Washington’s lever: the market

The FCC added foreign-made drones and critical drone parts to its Covered List on 22 December 2025, so new models cannot be authorised for sale. [622] On 7 January 2026 it exempted drones on the Pentagon’s approved list and products that count as domestic, until 1 January 2027. [621] DJI was not exempted. [621] DJI asked a federal appeals court on 20 February 2026 to overturn the ruling. [622]

Europe: single examples

Europe has single examples, not yet a supply chain. Tekever, a Portuguese firm, sells the Royal Air Force a drone with no Chinese parts and checked its Welsh factory’s suppliers for exposure to China. [615] A French maker of military drones said European drones cannot yet be built with the same technologies as Chinese ones, and that shipping Chinese parts independently had become almost impossible. [617] Vietnam was named as one alternative place to buy. [617]

The price gap explains why the dependence lasts. DJI’s cheapest camera drone sold for £169 in May 2025, and Western firms say they find it extremely difficult to compete on price. [615] When China tightened licences, the cost showed up at once: parts prices for foreign buyers doubled. [617] The controls also fall unevenly. A 2024 study found that China’s 2023 rules threatened Ukraine’s main source of small drones without affecting Russia. [616] Control of drone parts works like control of chips: the seller decides who can build.

The American answer is to build a protected market and an approved list, and to wait for factories to follow. The exemptions that keep allied drones on sale run out on 1 January 2027, and the court case over DJI was still open in the last report read. [621, 622] The approved list is small: 23 companies from more than 300 submissions in 2025. [620] Until batteries, motors and radios are made in volume elsewhere, a ban on Chinese drones raises prices before it raises supply.

Limits. Web search was cut off part-way through this research, so several requested items could not be sourced and are left out or kept general. No source was found for American domestic drone production numbers, for Taiwan’s production targets, exports or supply chain without Chinese parts (only a March 2024 statement by Taiwan’s president that the island wants to be the Asian centre of a democratic drone supply chain, reported by MIT Technology Review and not listed here), or for a dated list of China’s export-control rules of 2023 and 2024; the 2023 date comes from an Atlantic Council brief that says only ‘last year’, and a trade report says thermal cameras were added to controls ‘in September’ without giving the year. The link between the 22 December 2025 action and Section 1709 of the fiscal 2025 defence act was seen in a Dronelife article of 22 December 2025 and in search summaries, not in a listed reference. Search summaries, not opened pages, also gave: China’s sanctions date of 11 October 2024; a claim that Skydio’s sole battery supplier was a TDK plant in Dongguan (one outlet only); China adding 11 American drone firms to its unreliable entity list on 5 April 2025; and a figure that Chinese parts fell to about 38% of Ukrainian drone components in 2025 (unverified, not used). A secondary report of a Wall Street Journal article says American military quadcopters can cost over $15,000, at least three times a comparable Chinese drone; this was not used because the original was not read. Market-share figures conflict: 70 to 80%, 80% and about 90% for China, and 70% or 80% for DJI, depending on the source and the market counted. The 23-of-300 figure and the magnet halt come from a news site summarising a Forbes article that was not read directly. The statement that the side with factories loses less is the author’s analysis.

China · drone export controls

China controls drone parts by published thresholds, and since September 2024 bars any civilian drone export the seller knows is for military use

1 Sep 2024Date China’s current drone export rules took effect, replacing the two announcements of 2023

16 kWEngine power above which a drone engine needs an export licence

50 km or 10 aircraftRadio link range, or number of drones one station can control, above which the radio equipment is controlled

5 kmJamming range above which a civilian counter-drone jammer is controlled. Counter-drone lasers above 1.5 kW are also controlled

80 mJPulse energy of a target-designating laser, one of the conditions that bring it under control

2 yearsLongest term of the 2023 temporary control on heavier consumer drones, which was lifted after one

China makes most of the world’s small drones, so its export rules shape both sides of the war in Ukraine. They were set in two steps. On 31 July 2023 four bodies, the commerce ministry, customs, the defence industry administration and the Central Military Commission’s equipment department, issued Announcements 27 and 28, in force from 1 September 2023. [392] The first put specific drone parts under licence. The second put a temporary control, for up to two years, on drones that fly beyond line of sight for thirty minutes or more and weigh over seven kilograms at take-off, if they could drop a payload, carried certain cameras or laser rangefinders, or accepted uncertified payloads. [392]

A year later the rules were rewritten. An announcement of 31 July 2024, in force from 1 September 2024, repealed both earlier ones, lifted the temporary control on consumer drones, tightened some component thresholds and added high-precision inertial measurement units. [393] It kept one clause that covers everything else: no drone outside the lists may be exported if the exporter knows or should know it will be used for weapons of mass destruction, terrorism or military purposes. [393] The ministry said it opposes the use of civilian drones for non-peaceful ends and opposes other countries’ sanctions on Chinese firms over drones. [394]

What China’s 2024 drone announcement controls, with the published thresholds, and what each part does on a battlefield. The last column is this site’s reading.

Item	Threshold in the Chinese text	Changed from 2023?	Why it matters
Engines	Built for specified drones or unmanned airships, with maximum continuous power above 16 kilowatts. [393]	Same. [392]	long-range strike drones Small quadcopter motors are far below this.
Infrared imagers	Wavelength between 780 and 30,000 nanometres and an instantaneous field of view under 2.5 milliradians. [393]	Tightened: the 2023 text joined the two conditions with or. [392]	night attack Thermal cameras are what make a cheap drone usable after dark.
Synthetic aperture radar	Range above 5 kilometres, with resolution better than 0.3 metres in strip mode or 0.1 metres in spotlight mode. [393]	Same. [392]	all-weather reconnaissance
Target-designating lasers	Stable above 55 °C, with no temperature control, energy above 80 millijoules, stability better than 15% and beam divergence under 0.3 milliradians, all together. [393]	Tightened: in 2023 any one of the performance conditions was enough. [392]	guides other weapons
Inertial measurement units	Heading accuracy under 2 degrees, attitude accuracy under 0.5 degrees, resolution under 0.1 degrees. [393]	New in 2024. [394]	flying without satellite signals The answer to jamming.
Radio links	Line-of-sight range above 50 kilometres, or one station controlling more than 10 aircraft. [393]	Same. [392]	long range and swarms
Civilian counter-drone systems	Jammers with a range above 5 kilometres. Lasers with output above 1.5 kilowatts. [393]	Same. [392]	defence sold as civil goods
Any other drone	Not to be exported if the exporter knows or should know of use for weapons of mass destruction, terrorism or military purposes. Penalties under article 34 of the Export Control Law. [393]	Made permanent. In 2023 it applied during the temporary control. [392]	the clause that matters for Ukraine It puts the duty on the seller.

Thresholds set above the battlefield

The published numbers describe large, long-range systems: engines above 16 kilowatts, radio links beyond 50 kilometres, lasers for designating targets. [393] The first-person-view drones that do most of the killing in Ukraine use small electric motors, short-range radios and cheap cameras, all below these lines. For those the only rule is the knowledge clause, which depends on what a Chinese seller can be shown to have known about a buyer in a third country.

Looser in 2024, and tighter

The 2024 text moved both ways. It dropped the temporary control on heavier consumer drones after one year, and it changed the tests for thermal cameras and designator lasers so that a part must meet every condition to be caught. [393, 392] It also added inertial units and made the military-use clause permanent. [393, 394] The ministry described this as balancing development and security after consulting the industry. [394]

The same control seen from both ends

Western governments complain that Chinese drone parts reach Russia. Beijing’s texts show a licensing system with precise thresholds and a duty on exporters, and a ministry that objects to foreign sanctions on its firms. [393, 394] Both things can be true. The parts that matter most are too ordinary to list, which is the same problem the West has with its own chips in Russian weapons.

China’s drone rules are the mirror of the Western chip rules described in this part. Each side controls the large, specialised items it can define and trace, and relies on a know-your-customer clause for the mass of cheap ones. [393] In both systems the rule that covers the weapons actually used is the one that is hardest to enforce.

The thresholds are useful for a second reason: they are published. A reader can compare them with what teardowns find. A thermal imager or inertial unit recovered from a drone either meets the listed figures, in which case a licence should exist, or it does not, in which case the only question is what the seller knew.

Limits. The 2024 announcement was read as reproduced by a Chinese financial news service, without its number, and the 2023 announcements as reproduced by a Chinese news site; the ministry’s explanation was read in a Chinese news report of its answers. The comparison of 2023 and 2024 thresholds rests on those reproductions and should be checked against the ministry’s texts before being relied on. These rules were adjusted again by Announcement No. 49 of 2026, in force from 18 November 2026, which is described in the next section. The statements about drones used in Ukraine and about Western complaints are from the other sections of this part and general knowledge. Licensing figures and enforcement cases for drones were not found.

China · drone export controls, Announcement No. 49 of 2026

From 18 November 2026 China licenses drone autopilots, swarm control, jam-resistant navigation and on-device machine intelligence, and since August treats every drone sale to the United States case by case

18 Nov 2026Date Announcement No. 49 takes effect

3 hoursEndurance at or above which a beyond-line-of-sight drone needs a licence. From 30 minutes if it can fly in 25-knot gusts

10Aircraft one ground station may control before the radio equipment is licensed

300 kmRange at or above which any other drone is controlled

3 kWRated power of a controlled propeller motor, at 48 volts or more and 3 kilowatts per kilogram or more

150 msLongest frame-reconstruction delay in the controlled ground-robot control technology

The section before this one describes China’s drone export rules as they stood from September 2024. They have been rewritten again. On 19 October 2026 the commerce ministry, customs and the Central Military Commission’s equipment department issued Announcement No. 49, approved by the State Council and the Commission, to “optimise and adjust” the controls. It takes effect on 18 November 2026. [427]

The hardware thresholds are of the familiar kind: drones that fly beyond line of sight for three hours or more, or for thirty minutes to three hours if they can take off and fly in gusts of 25 knots; engines above 16 kilowatts; radio equipment that lets one station control more than ten aircraft. [427] The new weight is on technology. The list now names flight control “including swarm control”, autonomous navigation “including inertial, terrain-matching and jam-resistant satellite navigation”, sense-and-avoid, autopilots designed for drones, and counter-drone technology. [427]

One item is defined by the performance of the computing on board. It covers “human-machine hybrid control technology for unmanned ground platforms in weak-communication environments” that compresses images by meaning at 75% or better, rebuilds a frame within 150 milliseconds, answers a spoken instruction within one second and completes tasks in unknown surroundings at least 95% of the time. [427]

What Announcement No. 49 of 2026 puts under export licence, from the text.

Group	Controlled item	Threshold in the text	Link to chips
Aircraft	Drones and unmanned airships that can fly under control beyond natural line of sight. [427]	Endurance of 3 hours or more, or 30 minutes to 3 hours with take-off and stable flight in gusts of 46.3 km/h. [427]	indirect The class of long-range strike and surveillance drones.
Aircraft	Other drones. [427]	Range of 300 km or more, or able to carry an aerosol sprayer of more than 80 litres with autonomous or beyond-line-of-sight flight. [427]	none Missile-control and chemical-weapon concerns.
Propulsion	Engines designed for drones. [427]	Over 16 kW continuous power, turbojets of 400 newtons thrust or more, piston engines for flight above 15,420 metres. [427]	none
Propulsion	Brushless motors, speed controllers and carbon-fibre blades. [427]	Motors at 48 V or more, 3 kW or more, 3 kW/kg or more and 3,000 rpm or less. Blades of 762 mm or more from hub to tip. [427]	power chips Speed controllers are built on power transistors.
Radio	Communication equipment for controlled drones. [427]	Radiated power of 30 dBm or more, or control of more than 10 aircraft from one station. [427]	radio chips
Autopilot	Autopilots specially designed for drones, with gimbal and payload technology. [427]	No threshold: any such autopilot. [427]	the flight computer
Software and technology	Flight control including swarm control, autonomous navigation, sense-and-avoid, whole-system design, and software written for controlled drones. [427]	Tied to the controlled aircraft classes. [427]	navigation and SI The functions that run on the chips found in teardowns.
Ground robots	Hybrid human and machine control for unmanned ground platforms with poor communications. [427]	Five performance figures, among them a one-second response to natural language and a 95% task success rate. [427]	edge SI Defined by what the on-board model can do.
Polar drones	Design and manufacturing technology for light polar drones. [427]	Ship or ice launch, operation at minus 30 degrees, 6 hours endurance, 10 kg payload. [427]	none
Counter-drone	Technology for controlled counter-drone items. [427]	Tied to the existing control entry. [427]	jammers and lasers

Controlling the knowledge

The 2023 and 2024 rules listed parts: engines, cameras, lasers, radios. Parts are easy to define and hard to stop, as the teardowns on this page show. The 2026 text adds the things that turn parts into a weapon system: the autopilot, the control laws for a swarm, navigation that survives jamming, the software. [427] These are harder to buy on an open market and easier to tie to a named developer. China is the main source of all of them for small drones.

Easier for ordinary trade

The announcement also loosens. A drone in the thirty-minute to three-hour class can leave on a registration filed before each shipment, without waiting for a licence. Drones going to exhibitions, other than defence and police shows, travel on the same basis. Firms with a working compliance system and regular buyers can apply for general licences. [427] The design is a wide gate for commercial exports and a narrow one for the technology behind military use.

A separate rule for the United States

On 5 August 2026 the ministry announced that drones, their key parts and related technology on the control list would be reviewed “case by case and strictly” when bound for the United States, and that the easier procedures would not apply. [428] The registration route and general licences in Announcement No. 49 are therefore closed for American buyers. The notice gave the standard reason, national security and non-proliferation, and took effect at once. [428]

The item on ground robots deserves attention beyond drones. It is, as far as this site has found, the first Chinese export control defined by how well a machine understands language and completes tasks on its own, measured on the device and not in a data centre. [427] American rules control the chips that train large models. This Chinese rule controls a trained capability at the point of use, which is where China is ahead.

For the war in Ukraine the practical question is unchanged. The parts that matter most there are cheap and fall below every threshold, and the 2024 clause that bars sales for known military use is the one that would apply to them. Whether that clause survives in the new rules is not clear from the text read. What has changed is that the more advanced functions, swarms and jam-resistant navigation, now need a licence from a body that includes the Chinese military’s own equipment department.

Limits. Announcement No. 49 was read in full as carried by the state news agency. The text read does not say which earlier announcements it replaces, and it contains no clause on exports for known military use, so the relation to the 2024 rules described in the previous section is uncertain. A search summary reports three further announcements issued the same day, Nos. 50 to 52; they were not read. The August 2026 notice on the United States was read as reproduced by a financial data service, which gave neither its number nor its full text. The comparison with earlier thresholds relies on the previous section, which itself rests on reproductions. The statements that China is the main source of small-drone autopilots and navigation, and the links drawn to chips, are from the other sections of this part and general knowledge. No licensing figures were found.

Taiwan · the “non-red” drone supply chain, 2026

Taiwan exported more than 181,000 drones in the first four months of 2026, about twenty times the year before, selling them as free of Chinese parts at three times the Chinese price

181,159Drones exported from Taiwan, January to April 2026, nearly 20 times a year earlier

NT$2.95bnValue of whole drones exported in 2025, from 140 million in 2024

NT$12.9bnOutput of Taiwan’s drone industry in 2025, from 5 billion in 2024

3 timesPrice of a Taiwanese drone against the leading Chinese maker’s, as reported

2027Target year for a supply chain with no Chinese content

100,000Monthly production targeted for 2030, raised from 15,000 by 2028

The two sections before this one describe China’s drone export rules and, since August 2026, its case-by-case review of drone exports to the United States. Western armies and Ukraine want drones with no Chinese components. Taiwan has set out to be the supplier.

Official trade data, reported by a foreign news agency and carried in Taiwan, show exports of 181,159 drones in January to April 2026, nearly twenty times the same months of 2025 and more than in all of 2025. Most went to the Czech Republic and then Poland, for onward shipment to Ukraine. [596] The cabinet’s own figures have the value of whole drones exported rising from 140 million Taiwan dollars in 2024 to 2.95 billion in 2025, twenty-one-fold, and the industry’s output from 5 billion to 12.9 billion. [597]

The selling point is the supply chain. The drones contain “no Chinese material”, which the agency reports makes them perhaps three times the price of the leading Chinese maker’s. [596] The government’s target is a drone supply chain that is entirely “non-red” by 2027. [597]

Taiwan’s drone industry in 2025 and 2026, from Taiwanese press reports of trade data and cabinet statements.

Measure	Figure	Source	Reading
Units exported	181,159 in January to April 2026, more than all of 2025. [596]	Official trade data, as reported	war demand Small drones in volume.
Destinations	Czech Republic first, then Poland, and on to Ukraine. By value in 2025: Czech Republic, Poland and the United States. [596, 597]	News agency; cabinet	Ukraine by way of central Europe
Export value	NT$140 million in 2024, NT$2.95 billion in 2025. [597]	Vice-premier, January 2026	from almost nothing
Industry output	NT$5 billion in 2024, NT$12.9 billion in 2025. [597]	Cabinet statement	still small About $400 million.
Targets	Entirely non-red supply chain by 2027. Production of 100,000 a month by 2030. [596, 597]	Cabinet; news agency	ambitious Public procurement to lead demand.
Stated strategy	Three pillars: a trusted non-red supply chain, edge computing and software-defined design, and “drone diplomacy” with partners. [598]	Vice-president, October 2026	chips as the advantage Taiwan’s strength is the computing on board.

What “non-red” has to replace

A small drone needs motors, batteries, a flight controller, radios, cameras and a frame. China makes most of the world’s supply of each, and the section on China’s 2026 rules shows it placing the more capable versions under licence. A drone with no Chinese content must find or build every one of those elsewhere. That is why the price is three times higher. [596] Taiwan can supply the chips, the flight computer and the optics from its own industry. Motors, magnets and batteries are harder, and the reports read do not say how far the 2027 target has been met.

The link to China’s listings

In June 2026 China barred its exporters from supplying five American makers of small drones and their parts, and in January it barred dual-use exports that add to Japan’s military strength, with Japan’s two best-known drone makers later placed on its watch list. Each of those measures raises the cost of building a drone outside China, and each enlarges the market for a supplier that can do it. Taiwan’s export surge and China’s listings are two sides of one development: the drone supply chain is dividing in two.

Chips at the edge

The vice-president’s second pillar is edge computing and software-defined design. [598] The section on the military use of SI at the edge explains why: the drone that can navigate and pick a target without a radio link is the one that survives jamming. That needs a capable processor on board, which is the part of the drone Taiwan makes better than anyone. China’s October 2026 rules control the export of exactly that capability. Taiwan is offering it to the other side.

Taiwan’s drone exports are small in money, about $90 million in 2025, and large in meaning. They show the chip contest spreading into finished weapons: a supply chain defined by the absence of Chinese parts, sold at a premium to armies that will pay for it. [596, 597]

The risk for Taiwan is the one the island already runs with chips. It is becoming a supplier of war material to Ukraine and to Western armies while sitting a hundred miles from the country those drones exclude. The government calls this “drone diplomacy”. [598] It is also a further reason for Beijing to regard Taiwan’s industry as a strategic asset of its rivals.

Limits. The trade data and cabinet statements were not read directly; figures are from a Taiwanese newspaper’s translation of a foreign news agency report and from a Taiwanese financial site’s reports of cabinet and vice-presidential statements. Unit counts and values come from different sources and periods and should not be combined into a price. How much of the supply chain is in fact free of Chinese content is not stated in the reports, and the 2027 target is a goal. The conversion to dollars, the description of what a drone contains and who makes it, and the reading of the link to China’s listings are from general knowledge and the other sections of this page.

The cost of shooting back

Shooting down a cheap drone with an expensive missile is a losing trade, and the cheaper answers are built from the same commercial electronics as the drones

85 to 1Cost ratio when a Patriot missile is used against a Shahed drone, Defense News estimate, March 2026 [652]

$3,000 to $5,000Price of a Ukrainian interceptor drone, according to President Zelensky, late 2025 [652]

100,000Interceptor drones Ukraine produced in 2025, according to its National Security and Defense Council [652]

1,500 a dayAverage interceptor drones delivered to Ukrainian front-line units in December 2025 and January 2026 [652]

$500 millionCeiling of the Pentagon’s counter-drone contract with Perennial Autonomy, May 2026 [654]

$15,000Approximate unit price of the American Merops interceptor drone, per the US Army Secretary [654]

The defender’s problem is arithmetic. A Shahed attack drone costs Russia as little as $35,000 to make, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, while a Patriot interceptor costs over $3 million. [652] Defense News puts that exchange at roughly 85 to 1 against the defender. [652] The same gap appeared at sea. The United States Navy spent at least $500 million and 220 missiles shooting down Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea over 15 months, against drones thought to cost from about $50,000. [656] A defence that costs many times more than the attack cannot be sustained for long.

Supply is the second half of the problem. Lockheed Martin built 620 of the newest Patriot missiles in a year, while Ukraine has absorbed more than 57,000 Shahed-type attacks since 2022. [653] A European Union (EU) primer calls the use of fighter jets and missiles against drones “fiscally unsustainable”; an air-to-air missile costs about $1 million a round. [655] So armies are moving the job down to cheaper tools: small interceptor drones, guns with computer aiming, lasers, microwave weapons and jammers, all fed by networks of sensors. [652, 656, 655] Each of them depends on electronics more than on explosives.

The main ways to stop a cheap drone, what each costs, and what each depends on, with a rating for how well the cost holds against a drone priced in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Defence	Cost	What it depends on	Limit
Patriot missile	far too costly Over $3 million a round; one report gives $13.5 million for the newest version without naming a source. [652, 653]	Large radar and missile batteries.	620 of the newest type were built in a year. [653]
Medium-range air defence and fighter missiles	too costly A NASAMS round is slightly over $1 million; an AIM-120 air-to-air missile about $1 million. [652, 655]	Radar and aircraft; F-35 flying time costs roughly $33,000 to $42,000 an hour. [655]	The EU’s own primer calls this route “fiscally unsustainable”. [655]
Ship-launched missiles, Red Sea	too costly At least $500 million and 220 missiles in 15 months, many costing several million dollars each. [656]	Warship radar and missile stocks.	Houthi drones are thought to cost at least $50,000. [656]
Ukrainian interceptor drones	cheaper than target $3,000 to $5,000 each; the Sting model about $2,500. [652, 653]	Thermal imaging cameras on the drone; radar tracks and acoustic spotters to find the target. [653, 652]	Top speed is about 315 to 350 km/h; Russia’s jet-powered drones exceed 550 km/h. [653]
Merops interceptor (United States)	cheaper than target About $15,000 against $30,000 to $50,000 for a Shahed. [654]	A pilot guides it into visual range, then it engages on its own. [653]	The contract sets a spending ceiling, not a fixed order. [654]
Lasers	cheap shot, costly system “A few dollars a shot” once the system is bought. [656]	A 100 kilowatt-class beam in Israel’s Iron Beam. [650]	Cloud, rain, smoke and dust may prevent use. [650]
Guns with SI aiming	early Guns are cheaper than missiles; SI-assisted machine guns such as the American Bullfrog are described as a possible next step. [656]	Computer aiming. [656]	Higher-flying drones are out of reach of gunfire. [656]
Microwave weapons	in development Britain, the United States and China are working on them to disable drone electronics. [656]	Large amounts of energy. [656]	Short range. [656]
Jamming	losing ground Drones that navigate by image do not need a control signal for the last part of the flight. [656]	Radio transmitters.	Image-based navigation makes satellite-navigation jamming ineffective, an expert told The National. [656]

Ukraine’s interceptor drones

Ukraine produced 100,000 interceptor drones in 2025, eight times its earlier capacity, according to its National Security and Defense Council. [652] In February 2026 they flew about 6,300 sorties and destroyed more than 1,500 Russian drones. [652] About one in three Russian aerial targets is now brought down this way. [652] Most crews still fly manually. A unit commander said: “We just need better radar.” [652]

The American purchase

In May 2026 the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 awarded Perennial Autonomy a contract worth up to $500 million over three years for what it calls SI-enabled counter-drone systems, including Merops interceptors. [654] Merops was developed for Ukrainian forces and is now reported in American use against Iranian drones. [654] Britain’s Project Octopus aims to build 2,000 interceptor drones a month with Ukrainian makers. [653]

Europe’s drone wall

The European Union is planning a European Drone Defence Initiative, first known as the drone wall. [655] It expects initial capability by the end of 2026 and full function by the end of 2027. [655] The plan is a layered network of sensors to detect and track drones. [655] Which weapons will do the shooting is not settled: guns, missiles, jamming, lasers and microwaves are all listed as options. [655]

Lasers show both the promise and the limit. Israel’s Iron Beam began deployment on 28 December 2025, and its maker said lasers had already brought down 40 Hezbollah drones in October 2024. [650] An older estimate put a laser shot at about $2,000 with all costs counted, against $100,000 to $150,000 for an interceptor missile firing. [650] But weather can stop a beam, and the equipment is costly to buy. [650] For now the mass answer is the interceptor drone, and missiles remain necessary for faster threats: Russia’s jet-powered drones already outrun current interceptors. [653]

The cheap defence is built from the same kind of parts as the cheap attack. An interceptor drone is a 3D-printed airframe with a thermal camera, a radio link and software for tracking, and newer models add automatic target detection and terminal guidance. [653] These are commercial electronics, like the parts in the drones they hunt. Ukraine has shown the cost gap can be closed. [652] The dependence cannot. A country that wants thousands of interceptors a day needs a steady flow of ordinary cameras, radios and processors, which puts counter-drone defence inside the chip contest described on the rest of this page.

Limits. Costs conflict between sources. A Shahed is put at $35,000 (Center for Strategic and International Studies, via Defense News), $30,000 to $50,000 (US Army Secretary) and about $10,000 (President Zelensky, in a Euromaidan Press report not cited here). A Patriot round is given as over $3 million, $4 million and $13.5 million. Ukrainian production and kill figures are official Ukrainian statements and are not independently checked. Three figures were seen only in search summaries and are left out of the text: that the US Army had bought 13,000 Merops drones by April 2026, that Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence received about 40,000 interceptors in January 2026, and President Zelensky’s statement that output could reach 2,000 a day with funding. The 18 May 2026 announcement date of the US contract was also seen only in a summary; the cited article is dated 19 May. The Red Sea and laser material from The National dates from January 2025, when it said lasers had not been used in combat; the Israeli figures come from a Wikipedia entry that cites the Jerusalem Post, Defense News and a 2020 National Interest estimate, and should be checked against those originals. No Israeli cost figure for the Iron Dome interceptor was found. The European timeline is from one trade article citing a European Parliament briefing; the same article gives the end of 2028 for the wider Eastern Flank Watch. The Commission’s February 2026 counter-drone action plan could not be read. No source was found that lists the chips inside interceptor drones, radars or lasers, so the statements that they use commercial components bought in the same markets as attack drones, and the conclusion drawn from that, are general knowledge and this page’s reasoning. Web search was cut short in this session, so US production rates for interceptor drones could not be established.

Cost exchange

What a shot costs against what it shoots down

Price of one round, on a scale where each step is ten times the last. Amber is the defender’s weapon, black the attacking drone. Prices are those reported in the Counter-drone section and differ between sources. [652, 654]

The black bar is the target. Everything to its right loses money each time it fires: a Patriot used against a Shahed-type drone costs about 85 times as much as the drone. [652] Everything to its left wins the exchange. Ukraine made about 100,000 interceptor drones in 2025 at $3,000 to $5,000 each. [652]

The defence that works is the one built like the attack: small, cheap and made from commercial parts. No source read for this page lists the chips in an interceptor drone, so that last point is reasoning from its price and not a finding. It has a consequence all the same. The weapon and its counter now draw on the same market, and the side with the larger supply of ordinary electronics can afford both.

The spectrum as a chip contest

The fight for the radio spectrum is won with cheap commercial chips, and export controls have slowed their flow without stopping it

750–1,050 MHzBand across which Russian drone control signals had spread by 2024, up from a standard 900 megahertz [680]

7Jamming modules a Ukrainian unit needed by autumn 2024 to cover that band [680]

60%Share of Russian small attack drones on fibre-optic cable in certain key sectors, by one analyst’s estimate, August 2026 [681]

328,000 milesOptical fibre shipped from China to Russia in August 2025, up from 119,000 miles in May 2025 [681]

92%Share of one Moscow trader’s shipments of Western electronics, early 2022 to October 2023, that were on the top tier of the allied priority list [682]

$196mUS Army contracts for commercial spectrum sensors, announced 11 September 2026 [684]

Electronic warfare (EW) is the use of radio energy to blind, deceive or cut off an enemy’s equipment. In Ukraine it changed within months. A Ukrainian EW company commander recalls that in late 2022 jamming was barely present and one small drone survived six months. [680] In January 2023 his unit lost three drones in two weeks. [680] By 2024 Russian drones had spread their control signals across 750 to 1,050 megahertz, so a single jamming module was no longer enough. [680] Each move was answered within a season, using parts bought on the open market.

The answer to jamming that held was to leave the radio spectrum. From late 2024 small drones began to fly on a fibre-optic cable, which carries no radio signal to disrupt. [680] For weapons that fly too far for a cable, the defence sits in the chips. Programmable chips called FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) are at the core of the anti-jamming navigation units in Russian drones, missiles and guided bombs, and in Iranian drones. [682] These chips are American designs, and they are still reaching Russia through China. [682]

The links and parts that decide the spectrum contest, what the evidence shows, and whether controls on them hold.

Part or link	Role in the contest	Evidence	Control status
Radio control link of small drones	Carries the pilot’s commands and video. It is the jammer’s main target.	Russian drones moved from 900 megahertz to a band of 750 to 1,050 megahertz in 2024. Ukrainian units went from one jamming module to seven. [680]	Jamming losing ground The commander says EW ‘is gradually losing the battle against frontline quadcopters’. [680]
Fibre-optic cable	Replaces the radio link, so there is nothing to jam.	By spring 2025 Russian small attack drones reached about 10 kilometres deep, up from about 3 kilometres. [680] In some sectors 60% were fibre-optic models. [681]	Not controlled An analyst urges export controls on makers of fibre, spools and fibre-production equipment. [681]
Mesh radio modems	Every drone relays for the others, so the network survives the loss of one link.	Russia’s long-range attack drones have mostly shifted to mesh networks, using XK-F358 modems from Shenzhen Xingkai Technology. [681]	Unsanctioned The modems carry no sanctions and remain on sale. [681]
Satellite terminals	Give long-range drones a control link from space.	In February 2026 Starlink disabled thousands of smuggled and stolen terminals that Russian forces used to control about 5,000 attack drones a month. [681]	Cut off by provider The company controlled the service, not only the hardware. [681]
FPGAs	Process several antenna signals at once to reject a jammer. They are the core of anti-jamming navigation units.	Leaked documents show a Xilinx FPGA at the centre of the anti-jamming module of Iran’s Shahed 136. Russian Kometa units found in Ukraine contain an Altera FPGA. [682]	Banned but arriving One Moscow trader received 38 Xilinx shipments worth $756,088 and 18 Altera shipments worth $170,502. [682]
Other American integrated circuits	The source lists brands, not the function of each part.	The same trader’s records show 529 shipments of Analog Devices parts, 404 of Texas Instruments and 81 of Microchip. [682]	Banned but arriving Almost all were routed through China. [682]
Amplifier chips and radio transceiver modules	Amplify and handle radio signals in receivers, transmitters and jammers.	Amplifier circuits are one of four product codes in the top tier of the allied list. The top two tiers cover radio-frequency transceiver modules and navigation receivers. [683]	Listed at top tier The United States says these items have been found in Russian missiles and drones in Ukraine. [683]
Spectrum sensors for Western troops	Detect and report radio signals so that units can find the enemy and hide themselves.	The US Army awarded $99 million to Heaviside Industries and $96.9 million to Research Innovations. [684]	Bought commercially These are the first production contracts under a call for commercial EW tools opened in April 2026. [684]

Who makes the parts

The chips that matter here are American brands. In the records of Elmak, a Moscow trading company also known as Kometa, the leading names were Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, Microchip, Xilinx and Altera. [682] The company imported about $5.33 million of Western electronics between early 2022 and October 2023. [682] It used 39 suppliers, most of them Chinese. [682] One Hong Kong firm, Richtek, sent 458 shipments. [682]

What the controls cover

The United States, the European Union, Japan and the United Kingdom keep a shared list of 50 product codes that Russia seeks for its weapons. [683] The nine codes in the top two tiers are the priority. [683] The codes are broad: one covers all processors, another all amplifier circuits. [683] Listing a supplier can work. Ten of Elmak’s suppliers were placed under US restrictions, and four of them made no shipments afterwards. [682]

What Western armies changed

The US Army now asks industry for existing products instead of writing a detailed specification. Its call for commercial EW tools opened in April 2026 and covers jamming, sensing and protection. [684] An Army acquisition official said technology now moves faster than traditional procurement. [684] The lesson cited from Ukraine is that even a small radio signature can become a target within minutes. [684]

Three conclusions follow. First, jamming is a contest of adaptation, and the side that can buy and reprogramme commercial parts fastest holds the advantage for a few months at a time. [680] Second, the lasting answers have been to change the medium. Fibre-optic cable removes the radio link, and mesh networks spread it across many drones. [680, 681] Neither depends on a chip that Western governments control. The cable and the modems come largely from China. [681]

Third, export controls bite where one company controls a service or a supplier is named, and leak where a common part passes through traders. Starlink could switch off its terminals. [681] A programmable chip sold by the thousand cannot be switched off after sale, and it was still reaching Moscow through Chinese intermediaries in 2023. [682] Western armies have drawn their own conclusion and now buy EW equipment as commercial products on short cycles. [684]

Limits. Not verified in an opened source, and so left out of cited claims: which companies make gallium nitride amplifiers and signal converters, what Western armies changed about buying those specific parts, and what each Analog Devices or Texas Instruments part did inside Russian equipment (the source counts shipments by brand only). The descriptions of what an FPGA, a mesh network and an amplifier chip do are general knowledge. The account of jamming from 2022 to 2025 rests on one Ukrainian officer’s experience in one brigade. The 60% fibre-optic share and the figure of 10,000 Russian small drones a day are one analyst’s estimates reported by a journalist, and the fibre shipment figures are that article’s citation of The Washington Post. The Elmak trade data end in October 2023, so they do not show whether flows continued in 2025 and 2026. The allied priority list page we read is dated 23 February 2024 and may have been revised. Sources disagree on the number of antenna elements in Kometa units (8, 12, 16 and 32 all appear), so no count is given here. A search-budget limit prevented further searches on Western procurement and on gallium nitride.

The new problem

SI at the edge: the controlled technology that is sold as a hobby kit

Until 2025 the chips in weapons and the chips in SI were separate subjects. They are not any more. Ukrainian intelligence reports a small Nvidia computer in an upgraded Geran-2 that picks out targets by itself, and the same module in a new Russian cruise missile. [110, 111] The module is a developer kit of the kind sold to students and robot builders for a few hundred dollars. It is far below the thresholds in the export rules, which were set to catch data-centre chips.

This is the gap the present controls were not designed for. The computing needed to train a model is large, concentrated and controllable. The computing needed to run a small model on a drone is tiny and everywhere. A state that cannot buy accelerators can still train abroad, rent, or copy an open model, and then run it on parts bought online. Proposals to track the location of chips are aimed at the large ones. Nothing proposed so far would follow a module of this size.

Chips in orbit

Space forces fly on chips that are generations old, tightly controlled and made on very few lines, while commercial constellations buy at a scale they cannot match

500 timesPerformance of NASA’s new space processor against radiation-hardened chips in use today, early test result, May 2026 [694]

45 nmProcess used for BAE Systems’ RAD510 radiation-hardened chip when it entered fabrication, August 2021 [693]

Up to 80%Loss of effectiveness of one type of US-supplied guided munition under Russian jamming in eastern Ukraine, 2023 to 2024 [686]

2049Year the US Army expects to finish fitting M-code receivers across its aircraft, GAO, October 2026 [686]

13,000+Satellites planned for China’s Guowang constellation, with 204 in low orbit reported by September 2026 [697]

154Operational satellites in the first working batch of the US military’s low-orbit network, delayed by late parts [696]

Chips in orbit must survive radiation, and that requirement keeps them far behind commercial technology. In 2021 BAE Systems said its new radiation-hardened computer chip, the RAD510, was entering fabrication on a 45 nanometre process at a GlobalFoundries plant in New York, with twice the performance of the RAD750, which BAE called the industry standard. [693] NASA’s measure of the gap is starker. It reported in May 2026 that a new space processor from Microchip Technology was running at 500 times the performance of the radiation-hardened chips in use today. [694] The chips that fight from orbit are the oldest designs in the arsenal.

The war in Ukraine showed the other side of the market. Russian forces mounted illicitly obtained Starlink terminals on strike drones, and SpaceX blocked unregistered terminals in Ukraine at the start of February 2026. [695] Russian jamming also cut the accuracy of US-supplied guided munitions that rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS). [686] The jam-resistant military signal, called M-code, needs a custom chip whose first production line has closed, and the US Army does not expect all its aircraft to carry the new receivers until 2049. [686]

The main chip dependencies in military space and navigation, who supplies them and how secure each one is.

Item	Who makes or controls it	Evidence	Position
Radiation-hardened processors	BAE Systems designs them in Manassas, Virginia, and GlobalFoundries makes them in New York. Both sites hold DOD’s Category 1A trusted source status. [693]	The RAD510 uses a 45 nanometre process and offers twice the performance of the RAD750. [693]	onshore but old
Next-generation space processor	NASA chose Microchip Technology of Chandler, Arizona, in August 2022. [694]	Testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory began in February 2026. One version is hardened for high orbits and deep space, and one is radiation-tolerant for low orbit and commercial satellites. [694]	large step, in test
US export rules	The Department of Commerce has controlled radiation-hardened circuits since 27 June 2014, when they moved off the State Department’s munitions list. [692]	Licence applications for China face a policy of denial. [692]	closed to China
M-code GPS chip	A contractor shut the line for the first-generation chip, and GAO reports a limited supply. [686]	A bulk buy of nearly 1 million chips made at GlobalFoundries was expected to last to 2030 at best. [687]	line closed
Anti-jam receivers on vehicles	The US Army’s vehicle navigation system includes a seven-element anti-jam antenna and a card derived from the first-generation M-code chip. [686]	Stryker brigades were equipped by July 2025. Full fielding of the second version is listed as 2050 or later. [686]	fielding slowly
Commercial satellite terminals	SpaceX decides which Starlink terminals work in Ukraine. [695]	Unregistered terminals were blocked in February 2026, and a US research institute assessed that Russian forces would be unable to strike at the same tempo and depth. [695]	control by switch
US military low-orbit network	The Space Development Agency buys satellites from several firms. [696]	The first operational launches slipped from September 2024 to late summer 2025 because encryption devices and laser terminals arrived late. [696]	parts arrive late
China	China SatNet operates Guowang, with more than 13,000 satellites planned. [697]	Operational launches began on 16 December 2024, and 204 low-orbit satellites were reported by September 2026. [697]	scaling fast
Russia	Foreign parts were up to 90 percent of the electronics in the earlier GLONASS-K1 navigation satellite, according to Russian press reports. [698]	Sanctions limited the supply of radiation-resistant electronics, and the successor satellite, first expected in 2018, flew on 7 August 2023. [698]	import dependent

Hardened and tolerant

There are two grades of space chip. NASA’s new processor comes in a radiation-hardened version for medium and geostationary orbits and deep space, and a radiation-tolerant version for low Earth orbit and commercial satellites. [694] US rules control the hardened grade by set thresholds for radiation dose and for errors caused by single particles. [692] A chip rated below those thresholds falls under ordinary chip controls. [692] The lower grade is the one that large constellations buy.

The terminal as a controlled item

A satellite terminal is a box of commercial chips that only works if the operator allows it. Russian units used Starlink terminals on strike drones to hit targets deep in Ukraine’s rear. [695] After SpaceX blocked unregistered terminals, a Ukrainian brigade commander estimated that Russian forces would need about six months to find an alternative. [695] The effective control was the operator’s network switch, not an export licence.

Navigation under jamming

GAO reports that in eastern Ukraine in 2023 and 2024 one type of guided munition became up to 80 percent less effective under Russian jamming. [686] Another was disrupted up to 40 percent of the time even with countermeasures. [686] The US answer is the M-code signal, but a dozen munitions are still waiting for receiver cards, with first fielding dates that run from 2026 to 2032. [686]

Military space runs on two supply chains. The first is small, onshore and old: hardened processors from a handful of trusted lines, protected by export rules that deny them to China. [692, 693] The second is commercial and large, and it is where capacity sits. The US military’s own low-orbit network waited months for encryption devices and laser terminals. [696] The custom military part is the one that runs out. The M-code chip shows it: one closed line and a stockpile sized before the wars that raised demand. [686, 687]

China and Russia sit at opposite ends. China is launching a state constellation planned at more than 13,000 satellites and cannot lawfully buy US hardened chips, so it must be supplying its own; the sources read here do not say how. [692, 697] Russia’s navigation satellites relied on imported electronics, sanctions limited the supply, and the next model flew about five years later than first expected. [698] For both, and for the United States, the test in orbit is production of ordinary parts in volume more than the best single chip.

Limits. China’s radiation-hardened chip industry: no source was found, and the statement that China must supply its own is an inference from the US denial policy and the launch record. The Guowang and GLONASS-K2 facts come from Wikipedia pages, which cite SpaceNews, Reuters, Izvestia and GPS World; the Guowang page is inconsistent, giving 204 low-orbit satellites in its text and launches up to 8 November 2026 in its table that would total about 240. The 90 percent figure describes the older GLONASS-K1 and dates from about 2014. Sources conflict on when Starlink blocking began: 1 February 2026 in the account cited, 5 February in others seen in search summaries. Ukraine’s whitelist procedure was seen only in search summaries because the defence ministry’s page did not open. The 80 and 40 percent jamming figures are quoted by GAO from a Secure World Foundation report that was not read. The 500 times figure is an early test result; the programme target is 100 times. The RAD750’s own process (0.25 and 0.15 micrometre versions) was seen only in a search summary of a BAE datasheet. General knowledge, not sourced here: 45 nanometre was a leading commercial process in the late 2000s; a licence is needed for most destinations for hardened chips; civilian navigation receivers are widely sold and no specific control on them was verified. Starlink’s satellite count, Qianfan and other radiation-hardened suppliers (Honeywell, Microchip, Frontgrade) were not verified in a citable source.

Interceptors, radars and gallium

Missile defence burns through interceptors in weeks and rebuilds them in years, and the pace is set by electronics

190 to 290THAAD interceptors used in the 2026 Iran war, of about 400 held (CSIS estimate, May 2026) [657]

96 a yearcurrent THAAD interceptor output; the maker plans capacity of 400 a year [657]

36 to 39 monthswait from funding to first delivery for new SM-3 and SM-6 naval interceptors [657]

$185 billionGolden Dome cost for the full design, running out to 2035 (programme director, March 2026) [660]

98%China’s share of world low-purity gallium output in 2024 [662]

Air and missile defence uses up its stock faster than any factory can replace it. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, estimates that the 39-day war with Iran that began on 28 February 2026 consumed 190 to 290 interceptors for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) out of about 400, and 1,060 to 1,430 Patriot interceptors out of about 2,500. [657] THAAD interceptors are built at 96 a year. [657] Replacement deliveries are projected to start in mid-2029. [657]

Each interceptor is guided by a radar on the ground or on a ship, and the newest of those radars are built from gallium nitride chips. CSIS lists gallium nitride modules in the Navy’s SPY-6, the Army’s Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) that replaces the Patriot radar, the Missile Defense Agency’s TPY-2 and the upgraded radar of the F-35 fighter. [662] Raytheon makes the chips for SPY-6 in its own foundry in Andover, Massachusetts. [661] China produced 98% of the world’s low-purity gallium in 2024. [662] The American programme called Golden Dome now adds a large new order to the same supply chain. [660, 662]

What was fired in 2024 to 2026 against what is built in a year, from American estimates and official statements.

Interceptor or campaign	Used	Built a year	Reading
THAAD, Iran war of 2026	190 to 290 of about 400 (CSIS estimate) [657]	96 now; capacity of 400 planned [657]	two to three years’ output Replacement deliveries start in mid-2029 and finish by the end of 2029. [657]
Patriot, Iran war of 2026	1,060 to 1,430 of about 2,500 (CSIS estimate) [657]	About 650 of the newest type, half for the United States; contract target of 2,000 [657]	years of American share The Army asked for 3,203 in fiscal 2027; deliveries are projected from May 2029. [657]
Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), Iran war of 2026	Up to about 250 of about 400 [657]	Around 24, according to experts cited in February 2026 [658]	slowest line Stocks are not expected back at pre-war levels until early 2029. [657]
Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), Iran war of 2026	190 to 370 of about 1,250 [657]	Not given in the sources; 540 requested for fiscal 2027 [657]	about two years The time CSIS gives to return to pre-war levels. [657]
THAAD, Israel and Iran, June 2025	100 to 250, or 20% to 50% of the Pentagon’s stock [658]	96 at the time; the Pentagon moved in January 2026 to raise it to 400 [658]	drawn down twice The same stock was used again eight months later. [657, 658]
SM-3, Israel and Iran, June 2025	80, nearly a fifth of the stock [658]	Around 24 [658]	over three years’ output Iran launched 574 ballistic missiles in that war. [658]
Navy ships, Red Sea, October 2023 to January 2025	120 SM-2, 80 SM-6 and 20 other missiles, plus 160 gun rounds [659]	Not given in the sources	long, steady drain Nearly 400 munitions in 15 months, disclosed by the head of Naval Surface Forces. [659]

Radars are made in one place

The SPY-6 naval radar is designed and built at Raytheon’s site in Andover, Massachusetts, which has its own gallium nitride foundry. [661] The Navy placed a further $515 million order in June 2026. [661] Raytheon expects to double SPY-6 output by 2028, backed by $800 million of investment in its radar plants. [661] The radar is due on more than 50 Navy ships over the next decade. [661]

Golden Dome adds demand

The President approved a $175 billion budget for Golden Dome in May 2025. [660] The director put the full design at $185 billion in March 2026, after being asked to buy more space sensors and a space data network. [660] He must show a working defence by summer 2028. [660] He called scale, not technology, his hardest problem. [660] A gallium nitride ground radar is planned as one of its layers. [662]

Gallium is the weak link

China’s share falls to about half for refined gallium, but wafers made elsewhere still depend almost entirely on Chinese feedstock. [662] More than 11,000 Pentagon parts need gallium. [662] The price in Rotterdam reached $687 a kilogram in May 2025, over 150% above the level before controls. [662] One Chinese firm makes up to 90% of the resin used to recover gallium, and China has controlled that technology since January 2025. [662]

The gap is one of time, not money. Congress can fund thousands of interceptors in one budget, and the Army asked for 857 THAAD and 3,203 Patriot interceptors for fiscal 2027. [657] The missiles still arrive three years later, because American purchases of Patriot averaged only 225 a year over the last decade and suppliers were sized for that. [657] Radar output is on a similar clock, with a doubling promised for 2028. [661] Any new war before 2029 would be fought from stocks that have already been drawn down twice. [657, 658]

Gallium ties this back to the chip contest. New projects in Canada, Australia, Greece, Germany, Kazakhstan and the United States could add up to 170 tonnes of capacity outside China, about 24% of current world supply, if they all go ahead. [662] CSIS recommends a defence stockpile of at least 50 tonnes over five years, bought from suppliers outside China. [662] Until then, the radars that guide every interceptor, and the sensors Golden Dome plans to add, rest on a metal that one rival state controls. [660, 662]

Limits. Stock and use figures for the 2026 Iran war are CSIS estimates as reported by The War Zone, which said it could not verify them; official counts are not public. The table’s ‘years of output’ readings are simple division of the cited figures. Current Patriot output is given as about 650 a year by CSIS, while this page elsewhere uses about 600. Seen only in search summaries and not cited: Ukraine used about 700 Patriot interceptors in four months of winter 2025 to 2026 (attributed to a European commissioner) against roughly 600 to 620 built in 2025; about $3 billion of prototype contracts for space-based interceptors awarded to a dozen firms in April 2026; a fiscal 2027 request of about $17.5 billion for Golden Dome; a Congressional Budget Office estimate near $1.2 trillion over twenty years; and a second American gallium nitride line (HRL Laboratories with MACOM). No source was found on the seekers inside interceptors or on radiation-hardened chips for space sensors, so both are left out. The exact page titles of refs wp4 and wp5 were not captured and are descriptive.

Burn rate

One war used years of interceptor production

Interceptors used in the 2026 Iran war, divided by a year’s output at the current rate. The dark part of each bar is the range between the low and high estimates. The usage figures are a think tank’s estimates; the division is this site’s. Half of Patriot output goes to other countries, so the American position is worse than the bar shows. [657, 658]

The figure turns the Missile defence section into one comparison. A few weeks of fighting used about two to three years of output of the two largest interceptors, and about ten years of the slowest line. [657, 658] The same stocks had already been drawn down eight months earlier. [658] New naval interceptors take 36 to 39 months from funding to first delivery. [657]

An interceptor is the most electronics-dense thing an army fires, and it is built at the pace of its slowest part. Put this beside the cost exchange above: the expensive defence cannot be made fast enough, and the cheap defence is made from the open market. Both findings point the same way, to a war decided by who can keep building.

War at sea

Cheap electronics have let a country with almost no navy push back a fleet, and the same seabed carries the chip industry’s own data

62+Successful Ukrainian attacks on Russian warships, February 2022 to April 2026, per a Ukrainian database that relies partly on Ukrainian claims

770Weapons fired by the Eisenhower carrier group in the Red Sea campaign, November 2023 to June 2024

$4.27mEstimated cost of one SM-6 interceptor missile, 2024

99%Estimated share of international data traffic carried by undersea cables

9Cable-damage incidents counted in the Baltic (4) and around Taiwan (5) in 2024 and 2025

40 daysAverage time to repair an undersea cable in 2023

Ukraine has fought a naval war largely without warships. A Ukrainian research database counts at least 62 successful attacks on Russian warships in the Black and Azov Seas from February 2022 to April 2026, by missiles, air drones and sea drones. [623] The sea drones are small boats steered over a satellite link. One washed up at Sevastopol in September 2022 with a Starlink terminal on its stern. [624] The weak point of these boats is the link, not the hull. When coverage near Crimea was not switched on in 2022, boats lost contact and the attack failed. [624]

The same pattern appears elsewhere. In the Red Sea, an American carrier group fired 770 weapons in one deployment against Houthi drones, missiles and uncrewed boats. [625] The United States Navy now plans its own uncrewed ships, with software that must keep sailing if the radio link is lost. [626] Below the surface the contest is over cables. Undersea cables carry an estimated 99% of international data traffic, and ships damaged them repeatedly in the Baltic and around Taiwan in 2024 and 2025. [627] Taiwan’s chip makers depend on those cables to reach their customers.

Where electronics and data links decide the outcome at sea, from sources dated 2024 to 2026.

Theatre or programme	What happened	Role of electronics and links	Assessment
Ukraine’s sea drones, Black Sea	At least 62 successful attacks on Russian warships by all weapons, February 2022 to April 2026. [623]	Early boats were guided by Starlink; a new drone boat was seen with a Starlink terminal in March 2024. [624]	cheap and effective Results rest partly on Ukrainian claims that Russia disputes. [623]
Satellite link as a single point of failure	In 2022 Starlink was not active near Crimea and boats lost contact; in February 2023 SpaceX restricted use on uncrewed vessels. [624]	A private company’s coverage map set the limit of a military operation. [624]	exposed Dependence on one commercial network.
Underwater drone strike, Novorossiysk	Ukraine reported a strike on a diesel-electric submarine in port on 15 December 2025. [623]	Described as the first such strike on a submarine by a naval drone. [623]	claimed, disputed The database records it as critical damage from Ukrainian sources. [623]
Houthi campaign, Red Sea	One carrier group fired 155 Standard missiles, 135 Tomahawks, 60 air-to-air missiles and 420 air-to-surface weapons. [625]	Targets included attack drones, anti-ship missiles, uncrewed boats and uncrewed underwater vehicles. [625]	costly to defend The Navy had spent at least $1 billion on munitions by April 2024. [625]
American uncrewed ships	The Navy merged two programmes into the Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC) in 2025, with prototyping in fiscal 2026. [626]	Prototypes must carry autonomy, perception and command software and continue if communications are lost. [626]	still prototypes No purchase numbers announced; plans suggest as many as several dozen. [626]
Baltic cables	Four incidents with eight cable damages in 2024 and 2025; six outages in one week from December 2025 to January 2026. [627, 628]	Cables for power and telecoms were damaged by dragged anchors. [627, 628]	hard to prosecute A Finnish court found on 3 October 2025 that it had no jurisdiction over the Eagle S crew. [628]
Taiwan cables	Five incidents in 2024 and 2025; 36 cases of damage by external force from 2019 to 2023. [627, 628]	In 2023 a microwave backup restored about 5% of the Matsu Islands’ bandwidth. [627]	law tightened A ship’s master was jailed for three years, and stricter laws took effect in January 2026. [628]
Watching the seabed	NATO, the North Atlantic alliance, began Operation Baltic Sentry in January 2025. [628]	Its Mainsail system fuses satellite, sonar and underwater sensor data. [628]	new and unproven Outages continued a year later. [628]

The cost exchange

Defending ships costs far more than attacking them. The Eisenhower carrier group fired 770 weapons between November 2023 and June 2024. [625] An SM-2 interceptor was estimated at about $2.53 million and an SM-6 at about $4.27 million. [625] The Navy secretary told Congress in April 2024 that at least $1 billion had been spent on munitions against the Houthis and in defence of Israel. [625]

Navies follow Ukraine

The American programme asks industry for three designs, defined by how many shipping containers of weapons or sensors each carries. [626] The baseline ship carries two 40-foot containers for at least 2,500 nautical miles. [626] The Navy wants ships built and fielded in under 18 months from a prototype award. [626] Test ships Sea Hunter and Seahawk already sail from San Diego. [626]

Cables as the soft target

Cable damage is cheap to cause and hard to punish. At least five of nine incidents in 2024 and 2025 were put down to anchor dragging, and four involved ships linked to China or Russia with unclear ownership. [627] About 80 ships worldwide maintain and lay cables. [627] Repairs in the Asia-Pacific take up to 30 days on average, twice the North American figure. [627]

The lesson for the chip contest has two parts. First, sea power now depends on parts that are small, cheap and commercial: a satellite terminal, a camera, a control computer. Ukraine’s boats worked when the link worked and failed when it did not. [624] Later boats were built to rely less on one network, and on 28 August 2025 an air drone hit a Russian missile ship from about 350 kilometres. [623] The side that controls the link and the electronics controls the boat.

Second, the industry that makes those electronics sits behind the same vulnerable seabed. When two cables to Taiwan’s Matsu Islands were damaged in February 2023, full internet access did not return until April. [627] Taiwan has since named ten domestic cables as critical infrastructure and can now confiscate ships that damage them. [628] Those steps raise the cost of sabotage. They do not shorten the repair time, which is set by a small fleet of repair ships. [627]

Limits. Web search was cut off part-way through this research, so several requested items are missing. No source was found for Chinese or allied uncrewed-vessel programmes and numbers in 2025 and 2026, for sensors and processing used to find submarines, for the price of Houthi drones, for the number of merchant ships attacked, or for any study linking cable damage to the chip industry. The statements that Taiwan’s chip makers depend on undersea cables to reach customers, and that the weak point of sea drones is the link, are general knowledge and the author’s analysis, not sourced findings. The Starlink account comes from a Wikipedia article that summarises press reports (The Economist, Washington Post, Naval News and others) which were not read directly; the claim that later boats rely less on one network comes from a second Wikipedia article on the Sea Baby drone that is not listed. The Black Sea database is Ukrainian, says the real number may be higher, and marks many entries as presumed; Russia has denied some strikes, including the submarine strike of December 2025. Seen but not used for lack of a listed source: a fiscal 2026 request of $203 million for uncrewed surface vessels (Military Times), and a rate of 32 small uncrewed boats a month sought by the American navy (via Wikipedia). Search summaries gave a figure of $1.85 billion in Navy munitions for October 2023 to October 2024; the page did not open. Incident counts conflict: Recorded Future counts nine incidents in 2024 and 2025, while Al Jazeera reported at least 11 around Taiwan and at least 11 in the Baltic since 2023. Missile costs are a news site’s estimates from budget documents, not Navy totals.

Part 7

Armies and their supply

What armies do about their own chips and metals, the sabotage risk, the military case that started the controls, and where the United States, China and the Taiwan strait stand.

Chips and the rate of fire

Chips rarely head the list of missile bottlenecks, but one discontinued part can set the pace for a dozen weapons

98%Share of assembly, packaging and testing of all microelectronics done overseas, DOD estimate cited by GAO, July 2025 [685]

88%Share of microelectronics production done overseas, mainly in Taiwan, South Korea and China, same estimate [685]

19 to 34 monthsRise in lead time for one electronic component in a US missile programme, GAO, April 2024, as reported in the press [689]

Nearly 1 millionMilitary GPS chips in the bulk buy planned from 2019 and ordered in 2021 and 2022 before the line closed [687]

600 to 2,000Patriot interceptors a year: build rate today and the target for 2030 under the January 2026 framework [688]

$2 billionPlanned DOD spending over five years on eight chip prototyping hubs, backed by the CHIPS and Science Act, announced September 2023 [690]

Since 2022 the United States and Europe have tried to make missiles faster, and the public record names rocket motors and seekers as the first limits. The Patriot interceptor shows the scale. Its maker delivered 620 in 2025, the build rate is 600 a year, and a January 2026 framework aims for 2,000 a year by 2030. [688] Each interceptor takes 24 months to build and its rocket motor 30 months. [688] Its radar seeker comes from a single plant in Huntsville, Alabama, which delivered about 650 to 700 in 2025. [688] Electronics sit inside that queue and are seldom counted separately.

Where auditors do count them, the delays are long. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the audit arm of the US Congress, reported on 30 April 2024 that in one missile programme the lead time for a single electronic component had risen from 19 to 34 months, according to a later press account. [689] The sharper case is a chip that is no longer made. The Department of Defense (DOD) depends on one application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), a chip designed for a single job, to read the jam-resistant military signal of the Global Positioning System (GPS), and its production line has shut. [686, 687]

Where chips and electronics limit weapons output, what the evidence is, and how exposed each point is.

Pressure point	Evidence	What is being done	Position
Military GPS chip for guided munitions	The contractor shut the production line for the first-generation chip, and GAO says supply is limited. [686] Munitions that depend on the card include Excalibur shells, guided rockets, Tomahawk, Standard Missile 6 and two long-range air-launched missiles. [686]	Weapons are being built with the old card while a second-generation card is developed. [686]	one closed line
The stockpile of that chip	A bulk buy of nearly 1 million chips was planned to last to about 2028, an estimate DOD revised in August 2024 to 2030. [687] Officials said demand from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East may use it up sooner. [687]	Cards are being reserved and stored for later use. [687]	finite stock
Lead times for electronic parts	In one missile programme the lead time for an electronic component rose from 19 to 34 months. [689]	No programme-wide remedy was found in the sources read.	long and rising
Seekers	Every Patriot PAC-3 MSE interceptor takes its radar seeker from one plant, which delivered about 650 to 700 in 2025. [688]	An April 2026 framework aims to triple seeker output. [688]	single source
Where the chips are made	DOD estimates that 88 percent of microelectronics production is overseas, mainly in Taiwan, South Korea and China. [685]	DOD’s chip agency reported buying more than $400 million of one type of microcircuit from trusted domestic suppliers. [685]	mostly Asian fabs
Where the chips are packaged	DOD estimates that 98 percent of assembly, packaging and testing is overseas. [685]	The Department of Commerce awarded three packaging grants of $100 million each in January 2025. Two were still unresolved in 2026. [691]	almost all offshore
Knowing the origin of parts	DOD bought $1.3 billion of microcircuits in fiscal years 2020 to 2024, and its purchasing database lists the United States as the origin for nearly all of it. [685] DOD officials are still concerned that commercial chips in its goods come from non-US sources. [685]	GAO made three recommendations in July 2025, including a study of asking contractors for country-of-origin data. All were still open when the page was read. [685]	little visibility
Public money for defence chips	DOD planned about $2 billion over five years for eight regional hubs. [690] Congress directed $3.5 billion of the $39 billion in manufacturing incentives to a secure supply of leading-edge chips for DOD. [691]	The hubs prototype chips for electronic warfare, edge computing, 5G and 6G and quantum technology. [690]	funded, unproven

The lifetime buy

When a chip leaves production, the usual answer is to buy a lifetime supply at once. From 2019 DOD planned a bulk buy of nearly 1 million military GPS chips, and two contractors placed the orders with GlobalFoundries in 2021 and 2022. [687] The estimate that the stock would last to 2028 was later moved to 2030, with a warning that wartime demand could shorten it. [687] A lifetime buy fixes supply at a forecast made before the war.

Why the chip died

GAO’s account of the GPS chip explains the pattern. The foundry was phasing out the chips because more advanced technologies now dominate the commercial market. [687] The military cards all require chips specially designed for them, with no off-the-shelf replacement. [687] Sales of GPS equipment to allies were also depleting the stock of cards. [687] A weapon designed around one custom chip therefore inherits the commercial life of the factory line that makes it.

The blind spot

DOD relies on more than 200,000 suppliers and sees little below the top tiers. [685] Its purchasing data shows nearly all microcircuits as American in origin, while its own estimate is that 88 percent of production and 98 percent of packaging happen overseas. [685] The two figures measure different things, which is the point GAO makes: the database records the seller, and it gives limited information on where a part was made. [685]

The evidence supports a narrow claim. Rocket motors, seekers and qualified suppliers explain most of the delay in raising missile output, and no source read here shows a general chip shortage stopping a production line in 2025 or 2026. [688] The risk from chips is specific: a custom part with one maker, one line and no substitute. The military GPS chip is that case, and it sits in a dozen munitions that are scheduled to field the new signal between 2026 and 2032. [686]

The remedies work on different clocks. A bulk buy takes effect at once and then runs down. [687] A redesign around a newer chip takes years, as the wait for the second-generation GPS card shows. [686] Onshore packaging and the prototyping hubs are funded, but two of three packaging awards were still unsettled in 2026. [691] Until origin data improves, DOD cannot say how much of a given missile depends on Asian fabs, only that most chips do. [685]

Limits. The 19 to 34 month figure was read in an Il Sole 24 Ore article that attributes it to a GAO report of 30 April 2024; the GAO report itself and the name of the programme were not found, and the article’s own date was not shown. The 88 and 98 percent figures are DOD estimates for all microelectronics, not for defence purchases alone. The FPRI article on Patriot does not discuss chips; treating the seeker as an electronics constraint is this page’s reading. European evidence is thin: a 2023 Aviation Week excerpt in which the head of MBDA said some components had become unavailable, and a March 2026 EU work programme of more than €700 million that includes key electronic components, were seen only in search summaries or a paywalled excerpt and are not cited. No contractor statement blaming chips for a missile delay in 2025 or 2026 was found. A Govini claim that more than 40 percent of chips in US weapons depend on Chinese suppliers, and a distributor’s count of more than 620,000 parts discontinued in 2025, were seen but not verified and are left out. The page elsewhere gives up to $3 billion for Intel’s secure production programme; GAO gives $3.5 billion as the amount Congress directed to the Secure Enclave. General knowledge, not sourced here: redesign and qualification of a replacement part usually takes years.

The materials side

Where the pressure runs the other way

Modern radars and jammers are built from gallium nitride, a material that handles far more power than silicon. It is in the radar of allied missile-defence ships and in the ground radars of the US Marine Corps. [116] When China banned gallium sales to the United States in December 2024 the American defence stockpile held none, and one analysis found that about 85% of defence supply chains that use gallium include at least one Chinese supplier. [117] The motors that move a missile’s fins or a fighter’s control surfaces use rare-earth magnets, and China refines about nine-tenths of the rare earths and makes most of the magnets.

Beijing has drawn the line with care. Its general ban on metals sales to the United States is suspended until 27 November 2026, but the ban on sales to military users stayed in force throughout. Washington’s own rule against Chinese magnets in weapons has been hard to apply: in 2026 the Pentagon asked for more time, contractors asked for delay, and waivers continue. [118] Here it is the allied armies that depend on a chokepoint, and the holder has kept the military part of it closed.

Trusted supply

What armies do about it

A secure line at home

The United States is paying Intel up to $3 billion to make advanced chips for military and intelligence use in a secured part of its fabs. A related programme, in which defence contractors tested designs on Intel’s newest process, was completed in July 2026. [119] Whether it yields trusted chips in useful numbers is not yet shown.

Old chips from known fabs

Most military chips are mature, so the larger task is keeping trusted sources of ordinary parts: accredited fabs, long-term stocks of chips that are no longer made, and rules against parts from Chinese fabs in new systems. This is slow, unglamorous work, and it matters more than the leading edge.

Design for substitution

Both sides in Ukraine redesign drones every few months around whatever parts can be had. Weapons that take a decade to certify cannot do that. The lesson armies are drawing is to design so that a chip can be swapped without requalifying the whole system.

The supply chain as a target

Fake parts are the everyday risk and tampering the rare one, and states answer both by asking where a part came from

1,800 casesBogus-part cases found by the Senate Armed Services Committee, report of May 2012 [721]

16 of 16Parts bought by the GAO’s fictitious company in 2012 that were not legitimate [719]

526Suspect counterfeit reports filed in the Pentagon’s shared database, fiscal years 2011 to 2015 [720]

42 deadLebanese government toll for the device attacks of 17 and 18 September 2024, as of 22 September [723]

nearly 80%Share of ship-to-shore cranes at American ports made by ZPMC of China, House committees, 2024 [725]

13 August 2019Start of the American ban on buying equipment from five named Chinese electronics firms [726]

The best-documented threat to military electronics is the fake part, and the evidence comes from American audits. In 2012 the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the audit arm of Congress, set up a fictitious company and asked online vendors for military-grade chips. [719] It bought 16 parts, all from vendors in China, and none was legitimate. [719] A laboratory rated all 12 parts it tested as suspect counterfeit; many had been re-marked with the part numbers and logos of real products. [719] Of 396 vendors that replied, 334 were in China. [719] The GAO said the sample was too small to measure the whole market. [719]

A year-long inquiry by the Senate Armed Services Committee, released in May 2012, gave the scale. It found about 1,800 cases of bogus parts involving more than 1 million suspect components. [721] More than 70 percent of the suspect parts that were traced back through the supply chain led to China. [721] One Shenzhen supplier alone provided about 84,000 suspect parts. [721] Suspect parts reached collision-avoidance units meant for the Global Hawk drone and assemblies for the P-3 patrol aircraft. [721] A witness described pavements in China covered with components stripped from electronic waste. [721]

Seven supply-chain risks or defences, the public evidence for each and how well the response holds.

Risk or defence	What the public record shows	State response	How well it holds
Counterfeit and re-marked chips	1,800 cases and more than 1 million suspect parts in the Senate inquiry of 2012 [721]	Contractors must buy from the original maker or its authorised suppliers first [722]	Rules in place The scale since 2015 is not in the sources opened
Open-market purchases of rare parts	All 16 parts the GAO bought online in 2012 were bogus or suspect [719]	Parts from other sources must be inspected, tested and authenticated, and the contracting officer told in writing [722]	Exposed Old parts are the ones makers no longer sell
Reporting of fakes	526 reports in five years; the Pentagon did not check that its agencies reported [720]	All four GAO recommendations carried out; a Pentagon instruction followed in August 2022 [720]	Improved Reports had often been closed to industry [720]
Devices altered before delivery	Pagers sold through a Budapest intermediary under a Taiwanese brand exploded on 17 September 2024 [723]	Lebanon banned pagers and hand-held radios from flights; Iran’s Revolutionary Guards inspected their equipment [723]	Hard to detect The buyer had held the devices for about five months [723]
Undeclared radios in power equipment	American officials found undisclosed communication devices in some Chinese-made inverters and batteries, reported May 2025 [724]	The Energy Department says it is working to bring trusted equipment into the grid; a bill covers batteries only [724]	No rule yet No bill targeted inverters at the time [724]
Undeclared modems on port cranes	Cellular modems found on Chinese-made crane components at one port and in a server room at another [725]	Two House committees investigated more than 200 cranes and wrote to the maker [725]	Found and removed One port removed its modems in October 2023 [725]
Named-vendor bans	Equipment of Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua barred from federal purchases [726]	From 13 August 2020 the ban also reaches contractors that use such equipment [726]	In force Covers telecommunications and video surveillance, not chips in general [726]

Provenance first, testing second

The Pentagon’s purchasing rule sets an order of trust. Contractors go first to the original manufacturer or its authorised suppliers. [722] If those fail, they may use suppliers they have vetted themselves and must answer for the parts. [722] Any other source brings inspection, testing and written notice. [722] The same clause covers parts from suppliers accredited by the Defense Microelectronics Activity, the Pentagon office behind the trusted supplier scheme. [722]

The pager case

The September 2024 attacks showed a supply chain taken over, not just infiltrated. The pagers carried the brand of Gold Apollo of Taiwan, which said BAC Consulting of Budapest made and sold them under licence. [723] Hungary called BAC an intermediary with no factory there. [723] The New York Times reported that Israeli intelligence ran BAC, and Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed Israeli responsibility in November 2024. [723]

Inverters and cranes

The 2025 and 2024 findings concern undeclared radios, not explosives. Reuters reported in May 2025 that officials found communication devices missing from the parts lists of some Chinese-made solar inverters and batteries. [724] Sources said the extra channels could bypass firewalls. [724] A Chinese government spokesperson rejected the accusation. [724] On port cranes, the equipment contracts did not include the modems and port officials could not say why they were there. [725]

The common answer to fakes, tampering and hidden radios is the same: know the path a part took. Detection after the fact is weak. The GAO found that Pentagon bodies applied different standards of evidence before reporting a suspect part, which delayed warnings. [720] The pagers had been in their users’ hands for about five months before they exploded. [723] The crane modems are believed to have been fitted around 2017 and were removed in October 2023. [725] So the rules lean on trusted sources and on bans by maker’s name. [722, 726]

The states that changed course fastest after September 2024 were those closest to the attack. Lebanon barred pagers and hand-held radios from luggage at Beirut airport two days later. [723] Iran’s Revolutionary Guards suspended use of communication devices and inspected them, and about a month later Iran barred electronic communication devices other than mobile phones from passenger flights. [723] Taiwanese police searched four sites and found no Taiwanese company involved. [723] The hand-held radios that exploded on the second day were a model its Japanese maker stopped producing in 2014, and the maker doubted they were its own products. [723]

Limits. Opened and read: the two GAO product pages, the Pentagon contract clause, the federal purchasing rule, the House committee page, Utility Dive and Asia IP. The Senate committee’s own report would not open, so its figures come from the Asia IP account, which matches the search summaries of the committee’s press release; a second summary added that the parts came from more than 650 companies, which is not used. The pager account rests on the Wikipedia article, read only in its first part; its casualty figures are those of the Lebanese government and vary by date, and the Turkish interception it mentions is omitted as unconfirmed. The inverter findings rest on a Reuters report based on unnamed officials, read here through Utility Dive; no count of devices was given and the American government had not confirmed the finds in public. The crane findings were published in March 2024, not 2025; no source for new crane findings in 2025 was opened. The history of the trusted foundry programme, the Pentagon’s named trusted suppliers, the 2022 law that will bar chips from certain Chinese makers from federal systems, and European limits on Chinese inverters are general knowledge or unverified here and are left out of cited claims. No public audit was found that documents a tampered chip inside a fielded American weapon.

The first military argument

The controls began as a move against weapons supercomputers, and China now fields the fastest listed machine on chips of its own design

7Chinese supercomputing bodies added to the Entity List on 8 April 2021 [714]

5Bodies listed in June 2019, among them Sugon, Higon and the Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology [715]

about 2.2 exaflopsBenchmark result of LineShine in Shenzhen, first on the June 2026 Top500 list of the world’s fastest computers [717]

1.742 exaflopsVerified result of El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore when it was named fastest in November 2024 [718]

42.2 megawattsPower drawn by LineShine during its tested run, 2026 [717]

300 and 600The 2022 chip thresholds: 300 tera operations per second and 600 gigabytes per second of interconnect speed [716]

The chip controls started with supercomputers, not with chatbots. In April 2021 the United States Commerce Department put seven Chinese supercomputing bodies on its Entity List, the register of foreign organisations that American firms may not supply without a licence. [714] Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of “many – perhaps almost all – modern weapons”, and named nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons. [714] The seven were three chip designers, Phytium, Sunway Microelectronics and the Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center, and the national supercomputing centres in Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi and Zhengzhou. [714]

The rule of 7 October 2022 turned that list of names into a general ban. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the Commerce office that writes export rules, said China uses advanced chips and supercomputers to produce advanced military systems including weapons of mass destruction, to speed up military decision making, planning and logistics, and to run autonomous military systems. [713] The rule required licences for chips and other items bound for supercomputer use in China. [713] The press release itself does not use the words nuclear or hypersonic. [713] Those words come from the 2021 listing. [714]

The largest machines on each side, as described in public sources, with the purpose and the chips where known.

Machine and site	Chips	What is public	Standing under American controls
LineShine, National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen	LingKun LX2 processor designed by the centre with Huawei, 304 active cores per socket, no graphics chips [717]	Published and ranked Just under 2.2 exaflops on the standard test, about 21.5% above El Capitan, first on the June 2026 Top500 [717]	Listed, still built The Shenzhen centre has been on the Entity List since April 2021 [714]
Tianhe-3, National Supercomputing Centre in Guangzhou	Phytium processors based on Arm designs, with Matrix accelerator chips [717]	Reported, not ranked Peak of about 2.05 exaflops and about 1.57 on the standard test; first powered up in October 2021 [717]	Chip maker listed Phytium was listed in April 2021; the Guangzhou centre was not on that list [714, 715]
Sunway OceanLight, National Supercomputing Centre in Qingdao	Sunway SW26010-Pro processors, 41.93 million cores [717]	Reported, not ranked Rumoured to be running in March 2021 [717]	Chip maker listed Sunway Microelectronics and the Shanghai design centre were listed in April 2021 [714]
Sunway TaihuLight, Wuxi	Not stated in the sources opened	Ranked Described as China’s most powerful computer when its home centre was blacklisted in April 2021 [715]	Listed The Wuxi centre was listed in April 2021 [714, 715]
El Capitan, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	AMD Instinct MI300A chips, which join processor cores, graphics cores and memory in one package, in more than 11,000 nodes [718]	Fully published 1.742 exaflops verified in November 2024, peak 2.79 exaflops [718]	Unrestricted supply Built for the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which checks the nuclear arsenal by simulation instead of testing [718]
Sierra, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory	Not stated in the sources opened	Published El Capitan has more than 20 times Sierra’s peak performance [718]	Unrestricted supply El Capitan’s predecessor at the laboratory [718]

Three rounds of listings

The 2021 listing was the third round. An analyst quoted at the time said the Entity List had been used against Chinese military supercomputing institutions since 2015, under President Obama. [714] In June 2019 the list took in Sugon, Higon, two Chengdu Haiguang chip companies and the Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology. [715] After April 2021, three of China’s seven national centres, Guangzhou, Changsha and Tianjin, were still unlisted. [715]

What the American machines are for

The comparison is direct, because the largest American machine is a weapons computer. El Capitan is the first exascale system of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency that looks after American warheads. [718] Its head, Jill Hruby, called the computing power “the heart of science-based stockpile stewardship”. [718] Planned work includes support for two warheads in development, the W87-1 and the W93. [718]

How SI clusters changed the target

The 2022 rule already looked past the classic supercomputer. Its thresholds picked out chips built to be networked together in facilities that train and run large SI models. [716] The analyst Gregory Allen wrote that China’s policy of military-civil fusion made it hard to restrict the military without restricting commercial SI too. [716] Chips for single computers, such as game consoles, stayed on sale. [716]

The public record shows the controls changed how China builds these machines more clearly than it shows any delay to weapons work. The Shenzhen centre was listed in 2021 and led the world ranking in June 2026 with a processor designed with Huawei. [714, 717] The trade publication that examined the machine said American policy is forcing China to be independent, and that China is working around the embargo on Nvidia and AMD graphics chips. [717] Its author suspects the chip is made by SMIC, China’s largest chip maker, on a 7 nanometre process, but that is his inference. [717]

None of the official sources opened for this section gives a measure of how far the controls slowed Chinese weapons design. The 2022 statement lists the military uses Washington wants to deny; it does not report results. [713] What can be said is narrower. China has built at least three exascale-class machines on home-designed processors, and one of them took the top of the ranking in 2026. [717] The machines exist. Their cost and how many of their chips work first time are not public; the LineShine socket exposes 304 of 384 cores. [717]

Limits. Opened and read: the BIS release of 2022, The Record and Verdict on the 2021 and 2019 listings, the CSIS analysis, The Next Platform on LineShine and the Lawrence Livermore release. The February 2015 listing of the National University of Defense Technology was seen only in a search summary of a law-firm note that would not open; the cited source gives the year through an analyst’s remark, and the CSIS piece says the university kept using banned Intel chips. The Next Platform prints an OceanLight benchmark figure that looks like a misprint, so no speed is given for that machine, and its Qingdao location follows that article. Figures for Tianhe-3 and OceanLight are press estimates, not official results. The Top500 page for June 2026 was opened and lists El Capitan at 1.809 exaflops after a later measurement, against the 1.742 in the 2024 laboratory release; it is not among the references. The link between Phytium and hypersonic testing reported in the press in 2021, the October 2023 tightening of the chip thresholds, the SI diffusion rule of 2025 and the 2026 licences for Nvidia H200 sales to China were seen but are not cited here. No statement by Commerce or Pentagon officials on slowed weapons work was found before the search allowance ran out; that absence is a limit of this search, not proof that no statement exists. That exascale means a billion billion calculations a second is general knowledge.

Buying computing for defence

Allied armies rent their advanced computing from a few commercial firms, and are still writing the rules for using it

$200mCeiling of each of four Pentagon contracts with SI companies, July 2025 [671]

$13.4bnRequested for autonomy and autonomous systems in the fiscal 2026 budget, June 2025 [672]

340,000Small attack drones planned under the Drone Dominance Program, announced December 2025 [674]

2 basesFort Bliss (about 1,384 acres) and Dugway Proving Ground (about 1,201 acres) conditionally assigned to data-centre developers, 26 March 2026 [673]

70+SI and computer-vision systems Ukraine says are striking targets, August 2026 [677]

58States endorsing the US-led declaration on responsible military SI, as of 27 November 2024 [678]

The United States does not build its own leading-edge computing for war. It buys access from the companies that serve civilian customers. In July 2025 the Department of Defense awarded contracts of up to $200 million each to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI to speed its adoption of advanced SI (artificial intelligence). [671] Defence is a small customer in this market. A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) calls US defence chip needs ‘a tiny fraction’ of commercial demand. [679] No source we opened gives defence’s share of leading-edge chips as a percentage.

The money is moving toward machines that act with less human control. The Pentagon’s request for fiscal year 2026 set out $13.4 billion for autonomy and autonomous systems, the first year this spending had its own section. [672] A Drone Dominance Program plans 340,000 small attack drones in four phases ending in January 2028. [674] The Army has chosen investors to build large data centres on two of its bases. [673] The rules are under strain from the same shift. A dispute with Anthropic over fully autonomous weapons reached the courts in 2026. [671]

What the United States and its allies have bought or decided since 2025, and how firm each step is.

Effort	Date	What was bought or decided	Standing
Contracts with leading SI companies	July 2025	Up to $200 million each for Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI. [671]	Bought, then contested One supplier, Anthropic, was designated a supply-chain risk on 27 February 2026. [671]
Autonomy budget line	June 2025, for fiscal 2026	$13.4 billion: $9.4 billion for aerial vehicles, $1.7 billion for water-based systems, $734 million underwater, $210 million for ground vehicles and $1.2 billion for enabling software. [672]	First dedicated section The figure is a request to Congress. [672]
Counter-drone spending	June 2025, for fiscal 2026	$3.1 billion across the services. [672]	Defensive spending Listed apart from the autonomy line. [672]
Drone Dominance Program	Announced December 2025	$1 billion in fixed-price orders over four phases, from 30,000 drones at $5,000 each to 150,000 at $2,300 each. [674]	Plan in progress Companies are paid only for drones they deliver. [674]
Defense Autonomous Warfare Group	Late 2025	A new group that replaced the earlier Replicator effort, set up with a $225 million budget. [675]	New organisation CSIS proposes making it the integrator for autonomy. [675]
Maven Smart System	2025 to 2026	NATO finalised its purchase of a version from Palantir on 25 March 2025. [676] The US made it a formal programme of record in March 2026. [675]	In service NATO’s purchase took six months from requirement to contract. [676]
Army data centres on bases	26 March 2026	Carlyle selected for Fort Bliss, Texas, and CyrusOne for Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, with first operation projected for fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2029. [673]	Conditional selection The leases were still to be negotiated. [673]
Ukraine’s SI on drones	August 2026	More than 70 systems in use, more than 200 companies making SI-enabled drones, and 46 SI tools on the Brave1 Market. [677]	In combat use A human operator keeps the final decision on a target. [677]
US directive on autonomy in weapons	2012, updated January 2023	Requires ‘appropriate levels of human judgment’ over the use of force. [678] A presidential memorandum of 5 June 2026 ordered an update within 90 days. [675]	Being rewritten The phrase does not require manual control of the weapon. [678]

Data centres on military land

The Army is offering land, not money. Under its Enhanced Use Lease programme, private companies would finance, build, run and later remove the data centres on underused Army land. [673] The Army says this comes at no upfront cost to taxpayers and will give its forces more computing capacity. [673] The announcement of 26 March 2026 was a conditional selection that opened exclusive talks on the lease terms. [673]

NATO buys American software

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took the fast route. Its communications agency finalised a contract for Palantir’s Maven Smart System NATO on 25 March 2025, six months after setting the requirement. [676] The system uses SI, including large language models, for intelligence, targeting and planning. [676] Neither side disclosed the price. [676] The alliance’s main command system therefore rests on one American supplier.

Rules written by the armies themselves

US policy does not ban weapons that select and attack targets on their own. [678] It requires senior officials to approve such systems before development and again before fielding. [678] About 30 countries call for a ban, which the United States does not support. [678] Anthropic refused two uses of its models, mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, and was then designated a supply-chain risk. [671]

The pattern is consistent across these efforts. Allied armies do not own the leading edge of computing. They rent it from a handful of American companies, host it on leased land and reach it through commercial software. That makes the terms of supply a defence question. The Anthropic case shows it. A district court set the supply-chain designation aside on 27 August 2026, and an appeals panel ruled for the Department of Defense on 25 September 2026. [671] The outcome will shape what any supplier can refuse.

The chips at the cheap end matter as much. A drone that must cost $2,300 by the fourth phase of the Drone Dominance Program leaves little room for costly parts. [674] This is our reading of the price target, not a statement from the programme. Ukraine shows the direction of travel: its stated goal is computer vision and SI on every frontline drone. [677] Volume buying of small, ordinary processors is where allied demand for chips is growing.

Limits. Not verified in an opened source: which chips Ukrainian or American drones carry, any percentage for defence’s share of leading-edge chips, the European Union’s drone defence plans and their funding, the terms of the Army leases (search summaries mentioned 50-year leases and payment in computing power), and the Air Force’s separate offer of land on five bases (read in a Defense One article of October 2025 but not listed among the references). The $13.4 billion is a budget request; we did not confirm what Congress enacted. The Drone Dominance budget appears as $1 billion in one source and ‘more than $1 billion’ or $1.1 billion in others. The presidential memorandum of 5 June 2026 is numbered NSPM-11 by CSIS; a second source describes it without the number. The count of 58 endorsing states dates from November 2024 and may have changed. Ukraine’s figures come from its own Ministry of Defence as reported by a trade publication; the ministry’s page did not open. The statement that SI services run on leading-edge chips in commercial data centres is general knowledge.

Europe, 2025 to 2026

Europe has found the money to rearm, but not yet the chips its new weapons need

5%Share of GDP that NATO members agreed in June 2025 to spend on defence and related items by 2035. [636]

€150 billionSize of the EU’s SAFE defence loan scheme, shared among 19 member states in September 2025. [637]

65%Minimum share of component costs that must come from the EU, Ukraine or eligible partner countries under SAFE. [638]

€168.2 millionFirst industrial awards under the European Defence Industry Programme, October 2026: eight projects, none for electronic components. [640]

€3.5 to 5 billionInvestment that participants are considering for the joint European drone and counter-drone project by 2033. [641]

78%Share of new European defence orders in 2022 to 2023 that were placed outside Europe, as cited from the Draghi report. [642]

Europe’s rearmament is a large new order for electronics that Europe mostly does not make. In June 2025 the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) agreed to raise defence spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. [636] Core defence spending is to reach 3.5% of GDP, and the other 1.5% covers related items such as infrastructure, cybersecurity and the arms industry. [636] Spain was the sole exception. [636] The European Union (EU) added a loan scheme of €150 billion called Security Action for Europe (SAFE). [637]

The money is real and it is moving. Nineteen member states asked for SAFE loans, and Poland was given the largest share at €43.7 billion. [637] The first payments went out between June and August 2026. [638] The supply of chips has not moved at the same speed. A June 2026 study for the Hudson Institute found that in 2025 chips and the components built on them were still mainly designed and made outside the EU. [642] It also found that many high-end European systems, including drones and advanced electronics, still rely heavily on American components. [642]

Where European rearmament stands in late 2026: the money is firm, the electronics supply behind it is not.

Item	What it is	Key figure	What it means for chips
NATO spending target	Pledge made at The Hague in June 2025	firm pledge 5% of GDP by 2035, of which 3.5% is core defence. [636]	Demand for military electronics rises for a decade. The pledge says nothing about where parts come from.
SAFE loans	EU-backed loans for defence purchases	money allocated €150 billion across 19 states; Poland €43.7 billion, Romania €16.68 billion. [637]	At least 65% of component costs must come from the EU, Ukraine or eligible partners. [638]
SAFE payments	First cash to member states	just started Lithuania received €956.3 million on 24 June 2026 and Estonia €351.6 million on 12 August 2026, each 15% of its total. [638]	Orders are now being placed, so pressure on suppliers begins now.
European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP)	EU grant programme for defence production	small budget €1.5 billion in total, with €325 million for joint projects. [639]	It caps content from outside the European Economic Area at 35%. [642] It lists key electronic components as a funding topic. [639]
First EDIP industrial awards	Results of the 2026 call, published October 2026	no chip project Eight projects, €168.2 million, leveraging €1.26 billion of industry investment. [640]	All eight cover rocket motors, small engines, warheads, explosives and cartridges. [640]
Joint drone project	Drone and Counter-Drone European Resolve, one of five joint projects	plan stage €3.5 to 5 billion considered by participants by 2033. [641]	Drones are among the systems that still rely heavily on American components. [642]
European chip output	Share of world chip production	exposed The EU aimed to go from 10% to 20% by 2030, a target that now looks difficult. [642]	Chips were still mainly designed and made outside the EU in 2025. [642]
American export rules	International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR)	exposed The rules give Washington significant control over export and re-export. [642]	This leverage has led to calls for systems free of ITAR-controlled parts. [642]
Security of supply regime	Part of the EDIP law	new and untested A framework for mapping, monitoring and responding to supply crises. [639]	It gives the EU a legal tool for a parts shortage, but no factory.

The first money went to explosives

Europe’s first industrial awards show where it sees the bottleneck. The eight projects chosen in 2026 are expected to yield more than 20,000 tons of energetic materials, 200,000 loitering munition warheads and 3,500 propulsion systems for drones and missiles each year. [640] They are meant to cut production lead times by up to 90%. [640] None of the eight is a chip or electronics project. [640]

Buy European, with foreign parts inside

Europe’s rules count parts by value. SAFE requires that at least 65% of component costs come from the EU, Ukraine or eligible partner countries. [638] EDIP sets a 35% cap on content from outside the European Economic Area. [642] A weapon can therefore pass the test while its key chips are imported. The Hudson study warns that buying European will remain a content threshold until production lines exist. [642]

The American licence problem

Dependence on American parts is a legal dependence. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) give Washington significant control over the export and re-export of systems that contain controlled American items. [642] The Hudson study judges a full cut-off of allies unlikely, but says the leverage has driven calls for systems without such parts. [642] The EU’s aim of doubling its share of world chip output to 20% by 2030 now looks difficult, so the parts cannot simply be replaced at home. [642]

Europe has solved the first half of the problem. It has a spending target, loans that are being paid out and a set of joint projects, including one for drones with an investment horizon of 2033. [636, 638, 641] The second half, the electronics, is still mostly a rule about percentages. The 65% and 35% thresholds push buyers toward European suppliers, but they do not create a European source for the chips inside a radar, a missile seeker or a drone. [638, 642]

The test will come in the order books. If the orders paid for by these loans arrive while chips are still mainly designed and made outside the EU, lead times will be set by suppliers in Asia and the United States. [642] The EU now has a legal regime to monitor a supply crisis and a funding topic for key electronic components. [639] As of October 2026, the published awards had funded explosives, engines and warheads, and no electronics. [640]

Limits. Several parts of the brief could not be sourced in this session, because web search stopped working after eight queries. No statement by a named European defence company on electronics lead times was found. No report was found that the 2025 Nexperia shortage stopped defence production; an industry press release of October 2025 warned only of production halts in parts of European industry, without naming defence. Nothing was found on European gallium nitride or defence-grade packaging projects, so these are not covered. A July 2026 Digitimes article stating that the chips for missiles, drones, radar and electronic warfare cannot be made in Europe at scale was seen only as a paywalled opening paragraph and is not cited. The claim that one American chip puts a whole European drone under American export control came from a search summary of an Austrian magazine that could not be opened. A January 2026 Potomac Institute paper on the American trusted supplier list for chips was seen only as a summary page and is not cited. Dates for the EDIP law differ between Commission pages (approved November 2025; adopted 16 December 2025), so no date is given. The 2029 review of the NATO target and Poland’s loan signing on 8 May 2026 were seen in other pages but are not cited. The drone project total is an indicative figure considered by participants, not a budget.

China · American drone, defence and rare-earth firms on the control list, June 2026

China’s June 2026 list of ten American firms pairs small-drone makers with the two companies building a rare-earth supply outside China

10American entities listed on 22 June 2026

5Of them in small drones, drone motors, drone radar and unmanned boats

2Rare-earth companies on the list: MP Materials and USA Rare Earth

31European and American entities listed in the three 2026 announcements read for this page

On 22 June 2026 the commerce ministry placed ten American entities on its export control list. Chinese exporters may not send them dual-use items, and no organisation or person in any country may pass Chinese-origin dual-use items to them. Exports under way had to stop at once. [278]

The names fall into three groups. Five are in small drones and their parts: Red Cat Holdings and its subsidiary Teal Drones, the motor maker Aveox, the radar maker IMSAR and Jaia Robotics, which builds small unmanned boats. Three are established defence suppliers: Ball Aerospace, now part of BAE Systems, Oshkosh Defense and L3Harris Maritime Services. [278] The last two are MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, the companies at the centre of the American effort to mine rare earths and make magnets without China. [278]

A summary of the ministry’s explanation says the listing answered the American government’s additions to its list of “Chinese military companies”. [279]

The ten American entities listed on 22 June 2026, from the announcement. Descriptions of what each does are this site’s, from general knowledge.

Entity	What it is	What a cut in Chinese dual-use supply touches	Reading
Red Cat Holdings and Teal Drones. [278]	Maker of small military drones for the American army.	Motors, batteries, cameras, magnets and radio parts, where Chinese suppliers lead.	drones The American attempt at a drone without Chinese parts.
Aveox. [278]	Electric motors and controllers for aircraft and drones.	Magnets and magnet materials.	drone parts
IMSAR. [278]	Small radars carried by drones.	Compound semiconductor radio devices and the gallium behind them.	radar chips
Jaia Robotics. [278]	Small unmanned surface and underwater craft.	Batteries, motors, sensors.	sea drones
Ball Aerospace. [278]	Space and sensor systems, listed under its former name and its place within BAE Systems.	Germanium optics, infrared detectors.	space
Oshkosh Defense. [278]	Military trucks and vehicles.	General industrial inputs.	vehicles
L3Harris Maritime Services. [278]	Naval systems and ship support.	Electronics and materials.	naval
MP Materials. [278]	Owner of the Mountain Pass rare-earth mine in California, building magnet production.	Separation chemicals, processing and magnet-making equipment, the items in the paused Announcement No. 56.	minerals The Pentagon-backed alternative to Chinese magnets.
USA Rare Earth. [278]	Developer of a magnet plant in Oklahoma.	The same equipment and inputs.	minerals

Aimed at the substitutes

Earlier Chinese listings of American firms named the large arms makers, for which Chinese supply is a small matter. This list is different in kind. Small-drone makers and rare-earth processors are the two places where the United States is trying to replace a Chinese supply chain, and both still need Chinese inputs to do it: motors and batteries in one case, separation and magnet-making equipment in the other. Listing them raises the cost of the replacement.

The list does what the paused rule would do

Announcement No. 56 of 2025, which controls rare-earth processing equipment and separation chemicals for every buyer, has been suspended since November 2025. A listing achieves the same result for a named firm without ending the suspension: no dual-use item of any kind may go to MP Materials or USA Rare Earth, from China or through a third party. [278, 404] The truce pauses the general rule and leaves the targeted tool free.

The reach clause, again

As in the European listings, the bar extends to “organisations and individuals of any country or region”. [278] A Japanese or Korean supplier that resells Chinese-origin equipment or chemicals to a listed American firm is covered by the text. For rare-earth projects that buy processing equipment through third countries, that clause matters more than the ban on direct sales.

Taken with the European listings of April and July, China named thirty-one Western firms and institutes in three announcements in 2026, each framed as an answer to a Western list. [278, 424, 425] The choice of names shows a method: find the firms building the alternative to a Chinese supply, and deny them the Chinese inputs they need to build it.

For the drone war described in this part, the listing has a direct meaning. Western armies want small drones in large numbers without Chinese components. The firms attempting that are now barred by name from the supply chain they are trying to leave, before they have left it.

Limits. Announcement No. 23 of 2026 was read in full, with its list, as carried by the state news agency. The ministry’s explanation was not found as a text; the stated reason is from a search summary of press coverage. What each firm makes, its ties to the American government, and what Chinese inputs it uses are not in the announcement; they are from general knowledge and should be checked before being relied on. Whether any listed firm has lost supply is not known. Other 2026 measures against American firms, including an August 2026 countermeasure list under the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law seen in a news digest, were not researched. The count of thirty-one covers only the three announcements read.

China · European defence and optics firms on the control list, 2026

In 2026 China barred dual-use exports to twenty-one European firms and institutes, matching one European sanctions round name for name

21European entities placed on China’s export control list in 2026: seven on 24 April and fourteen on 24 July

14 for 14Entities listed by China on 24 July, and Chinese and Hong Kong firms listed by the European Union the evening before

9European countries with a listed entity

1 dayTime between the European sanctions package and China’s answer

China’s export control list was first used against American arms makers. In 2026 it was turned on Europe. On 24 April the commerce ministry listed seven entities in Belgium, the Czech Republic and Germany, among them the gun maker FN Herstal and the sensor maker Hensoldt. [425] On 24 July it listed fourteen more in eight countries, including Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms maker. [424]

The ministry gave its reason for the second round in one sentence. On the evening of 23 July, Beijing time, the European Union published its twenty-first package of sanctions over Russia and listed fourteen firms from mainland China and Hong Kong. “In response to this conduct”, China listed fourteen European entities. [426] Fourteen for fourteen, within a day.

The measure is the same in both announcements. Chinese exporters may not send dual-use items to the listed entities, and “organisations and individuals abroad” may not pass Chinese-origin dual-use items to them. Activity under way must stop at once. [424, 425]

European entities on China’s export control list in 2026, from the two announcements. The descriptions of what each does are this site’s, from general knowledge.

Listed	Entity and country	What it is	Why it matters here
24 April	FN Herstal and FN Browning, Belgium. [425]	Small-arms makers.	arms Users of Chinese-origin metals and parts.
24 April	Hensoldt, Germany. [425]	Radar and sensor maker.	electronics Sensors depend on gallium and germanium devices.
24 April	Omnipol, Excalibur Army, VZLU Aerospace and the Czech branch of SpaceKnow, Czech Republic. [425]	Arms trading and vehicles, aerospace research, satellite image analysis.	arms and space
24 July	Rheinmetall, Germany. [424]	Arms maker: ammunition, vehicles, air defence.	largest name Europe’s rearmament runs through it.
24 July	III-V Lab and InPACT, France. [424]	A compound-semiconductor research laboratory and a maker of indium phosphide wafers.	chips Compound semiconductors need gallium and indium, which China controls.
24 July	Vigo Photonics and Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland. [424]	Infrared detector maker, and a technical university.	chips The first European university on the list.
24 July	Ekspla, Lithuania, and Opticoelectron, Bulgaria. [424]	Laser maker, and optics maker.	optics
24 July	Sindlhauser Materials and Antraco, Germany. Lafert and Garnet, Italy. [424]	Materials, chemicals trading, electric motors, abrasives.	inputs Suppliers, not arms makers.
24 July	Cavok UAS, France. IHC Merwede, Netherlands. Tatra Trucks, Czech Republic. [424]	Drone maker, shipbuilder, truck maker.	platforms

A list that answers lists

The April announcement gives no reason beyond the law it rests on. [425] The July one is openly reciprocal: the ministry names the European package and the number of Chinese firms on it. [426] It fits the plan for 2026 to 2030, which calls for a stronger “struggle against sanctions”. The listing is a countermeasure delivered through export control law.

The reach clause

Both announcements bar anyone abroad from supplying the listed firms with Chinese-origin dual-use items. [424, 425] A German distributor that resells Chinese gallium to Hensoldt would be in breach of Chinese law. Whether China can detect or punish that is a separate matter, but the clause gives it grounds to cut off the distributor in turn. The United States built its Entity List on the same idea.

Who was chosen

The July list is not only arms makers. It includes a research laboratory, a university, a wafer maker, a detector maker and a laser maker. [424] Several work with the compound semiconductors that depend on Chinese gallium, germanium and indium. That choice puts pressure where China’s mineral controls already bite, on the part of Europe’s defence electronics that has no other source.

For European armies the listings turn a general risk into named cases. The section on Europe’s rearmament describes how much new production depends on imported electronics and materials. From 2026 some of the firms doing that production are barred from Chinese dual-use supply by name, and their suppliers are on notice. [424, 425] Europe’s sanctions on Chinese suppliers to Russia now carry a price in Europe’s own arms industry.

The list also shows how China’s tool differs from the American one. Washington lists Chinese firms to deny them technology they cannot make. Beijing lists Western firms to deny them materials they do not mine. The first works at the top of the chain and the second at the bottom.

Limits. Announcements No. 20 and No. 30 of 2026 were read as carried by the state news agency, with both lists in full; the ministry’s explanation of the July listing was read in a reproduction on a financial news site. No explanation of the April listing was found. What each listed entity makes is not stated in the announcements; the descriptions and the links to gallium, germanium and indium are from general knowledge and should be checked before being relied on. Whether any listed firm has lost supply, and whether any licence has been granted under the exception clause, is not known. Listings of American firms in 2026 were not researched. The European package was not read.

Japan, Korea, Australia, Taiwan

The Pacific allies are spending more and exporting more, but their joint supply-chain work has barely reached chips

9 trillion yenJapan’s record defence budget for fiscal 2026, about $58 billion [663]

$23 billionSouth Korea’s arms export contracts in 2025, preliminary industry figure [665]

95%share of Japan’s defence imports supplied by the United States, 2021 to 2025 [663]

21-foldrise in Taiwan’s drone exports in 2025, to NT$2.95 billion [668]

16members of the PIPIR defence-industry forum after March 2026 [666]

All four governments now treat arms production as industrial policy. Japan approved a record defence budget of more than 9 trillion yen ($58 billion) for the year from April 2026, the fourth year of a five-year push to 2% of national output. [663] South Korea’s arms export contracts approached $23 billion in 2025 on preliminary figures from its industry association. [665] Taiwan is putting NT$44.2 billion ($1.38 billion) over five years into a drone industry free of Chinese parts. [668] Australia’s main route into advanced military technology is the AUKUS partnership with Britain and the United States. [667]

The link to chips is direct but uneven. Korea is bringing mission computers, radars and guidance systems home while its new fighter still flies on American engines. [665] Taiwan names microprocessors and flight controllers as parts that must come from trusted suppliers. [669] The shared forum for this work is the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR), an American-led group of 16 states. [666] Its projects so far cover engine repair, rocket motors, and batteries and motors for small drones. [666] A review two years on does not mention chips or microelectronics. [666]

How each ally links its defence build-up to electronics, and where it remains exposed.

Ally and measure	What changed	Chip and electronics link	Exposure
Japan: budget	More than 9 trillion yen for fiscal 2026, with about 970 billion yen for long-range missiles. [663]	Toshiba is hiring about 500 people over three years and building test and production sites for defence work. [663]	buys from America The United States supplied about 95% of Japan’s defence imports in 2021 to 2025. [663]
Japan: export rules	On 21 April 2026 the cabinet removed the five categories that had limited exports to rescue, transport, warning, surveillance and mine-sweeping gear. [664]	Each sale is now judged on its merits by ministers and officials. [664]	door now open A ban on sales to countries in conflict stays, with exceptions for national security. [664]
Japan: clearance law	The Act on the Protection and Utilization of Critical Economic Security Information was enacted on 10 May 2024. [670]	It sets up security vetting for people who handle designated information, including staff of private companies. [670]	new and untested No public source was found tying it to a named chip project.
South Korea: exports	Export contracts rose from $17 billion in 2022 to nearly $23 billion in 2025; four firms hold a backlog above $72 billion. [665]	Industry is localising mission computers, radars and guidance systems, summed up as ‘own the brain, share the body’. [665]	American engines The KF-21 fighter uses American engines. [665]
Australia: AUKUS second pillar	The first ‘signature project’, payloads for uncrewed undersea vehicles, was named in May 2026, with deliveries from 2027. [667]	The pillar spans hypersonics, undersea systems, quantum, cyber, electronic warfare and SI. [667]	promise, not delivery CSIS says it is still unclear what will be fielded, when and at what scale. [667]
Taiwan: drones	Output reached NT$12.9 billion in 2025, 2.5 times the 2024 figure. [668] The goal is a supply chain without Chinese parts by 2027. [668]	The vice-president listed microprocessors, flight controllers, optical payloads and batteries as parts that must be trusted. [669]	Chinese parts remain A Taiwan institute says Chinese suppliers still matter in batteries, radio modules, flight control, navigation and software. [669]
Joint: PIPIR	A second full meeting on 18 March 2026 admitted Thailand and Britain. [666]	Four statements of intent cover batteries and motors for small drones. [666]	chips not covered The review names missile export rules and secrecy over supply-chain data as barriers. [666]

Japan opens its arms trade

The April 2026 change replaces a list of permitted categories with a case-by-case test. [664] Reuters reported that one of the first deals could be used warships for the Philippines. [664] Within PIPIR, Japan chairs a new rocket-motor initiative with the United States, and a plant in Tokyo owned by the firm IHI is due for completion in 2028. [666] A governing-party official said Japan wants Asian defence supply chains that do not depend on America. [663]

Korea sells, then localises

Korea’s industry association says the country is now the second-largest arms supplier to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), after the United States. [665] Sales include a $3.2 billion air-defence contract with Saudi Arabia. [665] The stated aim is control of integration and software, not full self-sufficiency. [665] Korea is also to host the first repair hub outside America for one type of helicopter engine. [666]

Taiwan’s rule is a target

Taiwan calls a supply chain without mainland Chinese components ‘non-red’. [668] The general budget holds more than NT$7.2 billion for it, and a January 2026 statement with the United States lists non-red drone cooperation. [668] Over 90% of Taiwan’s drone exports go to the Czech Republic, Poland and the United States. [668] China’s own revised export controls on drones and their parts take effect on 18 November 2026. [669]

The allies have moved faster on rules and budgets than on shared production. Japan has lifted its export limits, Korea has built an order book above $72 billion, and Taiwan has multiplied its drone exports. [664, 665, 668] The joint work is narrower. PIPIR’s named projects are repair hubs, rocket motors and small-drone batteries, and its reviewers say members hesitate to share data on their own supply-chain weak points. [666] AUKUS has reformed American export-licence rules among its three members but has one signature project after five years. [667]

For the chip contest this leaves a gap. The parts most often named as exposed are electronic: flight controllers, navigation units and radio modules in Taiwan’s drones, and radars and guidance systems in Korea’s exports. [665, 669] No joint allied project in the sources reviewed here covers defence chips directly. [666, 667] Australia appears in a different role, as a possible source of gallium, with one project in Western Australia put at up to 40 tonnes a year. [662]

Limits. Korea’s export figures are preliminary contract values from an interview with the chairman of the Korean Defense Industry Association; a search summary of a Hankyoreh report on Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data put Korea fourth among arms exporters in 2025 with a 6.0% share, which measures deliveries and is not comparable. On Korea’s dependence on American parts and licences the only cited fact is the KF-21 engine; a Wikipedia page, not cited, says Washington refused four technologies including the radar and delayed approval to fit American missiles. Japan’s clearance law is cited only for its enactment; that it took effect in May 2025 is general knowledge, and no source was found on defence use of Rapidus or other Japanese chip projects. Reports that Japan limits exports to 17 partner countries were seen only in a search summary. No formal Taiwanese legal ban on Chinese parts was found, only stated policy and targets, and deadlines conflict (end of 2026 in one summary, 2027 in the Taipei Times). Nothing was found on Taiwan’s missile output. PIPIR’s member list is an image; Taiwan’s membership could not be confirmed. Monthly drone capacity figures (15,000 now, 100,000 by 2030) and a plan to buy about 200,000 drones by 2033 were read in press reports not cited here.

China · dual-use controls on Japan, 2026

In 2026 China barred all dual-use exports that could add to Japan’s military strength, named twenty defence suppliers, and created a “watch list” that has put forty more Japanese firms and institutes under case-by-case review

6 Jan 2026Date of the ban on dual-use exports that help raise Japan’s military strength

20Japanese entities on the control list from 24 February 2026

40Entities on the two watch lists of 24 February and 29 June 2026

10.7tn yenJapan’s 2024 imports of dual-use items from China, about 42% of its imports from China, as estimated by a Japanese economist quoted in the Chinese press

70%+China’s share of Japan’s rare-earth imports in 2024, from the same report

No limitTime allowed for reviewing a licence for a watch-listed buyer. The normal statutory period does not apply

On 6 January 2026 China’s commerce ministry issued its first announcement of the year. It bans the export of all dual-use items to Japanese military users, for military use, “and for any other end user or end use that helps to raise Japan’s military strength”. Anyone in any country who passes Chinese-origin items to Japan in breach of the rule is liable. [291] The spokesperson gave the reason: remarks by Japan’s leader on Taiwan that “hinted at the possibility of armed intervention in the Taiwan Strait”. [291]

On 24 February two more announcements named names. No. 11 put twenty entities “taking part in raising Japan’s military strength” on the control list, which bars all dual-use supply: five Mitsubishi Heavy Industries companies, six of IHI, units of Kawasaki, NEC and Fujitsu, the shipbuilder Japan Marine United, the National Defense Academy and the space agency. [292] No. 12 used a new instrument, a “watch list”, for twenty entities whose end users and end uses “cannot be verified”. [293] A second watch list of twenty followed on 29 June. [294]

The watch list is the more interesting device. It does not ban. It removes general licences and registration, requires a risk assessment and a written undertaking with every application, lifts the legal time limit on review, and offers a way off the list for those who cooperate with verification. [293]

China’s 2026 dual-use measures on Japan, from the ministry’s announcements. Descriptions of what the named entities do are this site’s, from general knowledge.

Measure	Who is covered	Effect	Chip and materials link
Announcement No. 1, 6 January	Japanese military users, military uses, and any end use that helps raise Japan’s military strength. [291]	Export banned. Third parties in any country liable for passing items on. [291]	open-ended The test is the use, and China decides what helps.
No. 11, control list, 24 February	Mitsubishi Heavy Industries units for ships, aero engines and marine machinery. IHI units for aerospace and engines. Kawasaki’s aerospace company. NEC’s sensor and aerospace units. Fujitsu’s defence unit. Japan Marine United. [292]	All dual-use exports banned. Foreign persons barred from supplying Chinese-origin items. [292]	defence primes Radar, engines and ships depend on gallium, rare earths and magnets.
No. 11, institutions	National Defense Academy of Japan and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. [292]	Same. [292]	state bodies A civil space agency treated as military.
No. 12, watch list, 24 February	Subaru, ENEOS, Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Hino Motors, Mitsubishi Materials, TDK, Tokin, Nitto Denko, the Institute of Science Tokyo and others. [293]	Individual licences only, with a risk assessment and a written undertaking. No time limit on review. Military-related use refused. [293]	components and materials TDK and Tokin make electronic components and magnets. Nitto Denko and Mitsubishi Materials supply chipmaking.
Watch list, 29 June	Mitsui E&S, the drone makers Terra Drone and ACSL, two nuclear fuel companies, units of Fujitsu, Hitachi and Komatsu, and five companies of the OKI group including its circuit-board maker. [294]	Same as No. 12. [294]	drones and electronics Japan’s two best-known drone makers.
Leaving the list	Any watch-listed entity that cooperates with verification under the dual-use regulation. [293]	May apply for removal. The ministry may remove it after checking. [293]	a door left open The price is inspection by China.

China’s own unverified list

The watch list is a close copy of an American tool. The United States keeps an Unverified List of foreign firms whose end use it has been unable to check, withdraws licence exceptions from them, and removes them if they allow a check. China’s 2024 dual-use regulation created the same power, and Japan is its first large use. The condition for leaving is cooperation with Chinese verification of how the goods were used. [293] For a Japanese materials firm, that means letting a Chinese ministry confirm that none of its supply reaches the defence ministry.

Who is on it

A Chinese law firm’s note observes that the watch-listed entities are leading civilian companies and research institutions in cars, electronics, materials, chemicals and machinery, chosen for the risk that civilian products cross into military use, and that a university was listed for research in materials, semiconductors and small drones. [295] The lists therefore reach well beyond arms makers into the suppliers of Japan’s chip industry. The note warns Chinese exporters that any Japanese customer, including one with no visible defence link, now needs screening. [295]

Leverage held in reserve

The January ban does not name materials. Chinese reporting at the time cited a source saying the government was considering tighter licence review for the medium and heavy rare earths controlled since April 2025, and quoted Japanese economists on the cost: one estimated that a three-month halt in rare-earth supply would cost Japan 660 billion yen. [296] The ministry’s spokesperson said civilian trade would not be affected. [296] The measure works as much by what it leaves unsaid as by what it bans.

Japan is one of the three governments that control the tools China needs most, and in 2026 it became the first to face a full Chinese version of the instruments it helped apply to China: a use-based ban, an entity list and an unverified list. [291, 292, 293] Sixty Japanese companies and institutions were named in six months. [292, 293, 294] The trigger was a statement about Taiwan, and the instrument was export control law.

That is the pattern across the 2026 listings on this page. Europe was listed in answer to sanctions over Russia, the United States in answer to a list of Chinese military companies, Japan in answer to a remark on Taiwan. In each case the legal basis was non-proliferation and national security, and the selection reached past arms makers to the suppliers of materials, components and research.

Limits. Announcements No. 11 and No. 12 of 2026 were read in full, with their lists, on the commerce ministry’s site; Announcement No. 1 and the spokesperson’s explanation in a Chinese financial news service’s reproduction; the June 2026 watch list in a Chinese news outlet’s reproduction, which does not give its number. Whether further Japanese lists were issued after June 2026, and whether any entity has been removed, was not checked. What each named entity makes is not in the announcements; those descriptions, and the comparison with the American Unverified List, are from general knowledge. The trade and cost estimates are those of Japanese economists as quoted in one Chinese commentary and were not checked. The Japanese government’s response is described only as that commentary reports it. No licensing figures were found.

How the PLA gets its chips

China’s army still asks for American chips by name, and the controls have slowed it without shutting it out

3,800+Chinese military and government procurement records reviewed by WireScreen, report of 1 June 2026. [737]

374Companies in the procurement network WireScreen mapped, from army units to shell firms, June 2026. [737]

16Export-controlled Nvidia H100 chips requested by one PLA laboratory in May 2025. [736]

65Entities added to the Pentagon’s list of Chinese military companies on 8 June 2026. [738]

25%Share of sales revenue the American government takes on Nvidia H200 chips licensed for China from December 2025. [739]

The best evidence is the army’s own paperwork. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) publishes requests for proposals, and researchers have read thousands of them. The Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University found hundreds of requests from 2023 to 2026 for advanced American-designed SI hardware, some for chips that are export-controlled. [736] In May 2025 a PLA research laboratory asked for sixteen Nvidia H100 processors to run the Chinese models DeepSeek and Qwen for electromagnetic and infrared modelling. [736] A separate study by the data firm WireScreen, published on 1 June 2026, reviewed more than 3,800 military and government procurement records and mapped 374 companies involved in the trade. [737]

The records show a route, not a volume. Buyers relied more and more on intermediaries, shell firms and companies that rent computing power, and some notices hid American accelerators inside server systems described as domestic. [737] The CSET authors state that public procurement documents cannot show the scale of the army’s use of American chips. [736] The same documents show the other half of the policy: many of them require domestic technology, and Beijing has issued guidance to limit the use of foreign chips by Chinese SI laboratories. [736] The army is buying American chips where it can and building a home-made supply for the day it cannot.

What the open record shows about the Chinese military’s access to chips, and how well the American controls held in each case.

Evidence	What it shows	How the controls held
PLA laboratory request, May 2025	Sixteen Nvidia H100 chips, which are export-controlled, to run DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen. [736]	asked for by name The buyer expected a supplier to deliver a banned chip.
PLA server request, July 2025	A high-performance server with Nvidia H20 chips for a demonstration and verification system. [736]	weaker chip The H20 was a reduced model designed for the Chinese market.
Rented computing, July 2024	10 million core hours on a supercomputer cluster, with the supplier required to offer Nvidia V100 or A100 chips. [736]	rental gap Renting computing time avoids buying the chip at all.
WireScreen records, June 2026	Nvidia A100, H100, A800 and H800 chips kept appearing in PLA procurement after successive rounds of restrictions. [737]	access continued Controls caused friction and shortages but did not stop access. [737]
Disguised systems	Records often placed American accelerators inside server systems labelled as domestic. [737]	hard to trace The paperwork hides the origin of the chip.
Domestic requirement	Many PLA procurement documents require domestic technology. [736]	pushes self-supply The controls speed the move to Chinese chips.
Licensed H200 sales	Washington authorised Nvidia H200 sales to Chinese firms in December 2025. The export chief told Congress on 14 July 2026 that a small quantity had shipped. [739]	control relaxed Critics say civilian buyers can pass the benefit to the military. [739]
Pentagon list, June 2026	65 entities added, among them Alibaba, Baidu, BYD and the robot maker Unitree. The memory chip makers CXMT and YMTC stay listed. [738]	names, not a ban The list bars Pentagon contracts. It does not block chip sales.

Military-civil fusion in practice

Military-civil fusion is Beijing’s policy of drawing civilian firms and research into defence work. American law now uses the term: a company can be listed by the Pentagon as a military-civil fusion contributor to China’s defence industrial base. [738] The procurement files show what that means. PLA tenders ask for the commercial model DeepSeek in a command system for groups of unmanned vehicles, a cyber range and propaganda tools. [736]

What the army wants SI for

CSET’s February 2026 study read thousands of PLA requests from January 2023 to December 2024. [740] They seek decision support for targeting, tools to find American naval vessels on and under the sea, means to counter space systems, and deepfake generation for psychological warfare. [740] Most budgets were small and timelines short, often three to six months, which points to prototypes more than fielded systems. [740]

What officials concede

Jeffrey Kessler, who heads the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), told Congress on 14 July 2026 that there were very few shipments of H200 chips compared with the licences granted, and that some orders were refused after a security screening. [739] He did not rule out further sales. [739] The department admitted in May 2026 that suspending an earlier rule had let Chinese firms buy high-end SI components without a licence for over a year. [739]

The controls have denied China’s army scale and certainty, not access. Named American chips still appear in its tenders years after the first restrictions, but in lots of tens, bought through middlemen, with no guarantee of delivery. [736, 737] Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang argues the PLA simply cannot rely on American chips, and the CSET authors dispute that only in part. [736] The cost of the controls is that they give the army a reason to require domestic hardware, which many of its tenders now do. [736]

The listing system is wider than it is deep. The Pentagon list names companies and, from 30 June 2026, bars the Defense Department from contracting with them, with a ban on their products following on 30 June 2027. [738] It does not stop a listed firm such as Alibaba from buying licensed H200 chips. [739] The open record cannot settle how much computing power the PLA holds. It does show that the army tests each gap in the rules soon after it opens. [736, 737]

Limits. The WireScreen report sits behind an access request; only its public summary page was read, and it gives no date range. The ETO article gives no exact count of documents. A Reuters review of October 2025 (35 patent filings by military-linked universities citing Nvidia A100 chips, 15 citing Huawei Ascend chips, and an analyst’s view that the PLA is shifting to Huawei hardware) was seen only in search summaries and is not cited; no opened source named a specific home-made chip inside a specific Chinese weapon, and a Chinese-language search for military chip localisation rates returned only civilian market figures. CSET’s 2022 study Silicon Twist (97 chips in PLA purchase records, nearly all American-designed, bought through seven unlisted intermediaries) was confirmed in a news report but left out for space. A June 2025 statement by the same official that Huawei could make at most 200,000 SI chips in 2025 was confirmed in a trade outlet but is not cited. The Pentagon list’s reported total of 188 entries and the January 2025 addition of CXMT were seen only in search summaries. The description of military-civil fusion as policy is general knowledge; only the statutory term is sourced. No search for Commerce Department Entity List actions in 2025-2026 could be completed, so the Entity List is not covered. The FDD brief is an advocacy think-tank reading of the testimony, not a transcript. The description of the H20 as a reduced model for China is general knowledge.

Blockade, quarantine, war

A blockade of Taiwan stops the fabs through the power grid long before any shot reaches them

$10.6tnFirst-year cost to the world of a war over Taiwan, 9.6% of world GDP. Bloomberg Economics, February 2026. [727]

5.3%Fall in world GDP from a blockade without invasion, same model, February 2026. [727]

62%Taiwan’s share of the world’s most advanced logic chips, as used in the February 2026 model. [727]

10 daysTime for Taiwan’s natural gas to run out in most CSIS blockade games, July 2025. [729]

20%Electricity output against the pre-blockade level in the harsh CSIS cases, the point where all manufacturing stops. [728]

30%Share of TSMC’s 2-nanometre and more advanced capacity planned for Arizona once the site is complete, stated October 2025. [733]

The published war games agree on one point. Taiwan’s chip plants depend on imported fuel, and fuel is the first thing a blockade cuts. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington research institute, published the results of its blockade war games on 31 July 2025. [729] It called energy the weakest element in Taiwan’s resilience. [728] In most of its cases the island’s natural gas was gone within 10 days, and oil and coal ran out in 7 to 20 weeks without resupply. [729] In the harsh cases electricity fell to 20 percent of the level before the blockade, and at that level all manufacturing stops, chips included. [728]

The cost reaches every economy. Bloomberg Economics updated its model in February 2026 and put a war that draws in the United States at about 10.6 trillion dollars in the first year, which is 9.6 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP, the value of everything produced). [727] A blockade without invasion cuts world GDP by 5.3 percent. [727] The reason is concentration: Taiwan makes 62 percent of the most advanced logic chips, and industries that use chips produce almost 6 trillion dollars of value a year. [727] China’s own economy shrinks by 8.9 percent in the blockade case and 11 percent in the war case. [727]

What published war games, economic models and company statements say about each link between a Taiwan crisis and chip supply.

Link	What the source found	What it means for chips
Natural gas	Gone within 10 days in most CSIS cases, July 2025. [729]	first to fail Gas-fired power drops out in the second week.
Oil and coal	Run out in 7 to 20 weeks without resupply, depending on how strict the blockade is. [729]	weeks of cover Coal stocks set how long the grid can be rationed.
Electricity	Total output might fall to 20 percent of the pre-blockade level. In one case generation met 24 percent of demand. [728]	fabs stop At 20 percent all manufacturing ceases, including chips. [728]
Relief by air	An American airlift would need more than 800 aircraft a day and would bring only bare necessities. [729]	no fuel by air Airlift cannot carry the fuel a chip industry burns.
Convoys by sea	In the worst CSIS case the United States and Taiwan lost 33 surface warships, two aircraft carriers among them, and 153 merchant ships. [728]	very costly Breaking the blockade by force is possible but costly.
Lithography machines	Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines stop working quickly without spare parts from the Dutch maker ASML, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg in May 2024. [730]	deters seizure A captured fab cannot be kept running by the captor.
Advanced electronics	A blockade cuts output of advanced electronics such as smartphones by 60 percent. [727]	hit first The products built on the newest chips stop first.
Cars and home electronics	Output in sectors using older chips falls 30 percent in a blockade. About 18 percent of carmakers’ chip needs are met from Taiwan. [727]	hit second Older chips have other sources, so the fall is smaller.
Capacity abroad	About 30 percent of TSMC’s 2-nanometre and more advanced capacity is planned for Arizona when the site is complete. [733]	partial cover Most of the newest capacity stays on the island.

The shield and its critics

The silicon shield is the idea that the world needs Taiwan’s chips too much to let the island fall. A June 2026 essay in War on the Rocks argues the protection comes from somewhere else: no one, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) included, can make leading chips alone, so an invader would hold fabs without Dutch machines, Japanese chemicals or American design software. [731] The authors add that a blockade or grey-zone pressure could bypass this deterrent. [731]

Machines that can be switched off

Bloomberg reported in May 2024, citing unnamed people, that ASML and TSMC have ways to disable EUV machines remotely, and that ASML told Dutch officials it could do so. [730] ASML, TSMC and the Dutch trade ministry declined to comment. [730] TSMC’s then chairman Mark Liu said in September 2023 that a military invasion would render the TSMC factory non-operable. [730] No company has confirmed the mechanism on the record.

What Arizona changes

Washington wants the capacity moved. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a 2025 television interview that it was vital for Taiwan to have America produce 50 percent of the chips America needs. [732] Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun answered on 1 October 2025 that Taiwan had never committed to a 50-50 split and would not agree to one. [732] TSMC’s plants in Japan and Germany make less advanced chips and do not change the count at the leading edge.

China is rehearsing the blockade, not only the landing. The exercise Justice Mission 2025 ran from 29 to 31 December 2025, with 210 aircraft sorties, 48 naval vessels and 27 long-range rockets fired on 30 December. [734] Its training list included blockades of key ports and areas. [734] The April 2025 exercise, Strait Thunder-2025A, lasted two days with 135 sorties and 38 vessels. [734] Taiwan’s defence ministry reported in September 2026 that recent drills focus more and more on joint blockade and control of the island’s air and sea routes, while a full amphibious assault is still beyond the army’s means. [735]

The chip industry raises the price of a war for everyone, China included, but it does not protect the island from a blockade. The fabs fail through fuel and spare parts within weeks, so they cannot be held hostage or captured in working order. [728, 730] Moving 30 percent of the newest capacity to Arizona softens the shock for American buyers and leaves the rest of the world exposed. [733] Bloomberg’s analysts rate a blockade as low in probability and continued tension as the most likely path. [727]

Limits. The CSIS report was opened only at its summary page (csis.org), which confirms 26 games and the authors but is not in the reference list; the fuel and electricity figures come from Defense News and Taiwan News coverage of it, and a Japanese summary seen only in search results gives slightly different coal figures. The Bloomberg model was read in the Insurance Journal reprint, not on Bloomberg’s own page. The TSMC 30 percent statement and its October 2025 date were seen only in search summaries of Tom’s Hardware and other outlets; the page itself did not open. The sentence on TSMC’s plants in Japan and Germany is general knowledge supported only by search summaries and carries no citation. No opened source gave a figure for how many days a fab can run without imported process gases or parts; only the unnamed-source statement on EUV spare parts was found. What the April 2025 exercise rehearsed (reported as joint blockade and area control) was seen only in search summaries, as was a think-tank reading that the December 2025 drills signalled cutting energy imports. Sources disagree on the number of December zones: seven announced, with Taiwan reporting an eighth. The remote-disable report rests on unnamed people and has not been confirmed by the companies. Bloomberg’s 2024 model gave a slightly different war figure (about 10 percent of world GDP).

China · the stated position on military SI

Beijing’s papers on military SI ask for human control and no pursuit of absolute advantage, and object to technology barriers, without backing a ban

14 Dec 2021Date of China’s position paper on regulating military applications of SI

8Headings in the 2021 paper, from strategic security to international cooperation

5Principles in China’s later submission to the United Nations: prudence, people-centred, beneficial use, agile governance, multilateralism

0Calls for a ban, or for a binding treaty, in either paper as read

2019Year China’s defence white paper said intelligent warfare was on the horizon

79/239General Assembly resolution of 2024 under which China filed its second paper

China has stated its position on the military use of SI in two foreign ministry papers. The first, a position paper on regulating military applications dated 14 December 2021, has eight headings: strategic security, military policy, law and ethics, technical safety, research and operation, risk management, rule-making and international cooperation. [395] It says states, major powers above all, should develop and use the technology prudently and should not seek absolute military advantage. [395] It says weapon systems should always remain under human control, and that humans should be able to halt them at any time. [395]

The second paper is China’s submission under a United Nations General Assembly resolution of 2024 on the opportunities and challenges of military SI. It restates the position as five principles: prudence and responsibility, a people-centred approach, beneficial use, agile governance and multilateralism. [396] Neither paper proposes a prohibition, and the second takes no position on a legally binding instrument. [396] The army’s own view of the stakes is in the 2019 defence white paper: intelligent warfare is on the horizon. [397]

What China’s 2021 position paper says under each of its eight headings, and what follows for chips. The last column is this site’s reading.

Heading	What the Chinese text says	Bearing on chip rules
Strategic security	Develop and use the technology prudently. Do not seek absolute military advantage. Avoid misjudgment and escalation. [395]	aimed at the United States The phrase answers the stated American aim of holding as large a lead as possible.
Military policy	Military SI should not become a tool for starting wars or seeking hegemony, or for harming other states’ sovereignty and territorial security. [395]	no test proposed
Law and ethics	New weapons and methods must comply with international humanitarian law. SI for good. Avoid misuse. [395]	existing law, not new law
Technical safety	Improve safety, reliability and controllability. Keep weapon systems under human control at all times, with the ability to stop them. Limit the military use of data. [395]	the core commitment A requirement on design, which is a requirement on the processor and its software.
Research and operation	Self-restraint in research. Human-machine interaction through a weapon’s whole life. Humans are the final responsible party. Train operators. [395]	accountability stays with people
Risk management	Manage by grade and category. Avoid immature technology that may have serious negative consequences. Reduce the risk of proliferation. [395]	accepts the idea of non-proliferation The opening for controls on military SI hardware.
Rule-making	Multilateral, open and inclusive. A universal international mechanism and a framework with broad consensus. [395]	rules by consensus Which gives every large power a veto.
International cooperation	Developed countries should help developing ones. Avoid drawing lines by ideology and stretching the concept of national security. Remove artificially created technology barriers. [395]	the objection to export controls The paper does not name them, but this is where they are meant.

Control, not prohibition

The Chinese papers put their weight on human control and responsibility. Weapons must stay under human control, humans must be able to stop them, and a human is always the party held to account. [395, 396] That is a rule about how a system is built and used. It is not a ban on any class of weapon, and the later paper is silent on whether a binding instrument should be negotiated. [396] It is a position a state can hold while building autonomous systems.

The link to chip controls is made by Beijing

The 2021 paper ends its list with cooperation, and under it objects to stretching the idea of national security and to artificially created technology barriers. [395] The words export control do not appear. The target is plain enough: the paper was published a year after the first American restrictions on SMIC and argues that every state has a right to the technology’s development and peaceful use. [395] For Beijing, rules on military SI and rules on chips are one negotiation.

What the army says to itself

The defence white paper of July 2019 is plainer than the diplomatic texts. It says that under a new round of technological and industrial change, SI, quantum information, big data, cloud computing and the internet of things are being applied to the military field at a faster pace, and that intelligent warfare is on the horizon. [397] It also admits the army has not finished mechanising. [397] The diplomacy asks for restraint. The planning assumes a race.

China’s stated position sits between the two camps in the treaty talks described next. It shares the language of the states that want limits: human control, humanitarian law, no immature systems. [395] It shares the conduct of the states that build these weapons: no ban, rules only by consensus. [395, 396] It adds one demand the others do not make, which is that restraint on weapons be traded for an end to technology barriers.

That demand is what ties this part of the page to the first. A power denied advanced chips on military grounds has little reason to accept limits on what it does with the chips it has, and a power that fears military SI has little reason to sell them. The papers show Beijing has understood the link since 2021. No forum yet exists where the two could be discussed together.

Limits. The 2021 position paper was read on the foreign ministry’s site and the later submission on the ministry’s arms control pages; the second page carries no date, and its place and date of submission are taken from its title and the resolution it cites. The defence white paper was read only in its preface and first chapter, on a Chinese news site’s partial reproduction, so its defence spending figures and its passages on military modernisation are not used. Translations are this site’s. The readings in the last column of the table, the remark on SMIC’s listing and the link drawn between the papers and export controls are this site’s; the papers themselves speak of technology barriers, not export controls. China’s statements in the Geneva expert group, and any paper later than these, were not read.

China · position on lethal autonomous weapons, 2024 and 2025

China says it will negotiate a binding instrument on lethal autonomous weapons, but only in Geneva, only after a definition is agreed, and only for a class it calls “unacceptable”

4Points in China’s 2024 paper: the forum, the definition, the law, and classification

5Features China has proposed as marking an “unacceptable” system, which the 2024 paper mentions but does not list

11Guiding principles agreed by the Geneva expert group, which the paper cites as its achievement

2026Year of the convention’s seventh review conference, 45 years after it opened for signature

The earlier section on China and military SI reads two foreign ministry papers and finds no proposal for a ban. Two further documents, on autonomous weapons specifically, show the position is more precise than that. In May 2024 China sent the United Nations Secretary-General a paper on lethal autonomous weapons systems with four points. [280] In October 2025 its delegation told the General Assembly’s First Committee that China “supports negotiating a legally binding international instrument when conditions are ripe”. [281]

The conditions are the substance. First, the forum must be the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which decides by consensus. The 2024 paper warns that moving the subject elsewhere would be “starting a separate kitchen” and would waste what has been agreed. [280] Second, a definition must come before any rule. Third, the word “lethal” must stay. China says the discussion should not drift from lethal autonomous weapons to autonomous weapons in general. [280]

Fourth, the weapons should be sorted. The paper proposes to classify them as “acceptable” and “unacceptable”, to ban the second kind by a legal instrument modelled on the protocol on blinding laser weapons, and to apply risk-reduction measures to the first. [280]

China’s stated position on lethal autonomous weapons, from its 2024 paper to the Secretary-General, its October 2025 statement and its November 2025 working paper.

Question	China’s position	Source	What it means in practice
Where to negotiate	Only in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Opposes taking the subject to another forum. [280, 281]	2024 paper, 2025 statement	consensus forum Every state, China included, holds a veto there.
A binding instrument	Supported “when conditions are ripe”. [281]	2025 statement	conditional No date and no draft.
What comes first	Agreement on definition, technical features and scope. [280, 281]	Both	sequence No rule until the definition is settled.
Scope	Lethal systems only. Autonomy in general should not be the subject. [280]	2024 paper	narrow Leaves out non-lethal and supporting uses of autonomy.
Is existing law enough	The Geneva Conventions apply in full, but whether they are adequate is “very uncertain”, for example whether a system can distinguish targets and judge proportion. [280]	2024 paper	open A reason for new rules that most large military powers do not accept.
A general ban	Opposed. Broad prohibitions or limits “may harm legitimate defence capability” and the right to peaceful use of the technology. [280]	2024 paper	no Only the “unacceptable” class would be banned.
Military SI in general	States should “exercise restraint” in developing SI weapon systems and keep their use within humanitarian law. [281]	2025 statement	declaratory
Advantage	Opposes using these weapons to seek “absolute military advantage and hegemony”. [280]	2024 paper	aimed at the United States
Next step	Supports the expert group’s work and the preparation of the 2026 review conference. [282]	2025 working paper	process

A ban built to be narrow

China’s model is the 1995 protocol on blinding lasers, which prohibits one defined weapon and leaves the rest of laser technology alone. [280] Applied here, it would prohibit a class defined by features China has put forward and regulate nothing else. The paper says China once proposed five features of an “unacceptable” system. [280] As outside analysts have read those features, they describe a weapon that is lethal, fully autonomous, impossible to stop, indiscriminate and able to evolve by learning. Few weapons anyone plans to build would meet all five.

The definition as a brake

Putting the definition first is a position on timing as much as on substance. The expert group has discussed definitions since 2017 without agreeing one. [280] A rule that waits for a definition, in a forum that needs consensus, waits for every state with a programme. China can therefore support a treaty in principle while its own work continues. The five-year plan for 2026 to 2030 calls for faster building of “unmanned and intelligent combat forces”. [398]

Where chips come in

Nothing in these papers mentions hardware. That is the point of contact with the rest of this page. The talks address how a weapon is used. The controls address what it is built from. A state can accept limits on use in Geneva while racing on the components, and a state can restrict components without accepting any limit on use. China’s October 2026 drone rules control swarm control and autonomous navigation technology for export on security grounds, in the same year it argues in Geneva that autonomy as such should not be the subject. [427, 280]

This corrects a common shorthand. China is not against a treaty and is not for a ban. It is for a narrow prohibition, negotiated by consensus, after a definition, covering a class of weapon it has helped to define. Each condition is reasonable alone. Together they describe an agreement that would not constrain the systems now being built.

The convention’s seventh review conference falls in 2026, and China’s working paper says it will support the preparations. [282] That meeting is where the expert group’s mandate is renewed or changed, and where the choice between Geneva and the General Assembly, which China opposes, will be argued.

Limits. The 2024 paper and the 2025 statement were read in full on the foreign ministry’s site, and the 2025 working paper in the United Nations document library. The five features of an “unacceptable” system are not in any text read here; the description given is from general knowledge of how analysts have reported China’s 2018 position and should be checked. The statement that most large military powers consider existing law adequate, the date and content of the blinding laser protocol, and the outcome of the 2026 review conference, which was not researched, are likewise outside the texts read. No Chinese military document on autonomous weapons was found. Translations and readings are this site’s.

China · The army newspaper on intelligent warfare, 2025 and 2026

In its own newspaper the Chinese military calls computing power the “catalyst” of combat power and says today’s unmanned equipment is not very intelligent. By 2026 its writers were arguing for limits on what algorithms decide

4Army newspaper articles read for this section, May 2025 to June 2026

3Named drivers of combat power: algorithm, data, computing power

“Cheap, small, smart”The newspaper’s phrase for the unmanned forces that give an asymmetric edge

HundredsSize of drone swarm raids the newspaper says are “no longer rare”

3Stages it gives for the human role: in the loop, on the loop, out of the loop

4Things the 2026 article says algorithms cannot do

The Chinese military’s daily newspaper runs a regular theory page. Four articles from May 2025 to June 2026 show how officers and military academics are told to think about SI in war, and they are worth reading against the chip controls that are meant to limit it. [238, 239, 240, 241]

The first two set out the ambition. War is moving from “information” to “intelligence”, and the decisive form of control is no longer control of the air or of information but “control of intelligence”. Combat power once grew by addition of people and weapons, then by multiplication with information, and now by a power law with intelligence. In that scheme the algorithm is the “accelerator”, data the “multiplier” and computing power the “catalyst”. [239]

The same article contains a plain admission: “objectively, the degree of intelligence of unmanned equipment now used in the military field is generally not high, and most of it still cannot do without remote control by operators.” [239]

What four articles in the Chinese military’s newspaper say about SI in war, with this site’s reading.

Date	Argument	In the newspaper’s words	This site’s reading
27 May 2025	Unmanned systems change the kill chain on five counts: platform, scale, speed, system and decision. [238]	Unmanned forces that are “cheap, small and smart” form an asymmetric edge more easily than forces that are “high-end, large and complete”.	scale over quality A doctrine suited to a country with factories and limited top chips.
27 May 2025	Swarms spread the functions of a kill chain across many nodes. [238]	The chain becomes “de-noded” and “decentralised”, with one main path and several spares.	standard Close to American writing on the same subject.
27 May 2025	Decision passes from people to software. [238]	“Human in the loop” is upgraded to “algorithm in the loop”, moving to “human on the loop” and even “human out of the loop”.	the strong version Stated as a trend, not as policy.
30 Sep 2025	Computing power has moved from a minor to a necessary role. [239]	“Computing power is the catalyst of combat power.” It works through the algorithm.	why chips matter The link to export controls is direct, though not drawn.
30 Sep 2025	Humans keep the intent, machines the detail. [239]	“Machines, however excellent, must not escape human control.” Macro control, micro autonomy.	the balancing line
11 Jun 2026	Autonomy needs constraint. [240]	“Autonomy is not free decision without bounds.” The stronger the autonomy, the more the constraints must be strengthened.	a shift of tone A year on, the emphasis is on control.
17 Jun 2026	Stratagem governs technology. [241]	“The more intelligence develops, the more precious stratagem becomes.” Algorithms cannot answer “what the war is for”.	the corrective Written against “algorithm dominance” talk.
17 Jun 2026	Rules are part of the contest. [241]	Whoever joins the rule discussion earlier “holds the moral initiative and the legal advantage”. Use rules “to constrain an opponent’s misuse of technology”.	rules as a weapon Explains China’s activity in weapons talks.

What the doctrine needs from chips

None of the four articles mentions export controls or chip supply. The dependence is in the logic. The 2025 articles rest the whole scheme on large models, “large computing power”, cloud resources and a battlefield network with high bandwidth and low delay. [238, 239] A swarm of cheap drones needs little advanced silicon in each airframe, which mature Chinese processes can supply. The fusion of sensor data, the decision aids and the training of the models behind them are where leading-edge computing is used, and that is the part the American controls target. The doctrine of “cheap, small, smart” is, among other things, a way to put the weight of the force where China’s industry is strongest.

The 2026 correction

The June 2026 articles read as a response to enthusiasm. One lists what does not change: war turns on morale and popular support, which cannot be computed. An opponent thinks and creates surprises outside any preset model. Algorithms fall into a “decision blind zone” before events outside their data. And judgements of value “must be borne by a responsible subject”. [241] The other says a unit that leaves its mission intent can turn a local best choice into disorder for the whole system, and asks that autonomous action stay “trustworthy, controllable and explainable”. [240] The second of these was written about embodied intelligence, meaning robots.

This site’s reading

Two things follow. First, the newspaper’s own assessment in late 2025 was that fielded unmanned equipment was mostly remote-controlled. [239] The gap between the doctrine and the equipment is stated by the Chinese side, which is better evidence than an outside estimate. Second, the move from “human out of the loop” as a trend in May 2025 to “stratagem governs technology” in June 2026 is a move within one institution’s theory page in thirteen months. It may reflect experience with the systems, a political instruction, or only different authors. This site cannot tell which, and treats it as a signal to watch and not as a change of policy.

The last article’s point about rules connects this section to the diplomatic one before it. Chinese military writers describe early participation in rule-making as a way to gain “the power to define the rules” and to widen China’s own strategic room. [241] That is a candid description of why a state takes part in talks on autonomous weapons.

Limits. These are theory-page articles by named or unnamed military writers. They are discussion pieces, not doctrine documents, orders or procurement plans, and the newspaper publishes many such articles with differing emphasis. Four articles cannot show a trend with confidence. Two were read on the state news agency’s site and two on the site of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which reprinted them. The author’s unit is not given for any of them. Nothing here is evidence of what systems China has fielded.

China · A Peking University scholar on military SI, June 2026

A Peking University scholar says the military SI contest is worse than a security dilemma, because neither side is content with the present, and proposes a hotline with a deliberately small job

3Levels at which he assesses military SI: tactical, operational, strategic

3Risks he lists: compressed decision time, opaque algorithms and bad data, spiralling competition

2035Year by which China’s forces are to be basically modernised, as he cites the goal

5Items in his proposed minimum template for exchanging information on an incident

3Recommendations: a narrow channel, multilateral minimum rules, unofficial dialogue

2024Year the two leaders stated that humans must keep control of nuclear weapons

The same Tsinghua collection of June 2026 has a chapter on military uses of SI by Qi Haotian, a tenured associate professor at Peking University’s School of International Studies. It is the most detailed Chinese civilian statement this site has found of how the military contest looks from Beijing. [246]

He describes a contest in which each side fears falling behind and treats the other’s new deployment as pressure to match or exceed. Both governments say they do not want an arms race, he notes, but “in objective effect neither is willing to show weakness”. The two could “win the race and lose their security”. [246]

He then makes a sharper point. This is not a security dilemma, in which states that want only to keep what they have frighten each other. Its potential harm is greater, “because the starting point of both sides is not satisfaction with the status quo but the pursuit of change in their own favour through new technical possibilities”. [246]

Qi Haotian’s assessment of military SI at three levels and what he proposes, with this site’s reading.

Level	What SI does there	The risk he sees	This site’s reading
Tactical	Faster intelligence processing, more autonomous unmanned systems, quicker closing of the sensing and strike chain, better logistics and training. [246]	The most direct and fierce area of competition, but limited in reach, both in benefit and in loss of control.	matches the army newspaper The same list as in the section before this one.
Operational	Fusing intelligence from many sources and assisting commanders across services, regions and domains. [246]	A fast-running battlefield may exceed the commander’s grasp, or “induce” the commander, turning an incident into a confrontation. SI as a “risk amplifier”.	the candid part Says outright that speed can outrun control.
Strategic	Better detection and strike against an opponent’s deterrent forces. [246]	The stronger side is tempted to weaken the other’s second strike. The weaker side faces “use it or lose it”.	China’s own worry China is the side with the smaller arsenal.
Strategic decisions	SI woven through the human and machine loop at many points, not a single button. [246]	Biased or opaque systems, flawed data and forged material raise the chance of misjudgement.	a better picture than “human in the loop”
Proposal: a channel	A standing line whose task is kept narrow: to verify whether an anomaly linked to SI is real, local, degraded, disguised or still spreading. [246]	It should not try to settle blame in real time.	practical The most concrete idea in the collection.
Proposal: minimum rules	Support in the UN and among the five permanent members for principles such as limits on when certain systems may be used. [246]	He admits the starting point is low and the political resistance large.	modest by design

The template

The proposal for a channel comes with a specification, which is rare in this literature. When an incident linked to SI occurs, the two sides would exchange a minimum set of facts: the time window, the departments affected, the initial confidence in who is responsible, any signs of disguise, and the steps already taken to stop it spreading. The purpose is to prevent escalation caused by uncertainty, and he compares it to the hotline and agreements the United States and the Soviet Union built for nuclear weapons. [246] It asks neither side to reveal capability, only to describe an event.

A warning against his own conclusion

Having argued for cooperation, Qi qualifies it. “A rational recognition of shared risk is not enough to fully offset or remove the cycle of negative action that mutual suspicion shapes.” [246] He also notes that the two governments’ stated principles are not fundamentally opposed: the American defence directive on autonomy in weapons and China’s position paper both require human judgement and control. On his account the obstacle is that each expects to gain from moving first, and agreement on principle does not change that.

This site’s reading

Read beside the army newspaper articles in the previous section, this chapter fills in what they leave out. The newspaper writes about what SI will let China’s forces do. Qi writes about what it could do to the stability between two nuclear powers, and he says plainly that the weaker nuclear power has the most to fear from the other side’s sensing and targeting. That is a reason for China to want rules. It is also, on the logic of the chip controls, a reason for the United States to want to stay ahead in exactly the computing that makes such sensing possible. The chapter does not draw that connection, and it does not mention export controls at all.

His closing suggestion is that military SI be treated as a core subject of bilateral security talks, on a level with nuclear weapons and strategic stability. [246] In September 2026 the two leaders agreed to a dialogue on SI. Whether it covers military use is not stated in the Chinese sources this site has read.

Limits. This is a civilian scholar’s chapter in a collection written for unofficial dialogue with Americans, which shapes its tone. It is not a statement of military policy and gives no information on Chinese systems. The chapter dates the leaders’ statement on nuclear control to an Asia-Pacific summit in December 2024; the summit was in November, and this site has given only the year. The comparison with American motives for chip controls is this site’s.

Autonomous weapons and the law

Most states now want binding rules for weapons that pick their own targets, but the few that build them can still say no

Why chips come into this. Every weapon this section is about runs on semiconductors. They are the electronic brains behind navigation, targeting, communications and launch. A rule about what a machine may decide is a rule about what its chips are allowed to do, and a rule about who may buy chips decides who can build the machine at all. The table shows where the chips sit in the two cases at opposite ends of the range: a drone, built largely from commercial parts, and a nuclear missile in its silo, built from parts made for nothing else.

Where the chips sit in a drone and in a missile silo. Background from general knowledge, not separately sourced. The last column is this site’s reading.

System	Job	Chips that do it	What they do	Reach of chip rules
Drone	Flight control and navigation	Microcontrollers and inertial measurement chips	Read satellite positioning, gyroscopes and accelerometers to keep the aircraft stable and on course.	Ordinary commercial parts. Hard to restrict.
Drone	Autonomous targeting	Graphics processors and SI accelerators	Recognise objects, track moving targets and navigate when satellite signals are jammed.	The part chip controls aim at. See Edge SI.
Drone	Communications	Radio-frequency chips	Carry the encrypted two-way link: live video out, flight commands in.	Commercial parts. See Electronic warfare.
Drone	Sensor processing	Image signal processors	Turn raw data from optical, infrared and thermal cameras into usable pictures.	Commercial parts, often from phones and cameras.
Missile silo	Command and control	Secure microprocessors in the launch control centre	Verify launch codes, run diagnostics and talk to the military command network.	Made on trusted lines. See Trusted supply.
Missile	Inertial guidance	Radiation-hardened processors and sensors	Work out position, speed and path from internal sensors alone, because outside signals can be jammed or destroyed.	Specialised and tightly controlled. See Space and navigation.
Missile and warhead	Survival	Radiation-hardened chips	Withstand extreme heat, vibration, and the electromagnetic pulse and radiation of a nuclear detonation.	Few makers, old processes, already under the strictest controls.
Missile silo	Legacy hardware	Chips from the 1970s and 1980s	Still in service because simple designs are predictable, hard to attack through a network and naturally resistant to radiation. Newer secure chips are being introduced gradually.	No commercial market, so no trade to control.

Dual use

Many of the chips in a military drone are the standard commercial chips of everyday electronics, put to another purpose. That makes it hard for any government to track them or keep them out of a war zone. It is why the embargo on Russia leaks and why teardowns keep finding Western parts.

Export controls

States restrict advanced SI chips and the machines that make them to stop rivals building smarter autonomous weapons and the next generation of missile systems. That is the stated military purpose of the rules in the first parts of this page.

Two kinds of rule

Chip rules govern supply: who can obtain the hardware. The treaty talks below govern use: what a weapon may do once it has the hardware. Only the first kind is binding law today, and it reaches the large chips used for training and misses the small ones in the seeker.

So the two debates are one. If chip controls cannot keep a capable processor out of a cheap drone, the only remaining limit on autonomous weapons is a rule on their use. That is what the votes described next are about, and why the states with the most chips are the ones least willing to be bound.

164 to 6General Assembly vote on Resolution 80/57, 1 December 2025, with 7 abstentions [643]

166 to 3General Assembly vote on Resolution 79/62, 2 December 2024, with 15 abstentions [644]

152 to 4First General Assembly resolution on these weapons, December 2023, with 11 abstentions [644]

5 Sept 2026The Geneva expert group agrees its final report by consensus [645]

Over 70States that said by March 2026 they were ready to negotiate on the chair’s draft [648]

16 to 20 NovSeventh Review Conference of the CCW, Geneva, 2026 [646]

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly has voted on autonomous weapons three years in a row, and the majority keeps growing. The first resolution passed in December 2023 with 152 in favour, 4 against and 11 abstaining. [644] The second passed on 2 December 2024 by 166 to 3, with 15 abstentions. [644] The third, Resolution 80/57, passed on 1 December 2025 by 164 to 6, with 7 abstentions. [643] None of the three creates a rule: they ask states to keep talking. The 2025 text calls on the parties to a Geneva treaty to finish a set of draft elements “with a view to future negotiations” and sets no deadline. [643]

That Geneva treaty is the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which has 128 state parties. [645] Its Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on lethal autonomous weapons systems spent 2024 to 2026 drafting the elements. In the early hours of 5 September 2026 the group agreed its final report by consensus. [645, 646] The report goes to the Seventh Review Conference of the CCW in Geneva on 16 to 20 November 2026. [645, 646] The group was never asked to write a treaty. Its mandate was to formulate “a set of elements of an instrument, without prejudging its nature”. [646] Whether real negotiations start is the question now in front of the conference. [648]

Where the main actors stand on a binding treaty for autonomous weapons, as shown by their votes and statements in the sources.

Actor	Position on a binding treaty	Record
United States	opposes new standard Rejected the term “human control” at the March 2026 session and offered “good faith human judgement and care” instead. [648]	Voted for the 2023 and 2024 resolutions, then against Resolution 80/57 in 2025. [649, 643]
Russia	opposes a treaty Human Rights Watch names it among the military powers that have repeatedly blocked treaty proposals in the CCW. [644]	Voted against in 2024 and in 2025. [644, 643]
China	treaty, narrow scope Told the expert group in 2021 that it hoped states would negotiate a binding instrument on “fully autonomous lethal weapons systems”. [651]	Abstained in 2023, 2024 and 2025. [651, 644, 643]
India	has resisted Named by Human Rights Watch among the states that have blocked treaty proposals in the CCW. [644]	Abstained in 2024; not among the states voting against or abstaining in 2025. [644, 643]
Israel	voted no No statement of its reasons was found in the sources.	Abstained in 2024, voted against in 2025. [644, 643]
States ready to negotiate	want talks now Over 40 states backed negotiations on the chair’s draft at the start of the March 2026 session and over 70 by its end, including a group of African states. [648]	At least 70 of the 128 CCW parties, more than half. [645]
UN Secretary-General and Red Cross	binding rules now Joint call of 25 August 2026: “Negotiations must begin now to urgently adopt a legally binding instrument”. [647]	Renews a joint call first made in 2023. [647]
The Geneva text of 5 September 2026	elements, not law Elements of an instrument “without prejudging its nature”, described by legal scholars as “a repository of States’ views”. [645, 646]	Agreed by consensus; goes to the Review Conference. [645]

What the Geneva text says

The elements sit in paragraphs 25 to 44 of the report. They cover what counts as such a weapon, the existing laws of war, the human element, measures across a weapon’s life, and responsibility. [645] Control may be exercised “directly or indirectly, including through measures taken before and/or during” use. [646] One analyst notes the draft spoke of “context-appropriate human judgement and control”, a looser test than “meaningful human control”. [649]

What was cut to get consensus

Agreement came after late amendments, some meant to dilute the text. [645] A paragraph saying that weapons whose effects cannot be anticipated and limited are prohibited was deleted at the end. [646] Requirements that systems be predictable, explainable and traceable were also removed, as were some proposed limits on autonomous engagements. [646] The report keeps the idea that human responsibility cannot be transferred to machines. [646]

The call of 25 August 2026

UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), renewed their 2023 appeal. They wrote: “We are now dangerously close to crossing a moral red line: the autonomous targeting of humans by machines.” [647] They asked for a binding instrument with clear prohibitions and restrictions, and called the November Review Conference the clearest path available to states. [647]

Verification is the weakest part of every proposal. One legal analysis finds that the draft text prohibits non-compliant systems but sets up no independent body, no technical standard and no certification before deployment. [649] A missile silo can be counted. The function that matters here can be added to an ordinary drone with a small commercial computer: a drone forensics expert told The National that a Jetson module can be trained on images of a target, and that a Raspberry Pi “will get the job done” for some uses. [656] An inspector looking at the hardware would see parts sold for robots and cameras.

The same analysis therefore proposes that states declare software and training data, and allow challenge inspections of source code and operating logs. [649] Those are the author’s proposals, not agreed text. The politics point the other way. The General Assembly majority is large, but the states voting no in 2025 included the United States, Russia and Israel, and China abstained. [643] Campaign groups want the conference to open treaty negotiations. [644, 648] Any rule that results will bind only those who join it, and it will have to be checked in code, not in hardware.

Limits. The Review Conference of 16 to 20 November 2026 had not met when this was written, so its outcome is unknown. The full report of the expert group (document CCW/GGE.1/2026/3) was not opened; its content is taken from two Opinio Juris commentaries by participants and scholars, and the exact wording of its prohibitions was not seen. The phrase “context-appropriate human judgement and control” is reported for the draft rolling text, not confirmed for the final report. China’s stated position rests on a 2021 statement recorded by Automated Decision Research and may be out of date; no 2026 statement by China, Russia, India or Israel was found, and Russia’s and India’s positions are taken from votes and from a 2024 Human Rights Watch release. India’s vote in favour in 2025 is inferred from the UN press list of states voting against and abstaining; a tracker page says India voted in favour in 2025 and against in 2023, but it is not cited here. A separate First Committee vote on 6 November 2025 was reported by a campaign group as 156 to 5 with 8 abstentions and is not used in the text. That the CCW decides by consensus, so that one party can block a mandate, is general knowledge and was not found stated in a source. The argument that verification must look at software and data is this page’s reasoning from the cited material. The page’s existing figure of about 30 states calling for a ban and the figure of over 70 states ready to negotiate measure different things.

Seven misreadings

What is often said about chips and war, and what the evidence here supports

The claim	What the sections found	Verdict
An embargo can stop a country building weapons.	Russia was building about 3,000 Shahed-type drones a month by the end of 2025. What changed was the price: it pays China about 300% more than other buyers do. [705, 699]	No. It raises the cost
Advanced chips decide wars.	Iran, North Korea and the Houthis have no advanced chip industry and have not needed one. [704] The advanced chips matter one step back, in targeting and decision support, which is what Chinese army tenders ask for. [740]	Not on the battlefield, yet
A shortage of chips is what holds back missile production.	Rocket motors, seekers and qualified suppliers explain most of the delay. The chip risk is narrow: one custom part with one maker, as with the military GPS chip. [688, 687]	Mostly not
China’s army is cut off from American chips.	Its tenders still name them, years after the first rules, in lots of tens bought through middlemen. [736, 737]	Slowed, not shut out
The controls stopped China’s weapons supercomputers.	A centre listed in 2021 led the world ranking in June 2026 on a processor designed at home. [714, 717]	No visible effect
Taiwan’s chips protect it.	In most published blockade games the island’s gas runs out in about ten days and manufacturing stops when power falls to a fifth. The fabs stop before any shot reaches them. [729, 728]	Unproven either way
Better chips beat jamming.	Both sides answered jamming by changing the medium: fibre-optic cable and mesh networks. Neither depends on a chip that Western governments control. [680, 681]	The answer was fibre

Verdicts are this site’s judgment. Each rests on the cited section, with the limits stated there.

The misreadings share one error. They treat the chip as the weapon. In every case here the chip was an ordinary input, and what decided the outcome was something around it: the price, the trader, the power grid, the cable, the one supplier of a custom part. Policy aimed at the chip alone keeps missing for that reason.

Lessons by country

What each should take from four years of evidence

Who	Where it is exposed	The lesson
United States	The Pentagon estimates that 98% of assembly and packaging and 88% of production of its microelectronics is overseas, and it sees little below its top suppliers. [685]	Map the supply below the first tier and design weapons so a chip can be swapped. The exposure is ordinary parts and packaging, not the leading edge.
Europe	When China halted one company’s basic chips in 2025, a German parts maker applied for short-time work for more than 1,000 staff. [186] NATO’s targeting software is American. [676]	Hold stocks of ordinary chips and build packaging at home. The dependence that bit was on the cheapest parts.
Ukraine	Most drone parts come from China, which has restricted some. [114] A drone with no Chinese parts exists but is not yet made in quantity. [115]	Localise the parts that can be cut off first: motors, fibre, thermal cameras. Price, not technology, is the obstacle.
Taiwan	In most blockade games gas runs out in about ten days. [729]	The shield is the energy stock, not the fabs. Fuel reserves and grid hardening protect the chip industry more than any trade rule.
Japan and South Korea	China imposed dual-use controls on Japan in January 2026. [67] Korea’s plants in China run on a yearly American licence. [86]	Both are exposed to each side’s switch. Second sources for metals, and a plan for plants that cannot be moved.
Southeast Asia	Controlled servers pass through Singapore and Malaysia, and both now prosecute or seize. [227, 211]	Enforce or be rationed. The same states can gain from trusted packaging if they are seen to police the trade.
China	It supplies 75 to 85% of Russia’s war-critical imports at a premium. [699]	It has learned that supplying a war gives leverage without the cost of fighting one, and that independence in its own machines is achievable. [717]

The middle column is from the cited sections. The last column is this site’s judgment and is not military advice.

Open questions

Nine things the public record does not settle

These parts rest on open sources, and open sources have gaps. The questions below came up in the research and could not be answered. They are listed so the reader knows where the argument is thinner than it sounds.

Question	What was and was not found	Section
Did the controls slow China’s weapons work?	No official statement was found either way. What is visible is that a listed Chinese centre fields the fastest ranked machine on home-designed processors. [717]	Read →
How much of the leading edge does defence buy?	No source gives a share. One older analysis calls it a tiny fraction of commercial demand.	Read →
Which home-made chips are inside Chinese weapons?	No opened source names a specific chip in a specific weapon. The evidence is about what the army asks to buy, not what it has fielded. [737]	Read →
What was the value of controlled goods reaching Russia after 2023?	The last dollar total found is for January to October 2023. Later trackers give shares and prices only. [701, 699]	Read →
Has any distributor been convicted or fined in 2025 or 2026?	None was found. Enforcement in the record is by designation, not by trial. [703]	Read →
How long can a fab run under blockade?	No source gives a figure for gases or spare parts. The published games stop the fabs through electricity. [728, 729]	Read →
Can machines in Taiwan be disabled remotely?	One report from unnamed sources says so. The companies and the Dutch ministry declined to comment. [730]	Read →
Did a chip shortage stop any missile line in 2025 or 2026?	No source read shows one. The documented risk is a single custom part. [688, 687]	Read →
What electronics mattered in the June 2025 war between Israel and Iran?	Almost nothing was found on the electronics of that war itself. The evidence is from before and after. [710, 712]	Read →

Most of the gaps are on the Chinese and Russian side, and on anything classified. The record is richest where a government publishes what it finds, as Ukraine does with captured weapons and American auditors do with defence supply. It is poorest on what is inside Chinese systems and on whether the controls achieved their military purpose. A page built on that record will know more about leaks than about effects.

War: what to watch

Nine indicators, where each stands, and what a change would mean

Indicator	Where it stands	What a change would mean	Section
The share of Chinese parts in Russian drones	60 to 65% of the Geran-2 in 2026. [112]	A rise means the embargo is being replaced, not evaded.	Read →
The price Russia pays	A premium of about 300% over China’s other customers in 2025. [699]	A falling premium means supply has become routine.	Read →
Fibre-optic share of drones	About 60% of Russian small attack drones in key sectors, by one estimate. [681]	The higher it goes, the less jamming and radio chips matter.	Read →
Ukrainian drones without Chinese parts	One maker, not yet in quantity. [115]	Volume production would remove China’s lever over Ukraine.	Read →
China’s metals rules for military users	The bar stayed while the wider ban was suspended to 27 November 2026. [169]	Any change shows whether Beijing is tightening or trading.	Read →
Exercises around Taiwan	Justice Mission 2025 rehearsed port blockades with 210 sorties and 48 vessels. [734]	Longer drills, or ones that halt shipping, are the warning sign.	Read →
Small SI computers in weapons	Found in a Russian drone and a cruise missile. [110]	Spread to more types would mean target recognition is now ordinary.	Read →
Military navigation receivers	The US Army expects to finish fitting them across its aircraft in 2049. [686]	A faster timetable would show the lesson of jamming has been taken.	Read →
American chips in Chinese army tenders	Still named, in lots of tens. [736, 737]	Larger lots would mean the controls are failing at scale.	Read →

The third column is this site’s judgment.

Glossary

Eighteen terms used in the war parts

Accelerator: A chip built to run many calculations at once. The large ones train SI models in data centres.
Edge computer: A small computer that runs a trained SI model on the device itself, for example on a drone.
Microcontroller: A cheap, simple chip that runs one device, such as a motor or a fuse. Weapons hold hundreds.
FPGA: A chip whose circuits can be reprogrammed after it is made. Used in radios, radars and jammers.
Gallium nitride: A material that handles more power than silicon. Used in the amplifiers of radars and jammers.
Radiation-hardened chip: A chip built to keep working in space, where radiation damages ordinary chips.
Anti-jam antenna: An antenna that can ignore signals from the direction of a jammer, so navigation keeps working.
M-code: The encrypted military signal of the American satellite navigation system, harder to jam.
First-person-view drone: A small drone flown through a camera feed, usually carrying an explosive on a one-way flight.
Loitering munition: A drone that circles until it finds a target and then dives on it.
Fibre-optic drone: A drone controlled through a thin cable it unreels as it flies, so radio jamming cannot stop it.
Electronic warfare: The fight to use the radio spectrum and deny it to the enemy: jamming, deception and listening.
Lifetime buy: Buying all the units of a chip an army will ever need before the maker stops production.
Trusted supplier: A maker or distributor accredited by a defence ministry as a known source for military parts.
Common high priority list: The allied list of about 50 kinds of goods Russia needs most for its weapons.
Entity List: The American list of foreign buyers that need a licence to receive American technology.
Military-civil fusion: China’s policy of drawing civilian firms and research into defence work.
Exaflop: A measure of supercomputer speed: a billion billion calculations a second.

Part 8

What follows

The test that explains the whole page, China’s plan for 2026 to 2030, four scenarios, the conclusions, and the dates and decisions to watch.

What works

Which rule fits which chip: seven items, one test

The parts above give the evidence for a single test. An item can be controlled when few firms make it, when it is large enough to trace, and when it goes on needing its maker after the sale. The table applies that test to the seven things this contest is fought over. Read down the last column: the verdicts follow the first three almost exactly.

The control test. Amber cells favour control, grey cells do not. Verdicts and the time for the target to make its own are this site’s judgment.

Item	Makers	Large and traceable	Needs its maker after sale	Time for the target to make its own	Verdict	Evidence
EUV lithography machine	One	Yes	Yes	10 years or more	Holds	None has reached China since the Dutch refused a licence in 2019. [172]
Older immersion lithography	Two	Yes	Yes	Under way	Not fully used	More than 300 already in China. A first home-made machine is in small-batch production. [172, 131]
Stacked memory for accelerators	Three	No	No	2 to 4 years	Holds for now	Huawei’s roadmap includes its own stacked memory from 2026. [130]
Data-centre accelerator	Few	Partly	No	Under way	Leaks at the edges	Billing in one country, arrival in another; mislabelled servers. [227, 211]
Small SI module	One main	No	No	Not needed	Not controlled	Sold as a developer kit; found in a Russian missile. [110]
Ordinary chips	Hundreds	No	No	Not needed	Cannot be controlled	5,816 foreign parts in 202 Russian systems. [108]
Gallium, germanium, rare-earth magnets	China	Bulk goods	No	3 to 5 years	Holds, in China’s hands	The bar on military users stayed while the wider ban was suspended. [169]

Three things follow. The controls that hold are on machines and materials, not on chips. The control most argued about, on accelerators, is the one in the middle of the table, which is why it has been redrawn six times. And the items that matter most on a battlefield are at the bottom, out of reach of any rule yet written. Governance of chips is strong where the war is not being fought, and weak where it is.

China · the plan for 2026 to 2030

China’s five-year plan puts chips first among six fields for “extraordinary measures”, and writes export controls and counter-sanctions into the same document

12 Mar 2026Date the National People’s Congress approved the plan for 2026 to 2030

1st of 6Position of integrated circuits in the list of fields for “extraordinary measures”

7%+Target for average yearly growth in national research spending, the same wording as in the 2021 plan

2.8%Research spending as a share of the economy at the end of the last plan, as the new plan reports it

0 to 2Uses of the word “extraordinary” (超常规) in the 2021 plan and in the 2026 plan

10 yearsCorporate income tax exemption for chip plants at 28 nanometres or below with a fifteen-year operating term, as the planning commission’s newspaper describes current policy

The best guide to what China will do next is the document that binds its ministries and provinces. The National People’s Congress approved the outline of the fifteenth five-year plan, for 2026 to 2030, on 12 March 2026, and the state news agency published the full text the next day: eighteen parts and sixty-two chapters. [398, 401] It follows the Party’s recommendations of October 2025. [399]

One sentence in chapter eight carries the chip policy. The state will “focus on strategically contested fields and the weak links in industrial and supply chains, take extraordinary measures, and push along the whole chain for decisive breakthroughs in key core technologies” in six fields: integrated circuits, machine tools, high-end instruments, basic software, advanced materials and biomanufacturing. [398] Chips are named first. The word “extraordinary” does not appear anywhere in the plan for 2021 to 2025, where integrated circuits were the third item in a list of eight frontier research fields. [398, 400]

The same plan treats China’s own controls as a standing instrument. It commits to “improve the export control system”, to “keep strengthening the competitive advantages in rare earths, rare metals and superhard materials”, and to step up “the struggle against sanctions, interference and long-arm jurisdiction”. [398] None of those phrases is in the 2021 plan. [400]

What the plan for 2026 to 2030 says on the subjects of this page, with the matching wording in the plan for 2021 to 2025. Translations are this site’s.

Subject	Wording in the 2026 plan	In the 2021 plan	Reading
Chips	Extraordinary measures and whole-chain work for “decisive breakthroughs” in six fields, integrated circuits first. [398]	Integrated circuits listed among eight frontier fields for major science projects, and among manufacturing clusters. [400]	escalated From a research priority to an emergency programme.
How the work is organised	Tasks drawn from demand, a “technology and economic security assessment”, special transfer of staff to major tasks, open competitions for projects, payment by results, and “use to drive research”: buyers adopt the output as it is developed. [398]	A “new whole-nation system” for core technologies, named but not specified. [400]	more specific The buyer is brought into the project.
A national technology list	“Establish a national list of critical and emerging technologies.” [398]	Not present. [400]	new The same device the United States uses to organise its controls.
Minerals	Strengthen the advantage in rare earths, rare metals and superhard materials. Build product, capacity and in-ground reserves of strategic minerals. [398]	Rare earths not mentioned. [400]	new Leverage is to be kept, not traded away.
Backup industry	A “national strategic hinterland” and “backup of key industries”, with strategic industrial bases and stockpile bases. [398, 399]	Not present. [400]	new Planning for the loss of coastal plants.
Computing power	National hub clusters, a study of “ultra-large” intelligent computing clusters, a domestic hardware and software ecosystem “under our own control”, and offshore computing facilities to be explored. [398]	Data centres as new infrastructure.	extended Compute is planned as a public utility.
Export controls	“Improve the export control system.” The Party’s recommendations add the security review mechanism. [398, 399]	Not mentioned. [400]	new Controls become a permanent tool of trade policy.
Counter-sanctions	“Strengthen the struggle against sanctions, interference and long-arm jurisdiction.” [398]	Not mentioned. [400]	new
Universities	“Extraordinary” expansion of degree programmes in SI and integrated circuits. [398]	Not in these terms.	new The staff shortage is treated as a planning task.
Armed forces	Faster building of “unmanned and intelligent combat forces and the means to counter them”, an “intelligent military system”, a fast channel for civilian technology into the forces, and common military and civilian standards. [398]	Mechanised, informatised and intelligent development together.	sharper Drones and counter-drone work are named.
Taiwan	A “cross-strait common market”, support for Taiwanese firms to settle and list on the mainland. Chips are not mentioned in the chapter. [398]	Similar economic measures.	unchanged The plan offers integration and says nothing of the island’s chip plants.

What “extraordinary measures” means in practice

The plan gives the method, not the budget. Projects start from what users need, pass a security assessment, draw staff by special transfer and are paid for on results. The phrase “use to drive research” matters most: state buyers and large firms are expected to take domestic machines and chips before they match imports, so that makers can improve them in production. [398] The planning commission’s newspaper reported in September 2026 that chip plants now open their lines to test domestic tools for this reason. [402]

Controls on both sides of the ledger

A reader looking for a sign that China sees its mineral controls as a bargaining chip to be given up will not find it here. The plan commits to keep the advantage in rare earths and superhard materials, the two groups covered by the controls that were paused in November 2025, and to perfect the export control system itself. [398] The pause is a matter of timing. The instrument is in the plan.

What the plan does not say

It sets no figure for chip self-sufficiency, no node to reach and no date. The 2015 industrial plan did set shares, and they were missed and then used abroad as evidence of intent. This plan names the fields and the method and leaves numbers to ministries. The planning commission’s spokesperson said in 2026 that the next step is to use the whole-nation system for “decisive breakthroughs” along the chip chain, again without a number. [402]

For the argument of this page the plan settles one question. The American controls were designed to slow China at the leading edge. China’s formal answer, five years after the first chip limits, is to raise chips to the first place in its emergency research list, to organise state demand around domestic suppliers, and to keep its own controls as a standing tool. [398] The contest is written into both sides’ planning for the rest of the decade.

A plan is a statement of intent, and China’s past chip targets were missed. The parts that can be checked from outside are the ones with institutions attached: the technology list, the security assessment, the university programmes, the stockpiles and the backup plants. Those are the items to watch between now and the mid-term review.

Limits. The plan and the recommendations were read in full text on the central government’s site and searched for every use of the terms for integrated circuits, chips, export control, sanctions, rare earths, strategic minerals, backup and unmanned forces; the 2021 plan was searched for the same terms on the same site, and “not mentioned” means the term was not found in that text. Sector plans that will carry the detail, including any chip plan from the industry ministry, were not found and may not be public. The tax exemption is as described in a newspaper article carried on the planning commission’s site, not from the tax notice itself. The comparison with the 2015 industrial plan is from general knowledge. Translations and readings are this site’s.

China · the sector plan for electronics manufacturing, 2026 to 2030

China’s electronics industry plan to 2030 puts “whole-chain” work on chips first of seventeen tasks and sets one hard number: 30 trillion yuan in revenue

30tn yuanTarget revenue of larger electronics manufacturers in 2030

3.5%Target research spending as a share of revenue

17Tasks in the plan, with nine special columns

1stPlace of integrated circuits among the five fields where leading technologies are to emerge

13 yearsTime electronics manufacturing has ranked first by revenue among China’s 41 industrial sectors

about 11.5%Yearly growth needed to reach the target from 17.4 trillion yuan in 2025, as a Chinese commentary calculates it

The five-year plan described above gives chips one sentence. The detail was left to ministries. In September 2026 the industry ministry and the planning commission jointly issued the plan for electronics manufacturing in 2026 to 2030, the sector plan that covers chips. [326, 327]

It is organised under four words, “foundation, quality, new growth, governance”, with seventeen tasks and nine special columns. [326] The first task under the first heading is “to push whole-chain breakthroughs in integrated circuits”. [326, 327] Around it sit the related tasks: upgrading electronic components and materials, smart sensors, special equipment and measuring instruments for electronics, and photonics. [327]

The targets for 2030 are for the industry as a whole: revenue of the larger firms above 30 trillion yuan, research spending at 3.5% of revenue, and “a batch” of leading technologies and world-class firms in five fields, of which integrated circuits is named first. [326, 327]

The electronics manufacturing plan for 2026 to 2030 as reported by the state news agency, the science ministry’s newspaper and the Chinese business press. The plan itself was not read.

Heading	Tasks reported	Chip content	Reading
Foundation	Whole-chain work on integrated circuits; high-end components and materials; smart sensors; special equipment and instruments; photonics. [327]	Chips first. Equipment, materials and parts supply to be raised. [329]	the core The chain upstream of the chip is treated as one task.
Named equipment	Research on atomic-layer etching, plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition, atomic-layer deposition and precision plating equipment. [329]	The deposition and etch steps used in advanced logic and memory.	specific The only named technologies found in the coverage. Lithography is not among those reported.
Whole machines and systems	Supply-chain resilience in key fields; an advanced computing ecosystem; consumer electronics; software and hardware working together. [327]	Open, unified interfaces between chips, operating systems, frameworks and models. [328]	the software side Aimed at the advantage of the incumbent’s software stack.
New growth	Energy electronics; satellite positioning; hardware for SI; electronics for cars, medicine, aviation, ships and industry. [328]	Computing hardware, and special-purpose chips for each industry. [328]	demand Markets where domestic chips can be designed in.
Governance	Innovation capacity, regional layout, opening and cooperation. [326]	Not reported in detail.	general
Targets	30 trillion yuan revenue, 3.5% research intensity, more fields where China leads or runs level, a marked rise in supply-chain security. [326, 327]	No figure for chips alone.	no chip number As in the national plan.

Interfaces as policy

The most concrete idea in the coverage is about software. The plan calls for chips, operating systems, development frameworks and models to have open, unified interfaces, with tools to adapt software to hardware, so that applications can be built “on a unified technical base”. [328] The practical obstacle to using a Chinese SI chip is that software written for the market leader does not run on it without work. A common interface across domestic chips would let one adaptation serve many of them. This is the state organising a standard that the market has not produced.

From scale to system

An official research institute’s deputy head, quoted in all the reports, describes the aim as moving “from leading in scale to leading as a system”, and says the foundations need long accumulation. [327, 328] He recommends that state investment funds steer private capital to invest “early, small, long-term and in hard technology”, and that Chinese experts take a larger part in international standards bodies. [327] The emphasis on standards recurs across this page’s Chinese sources: car chips, interfaces, and the evaluation of computing services.

What is missing

The ministry’s own remarks stress risk. It describes the next five years as a period in which “uncertain and hard-to-predict factors are increasing”, and says the plan is meant to balance development with security. [327, 328] Yet the published targets contain no number for chips: no output, no share, no node. Either the nine special columns hold such figures and the press did not report them, or the ministry has chosen, like the national plan and Shanghai’s, to publish none.

With this document the chain of plans is complete. The Party’s recommendations named chips first for extraordinary measures in October 2025, the national plan repeated it in March 2026, the sector plan made it the first task in September, and the city plans turned it into districts and mergers. [398, 326] At every level the commitment is to the whole chain, and at no level is there a published target for the chip itself.

The named equipment is the detail to hold on to. Atomic-layer etching and deposition are where Chinese toolmakers are closest to foreign ones, and the section on China’s toolmakers shows their sales rising fast. A plan that names what is nearly within reach, and stays silent on lithography, is a realistic one.

Limits. The plan’s text was not found; this section rests on reports by the state news agency, the science ministry’s newspaper and a Chinese business newspaper, which quote it in part, and on one news site’s mention of the named equipment. The nine special columns, where detailed targets would appear, were not seen, so the statement that no chip-specific number is published means only that none was reported. The reports give the issue date as “recently” in mid-September 2026; one gives 10 September. The growth-rate calculation is a commentary’s, seen in a search summary. The reading of the interface task as aimed at the market leader’s software, and the remark on lithography, are this site’s.

China · A university president on “strategic breakout”

The head of China’s leading trade university expects American technology limits to tighten through 2030, and lists three weaknesses China has to fix first

2026–2030The window in which he expects limits to tighten and China to act

$630.6bnWorld chip market in 2024, as he cites it, nearing $1 trillion in 2026

69.7%China’s share of SI patents granted in 2023, as cited

41 / 207 / 666Large, medium and small industrial categories China covers, all of the UN list

3Weaknesses he names: research spending ratio, originality, voice in standards

3Recommendations: self-reliance, basic science, standards

Zhao Zhongxiu, president of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, published an essay on China’s “strategic breakout” that was reposted on a Chinese academic site in February 2026. It is short and close to official language, which makes its admissions more notable. [245]

His starting point is that the trade dispute was always about technology. The tariff conflict since 2018 “in essence stems from the contest over base technologies in a new industrial revolution”, and once the trade toolbox was used up it showed itself as a “technology war”. American policy has moved from indirect trade measures to direct limits on technology. [245]

His forecast is that the next stage of American limits “will only be deeper and more varied”, and that 2026 to 2030 “is very likely an important point for tightened restrictions, and also the key window for our side to take the initiative”. [245]

Zhao Zhongxiu’s account of the contest and what he recommends, with this site’s reading.

Subject	What he says	This site’s reading
Upstream	The United States limits technology by investment rules at home and export controls abroad, reinforced by limits on researchers’ movement. [245]	standard account
Downstream	Tariffs remain, and a 2025 American tax law denies credits to firms tied to “prohibited foreign entities”, to push American firms away from Chinese-linked partners. [245]	often missed Tax law as a supply chain control.
Standards	Washington’s 2023 standards strategy aims at the rules for future technology. [245]	a long game
China’s weaknesses	Research spending as a share of output is still below the United States and parts of Europe. Patent numbers lead the world but the original share needs to rise. Talent is short in some frontier fields. [245]	candid From a university head, in public.
China’s strengths	The only country with every industrial category. A “new whole-nation system” that has “played a positive role”. A young talent base, with people born in the 1990s leading in SI. [245]	the official list
What to do	Use the whole-nation system and raise research funding. Fund mathematics, physics and chemistry for the long term. Build a cross-ministry mechanism for standards and place people in international standards bodies. [245]	unspecific on chips No measure names semiconductors.

Reading an American report against itself

Zhao cites the November 2025 report of an American congressional commission, which described China’s state-led manufacturing system as a “structural threat” and China’s rising exports as spilled-over capacity. He calls the commission deeply prejudiced, and then uses its conclusions as evidence: because that view matches current American strategy, limits will deepen. [245] It is a common move in Chinese analysis. The commission’s reports are dismissed as biased and treated as the most reliable guide to what Washington will do next.

What is absent

For an essay that calls semiconductors “the base support of the industrial system and the national security system”, it proposes nothing specific to them. The recommendations are funding for basic science, links between universities and industry, a unified domestic market and standards. There is no mention of the investment funds, the procurement rules or the equipment programmes that fill the rest of this tab. [245] The essay shows the level at which the subject is discussed by senior figures in trade policy: as a contest of systems, to be won by fundamentals over a five-year plan.

This site’s reading

The dating matters. The essay names 2026 to 2030, the period of China’s next five-year plan, as both the time of greatest pressure and the window for action. That framing appears in the plan documents covered in the sections before this one. It also sets a test. If limits ease in that period, as the chip licences of 2026 suggest they might in part, the case for “breakout” spending weakens. Zhao’s forecast, like Liu Dian’s a year earlier, assumes steady tightening, and events since have been less tidy.

He ends on the claim that the foreign measures are all, in essence, about keeping “absolute international control”, whose base is technology, and that China’s answer should be original research “from zero to one”. [245]

Limits. This is a short essay by a university president, reposted without a stated original publication or date beyond the repost date of February 2026. Its market and patent figures are quoted without sources and were not checked. It is close to official positions and should be read as an indication of how the question is framed in trade-policy circles, not as research. The comparison with later events is this site’s.

Scenarios

Four ways the rules could go by 2030

These are this site’s judgments, not forecasts from a source. They are set out so that the reader can test them against the news: each has signs that would show it is under way.

Scenario	What happens	This site’s view	Signs to look for
Managed stand-off	Both sides keep their strongest measures suspended and renew the suspensions. Licensed sales continue in small volume. Allies license nationally.	Most likely	The metals suspension is extended past 27 November 2026. Korea’s yearly licence is renewed in December.
Tightening	The bill in Congress passes or its terms are adopted. Servicing of installed machines in China is cut. China ends the metals suspension and widens it.	Possible	A vote on the bill. A Dutch or Japanese rule on servicing. A lapse of the metals suspension.
Bargain	More capable chips are licensed in exchange for metals and purchases. The control regime becomes a price list.	Possible	A licence for chips above the present limit. A multi-year metals agreement.
Shock	A blockade or quarantine of Taiwan. Every rule on this page becomes secondary to physical supply.	Unlikely, most severe	Military activity around the island beyond exercises. Insurance and shipping withdrawals.

The first scenario is the present arrangement continued. It is the most likely because both sides have chosen it twice already, in October 2025 and in the licences of 2026.

The scenarios differ in what happens to the two controls that work: Western machines and Chinese metals. The chips themselves follow. If servicing is cut and the metals ban returns, the contest moves from managed to open within a quarter, because both measures act faster than any response to them. If neither is used, the present bargaining continues and the permitted chip keeps creeping upward.

Conclusions on governance

Six conclusions about the rules

Control the machines and the materials, and expect the chips to leak. The controls that have held are on lithography and on refined metals. The control on accelerators has been redrawn six times and is evaded through billing addresses and mislabelled freight. [172, 169, 227, 211]
A moving line teaches the target to build its own. Each change told Chinese firms that foreign supply could be cut, and each relaxation came after they had begun to replace it. A rule that is stable does more than a rule that is strict.
Enforcement has to be paid for. The seizures and prosecutions are carried out by Singapore and Malaysia, which did not write the rules and earn their living from open trade. What they receive is continued access and exemptions that can be withdrawn. [225, 210, 213, 229]
Servicing is the last large lever, and using it changes the alliance. More than 300 older machines are already in China. Ending their upkeep would bite within months, and it would be done over the objection of the government that licenses them. [172, 173]
A state that owns a chipmaker is no longer a neutral rule-maker. The American stake in Intel, Japan’s in Rapidus and the Dutch intervention at Nexperia each give a government a private interest in rules it writes for everyone. [161, 62, 175]
Governance is now the management of suspensions. China’s metals ban and America’s newest measures are both suspended, not repealed. The dates on which the suspensions end matter more than any new rule. [169]

Conclusions on war

Five conclusions

Controls cannot disarm an adversary. They can hold back its largest computing, and with it the training of the most capable models. They do not reach the chips that guide a missile. Policy that promises the second will be judged to have failed even when it achieves the first.
Enforcement matters more than new rules. The parts in Russian weapons were legal to make and usually legal to sell to the first buyer. They arrived through distributors in third countries. Following those routes is duller than writing a new rule and does more.
Small SI computers are the gap. The module found in Russian drones is the first place where the controlled technology and the uncontrollable market overlap. Either it is tracked, or it must be assumed that any state and many groups can field weapons that recognise targets.
China’s position in a war it is not fighting is the strongest in the field. It supplies both armies, holds the metals both alliances need, and can adjust either flow. No Western chokepoint gives a comparable hold over a conflict in progress.
For allied armies the urgent dependence is materials, not chips. A year’s stock of gallium and magnets would do more for readiness than another fab. The suspension that expires on 27 November 2026 does not cover military users, so for them the ban never stopped.

What to watch. Whether tracking rules are extended to small SI modules. Whether the share of Chinese parts in Ukrainian drones keeps falling once China-free production has to scale. Whether the Pentagon’s magnet rule takes effect or is waived again. Whether the secure line at Intel delivers parts to a weapons programme.

Limits. Component counts and shares are claims by Ukrainian defence intelligence relayed by the press; they are plausible and consistent with independent teardowns, but were not verified here. Chip counts for American weapons are round figures given by officials and contractors in 2022. Sources were read through search summaries on 13 November 2026. The description of a drone’s parts, the role of rare-earth magnets, and the statement that China has restricted drone parts to Ukraine are from general knowledge and earlier reporting, not from a cited source. The ratings in the figure and the five conclusions are this site’s judgment.

What to watch

Six things that would change this picture

27 November 2026. Whether China extends the suspension of its metals ban, and whether Washington extends its own. If both lapse, the contest returns to where it stood in October 2025.
Immersion DUV. Whether the Netherlands and Japan stop the sale and servicing of the older lithography machines China’s advanced lines run on. This is the largest control not yet used, and Congress has asked for it. [19]
Home-made lithography. Whether China’s first immersion DUV machines work in production. If they do, the machine chokepoint has a date on it. [18] [16]
Memory. Whether Chinese makers produce current high-bandwidth memory in volume. This would lift the limit on Huawei’s output. [11]
Taiwan. Any blockade or quarantine of the island would stop most of the world’s advanced chip supply within weeks, for every country including China. No subsidy programme changes this before the 2030s.
Old chips. Whether Western states restrict imports of Chinese mature chips, as they have begun to discuss. This would open a second front, in the part of the chain where China is the stronger party.

Cash flow · public money and private money

Cash flow

What governments are spending on chipmaking, then what the companies spend themselves: capital spending and research for forty companies, year over year, ranked and drawn as heatmaps.

Public money

What governments have put in

Public money committed to chipmaking. Billions of dollars, converted roughly. These figures count different things and should be read as orders of magnitude. [23] [24] [25]

ChinaThree phases of the national chip fund, 2014 to 2024: ¥687 billion of capitalabout $98 billion

United StatesCHIPS and Science Act, 2022: grants and research; tax credits come on top$52.7 billion

European UnionChips Act headline of €43 billion; only a small part is new money from the Unionabout $47 billion

JapanGrants since 2021 to TSMC’s Kumamoto plants, Rapidus and others: about ¥4 trillion$26 to 30 billion

IndiaSemiconductor mission of 2021; a second, larger round is reportedabout $10 billion

South Korea2026 chip fund of ₩11 trillion; support is mainly tax credits and cheap loansabout $8 billion

China’s figure is the paid-in capital of one national fund and leaves out provincial funds, tax breaks, and cheap loans, which are larger. The American figure leaves out a tax credit on plant investment. Europe’s is mostly national money and existing programmes. South Korea’s public and private target is far larger, at ₩881 trillion. A second European act aims at €120 billion of combined public and private investment by 2035.

Set against the industry’s own spending, these sums are small. TSMC alone invests more in a year than the whole American grant programme. Public money has changed where some plants are built. It has not changed who knows how to run them, and the plants built abroad run processes a step behind those in Taiwan. For how these sums compare with military budgets, see the fiscal analysis on si-warfare.com.

Private money · the argument

The industry’s own spending is rising again, and it is no longer the industry’s own decision

Public money gets the headlines. Private money builds the fabs. The companies in this site’s directory that file accounts in the United States report two kinds of self-investment every year: capital spending, which is cash paid for buildings and machines, and research and development. This page reads both from the filings for 2019 to 2025 and compares each year with the one before. [152]

Three things stand out. First, chip companies’ capital spending fell for two years after the 2022 peak and turned up again in 2025: $94.0 bn across 25 companies, +16% on 2024. Second, the rise is narrow. TSMC and Micron account for more than the whole increase; Intel cut by 39% and most makers of ordinary chips cut too. Third, and most important, the four largest cloud companies spent $409 bn in 2025, +72% on 2024 and about 4.3 times what all the chip companies here spent on plant. The chip industry now invests on its customers’ forecast, not its own.

$94.0 bncapital spending by 25 chip companies in 2025, +16%

$409 bncapital spending by four cloud buyers in 2025, +72%

$51.3 bnresearch spending by 7 designers in 2025, +23%

48%TSMC’s share of the fab and packaging owners’ capital spending

Year over year

Seven years of capital spending, chip companies beside their largest buyers

Capital spending by fiscal year, billions of dollars. Left bar of each pair: 25 chip companies, stacked by kind. Right bar: four cloud companies, whole-company spending. Only companies with all seven years are counted, so the totals are comparable across years. Samsung, SK hynix and SMIC do not file in the United States and are not in the bars. [152, 153]

Capital spending	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Fab and packaging owners12 companies	46.2	44.9−3%	68.6+53%	86.1+25%	77.6−10%	73.5−5%	84.7+15%
Designers and software7 companies	1.9	2.6+34%	3.0+17%	3.6+22%	3.1−14%	2.8−9%	3.5+23%
Machines and materials6 companies	1.9	2.4+27%	2.9+21%	3.6+23%	4.7+31%	5.0+6%	5.9+17%
All chip companies	50.0	49.8−0%	74.5+50%	93.3+25%	85.4−8%	81.3−5%	94.0+16%
Four cloud buyers	71.0	98.2+38%	128+31%	154+20%	157+1%	237+52%	409+72%
Research and development
Designers7 companies	16.8	19.3+15%	23.2+20%	29.0+25%	32.5+12%	41.8+28%	51.3+23%
Machines and materials6 companies	6.8	7.7+13%	8.8+15%	9.9+12%	11.3+14%	12.1+7%	13.6+12%
Fab and packaging owners11 companies, without TSMC	23.0	23.3+1%	25.8+11%	29.4+14%	28.3−4%	29.0+3%	27.3−6%

Totals in billions of dollars, with the change on the year before underneath. Research spending rows count only companies that report it in every year; TSMC’s 2025 research figure is not yet in the data, so the fab owners’ research row excludes it.

Read the left bars first. The pandemic shortage took chip companies’ capital spending from $50.0 bn in 2019 to $93.3 bn in 2022. Then demand for phones and computers fell, memory prices collapsed, and spending dropped in 2023 and again in 2024. The recovery in 2025 is real but it is not a second broad boom. It is a build-out for one product: the accelerator, the memory stacked beside it, and the packaging that joins them.

Now the right bars. The four cloud companies spent about 1.4 times the chip companies’ total in 2019 and 4.3 times in 2025. Their spending is on data centres, and a large share of each data centre is chips. That money reaches the chip industry as revenue, mostly Nvidia’s, and only then as orders to TSMC, to the memory makers and to the machine makers. The chain’s own investment is a delayed echo of its customers’ investment, and a smaller one.

Who invests most

The ranking: who spends most on plant, and who on research

Capital spending, latest fiscal year. Amber: up on the year before. Blue: down. Grey: taken from press reports, not filings, and not directly comparable. [152, 153, 154, 155, 156]

TSMCFY2025 · +37% on the year before; from the company’s call$40.9 bn

Samsung Electronics2025, press · whole company, incl. displays; ₩52.7 trillion$37.1 bn

MicronFY2026 · +94% on the year before$30.7 bn

SK hynix2025, press · about ₩28.6 trillion, derived$20.1 bn

IntelFY2025 · −39% on the year before$14.6 bn

SMIC2025, press · unaudited results$8.1 bn

NvidiaFY2025 · +87% on the year before$6.0 bn

ASEFY2025 · +113% on the year before$5.3 bn

Texas InstrumentsFY2025 · −6% on the year before$4.5 bn

UMCFY2024 · −6% on the year before$2.8 bn

QualcommFY2026 · +109% on the year before$2.5 bn

Applied MaterialsFY2025 · +90% on the year before$2.3 bn

ASMLFY2025 · −20% on the year before$1.8 bn

WolfspeedFY2024 · −44% on the year before$1.3 bn

AMDFY2025 · +53% on the year before$1.0 bn

Lam ResearchFY2025 · +27% on the year before$1.0 bn

Research and development, latest fiscal year. Same colours. TSMC is shown for 2024. Samsung, SK hynix and SMIC are not shown. [152]

NvidiaFY2025 · +43% on the year before$18.5 bn

IntelFY2025 · −17% on the year before$13.8 bn

BroadcomFY2025 · +18% on the year before$11.0 bn

QualcommFY2026 · +13% on the year before$10.2 bn

AMDFY2025 · +25% on the year before$8.1 bn

TSMCFY2024 · +9% on the year before$6.4 bn

MicronFY2026 · +49% on the year before$5.7 bn

ASMLFY2025 · +14% on the year before$5.3 bn

Applied MaterialsFY2025 · +10% on the year before$3.6 bn

ArmFY2025 · +34% on the year before$2.8 bn

SynopsysFY2025 · +19% on the year before$2.5 bn

Lam ResearchFY2025 · +13% on the year before$2.4 bn

NXPFY2025 · +1% on the year before$2.4 bn

Texas InstrumentsFY2025 · +6% on the year before$2.1 bn

MarvellFY2025 · +6% on the year before$2.1 bn

Analog DevicesFY2025 · +19% on the year before$1.8 bn

The order of the two lists is different, and that is the structure of the industry in one picture. Plant is concentrated in a handful of manufacturers. TSMC, Samsung, Micron, SK hynix and Intel account for most of it, and TSMC alone is 48% of what the fab and packaging owners in the filings spent. Research is led by companies that own no fabs. Nvidia spent $18.5 bn on research in its latest year, +43%, which is more than Intel and about three times what it spent on plant. Broadcom, Qualcomm and AMD follow.

The fastest risers are the firms nearest the accelerator: Micron (+89% in fiscal 2025, then +94% to $30.7 bn in fiscal 2026), ASE in packaging (+113%), TSMC (+37%) and Nvidia (+87%, from a small base). The steepest cuts are at the makers of ordinary chips for cars and factories: onsemi −51%, NXP −45%, Analog Devices −27%. Intel’s cut of 39% is a different case: a company conserving cash, not one whose market has shrunk.

Heatmap

Every company, every year: where spending rose and where it was cut

Capital spending, change on the year before. Amber is growth, blue is a cut, darker is larger; the scale stops at 100% either way. The last column is the latest year’s spending. A dot means no figure. The 2026 column holds only companies whose fiscal year ended between July and September 2026. [152, 153]

Company	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	Latest
Companies that run fabs or packaging plants
TSMC	+15%	+76%	+21%	−16%	−2%	+37%	·	$40.9 bn
Intel	−12%	+31%	+33%	+4%	−7%	−39%	·	$14.6 bn
Micron	−16%	+22%	+20%	−36%	+9%	+89%	+94%	$30.7 bn
Texas Instruments	−23%	+279%	+14%	+81%	−5%	−6%	·	$4.5 bn
ASE	+14%	+21%	−4%	−29%	+43%	+113%	·	$5.3 bn
UMC	+66%	+93%	+56%	+9%	−6%	·	·	$2.8 bn
Wolfspeed	+148%	+12%	+49%	+139%	−44%	·	·	$1.3 bn
Amkor	+17%	+41%	+16%	−17%	−1%	+22%	·	$0.9 bn
GlobalFoundries	+1%	+198%	+73%	−41%	−65%	+16%	·	$0.7 bn
Analog Devices	−40%	+107%	+103%	+80%	−42%	−27%	·	$0.5 bn
Tower Semiconductor	+64%	+0%	+17%	+21%	−2%	+2%	·	$0.4 bn
NXP	−25%	+96%	+39%	−22%	−12%	−45%	·	$0.4 bn
onsemi	−28%	+16%	+133%	+49%	−55%	−51%	·	$0.3 bn
Designers and design software
Nvidia	·	·	+88%	−42%	+203%	+87%	·	$6.0 bn
Qualcomm	+59%	+34%	+20%	−36%	−28%	+15%	+109%	$2.5 bn
Broadcom	+7%	−4%	−4%	+7%	+21%	+14%	·	$0.6 bn
AMD	+35%	+2%	+50%	+21%	+16%	+53%	·	$1.0 bn
Arm	·	·	+88%	+44%	+138%	+149%	·	$0.5 bn
Marvell	+30%	+58%	+22%	+63%	−15%	+24%	·	$0.4 bn
Machine and material makers
Applied Materials	−4%	+58%	+18%	+41%	+8%	+90%	·	$2.3 bn
ASML	+28%	−3%	+27%	+73%	−4%	−20%	·	$1.8 bn
Lam Research	+72%	+56%	−8%	−21%	+91%	+27%	·	$1.0 bn
KLA	+52%	+33%	+11%	−19%	+21%	+12%	·	$0.4 bn
The four cloud buyers
Amazon	+138%	+52%	+4%	−17%	+57%	+59%	·	$132 bn
Microsoft	+34%	+16%	+18%	+58%	+45%	+80%	·	$116 bn
Google	−5%	+11%	+28%	+2%	+63%	+74%	·	$91.4 bn
Meta	+0%	+23%	+67%	−13%	+38%	+87%	·	$69.7 bn

Research and development, change on the year before. Same scale. [152]

Company	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	Latest
Companies that run fabs or packaging plants
TSMC	+25%	+21%	+23%	+7%	+9%	·	·	$6.4 bn
Intel	+1%	+12%	+15%	−8%	+3%	−17%	·	$13.8 bn
Micron	+7%	+2%	+17%	−0%	+10%	+11%	+49%	$5.7 bn
Texas Instruments	−1%	+2%	+7%	+12%	+5%	+6%	·	$2.1 bn
ASE	+10%	+16%	+8%	−0%	+10%	+17%	·	$1.1 bn
UMC	+14%	+6%	−6%	−2%	+14%	·	·	$0.5 bn
GlobalFoundries	−18%	+0%	+1%	−11%	+16%	+4%	·	$0.5 bn
Analog Devices	−7%	+23%	+31%	−2%	−10%	+19%	·	$1.8 bn
NXP	+5%	+12%	+11%	+13%	−3%	+1%	·	$2.4 bn
onsemi	+0%	+2%	−8%	−4%	+6%	−5%	·	$0.6 bn
SanDisk	·	·	·	−9%	+7%	·	·	$1.3 bn
Microchip	−5%	+18%	+13%	−2%	−10%	+10%	·	$1.1 bn
Designers and design software
Nvidia	+39%	+34%	+39%	+18%	+49%	+43%	·	$18.5 bn
Qualcomm	+11%	+20%	+14%	+8%	+1%	+2%	+13%	$10.2 bn
Broadcom	+6%	−2%	+1%	+7%	+77%	+18%	·	$11.0 bn
AMD	+28%	+43%	+76%	+17%	+10%	+25%	·	$8.1 bn
Arm	·	·	+14%	+75%	+5%	+34%	·	$2.8 bn
Marvell	−1%	+33%	+25%	+6%	+3%	+6%	·	$2.1 bn
Synopsys	+12%	+18%	+6%	+16%	+13%	+19%	·	$2.5 bn
Machine and material makers
Applied Materials	+9%	+11%	+12%	+12%	+4%	+10%	·	$3.6 bn
ASML	+14%	+20%	+14%	+26%	+8%	+14%	·	$5.3 bn
Lam Research	+19%	+7%	+8%	+10%	+10%	+13%	·	$2.4 bn
KLA	+7%	+19%	+17%	−1%	+6%	+13%	·	$1.5 bn
Teradyne	+16%	+14%	+3%	−5%	+10%	+9%	·	$0.5 bn
The four cloud buyers
Microsoft	+8%	+18%	+11%	+9%	+10%	+9%	·	$35.6 bn
Google	+6%	+14%	+25%	+15%	+9%	+24%	·	$61.1 bn
Meta	+36%	+34%	+43%	+9%	+14%	+31%	·	$57.4 bn

The two maps have different textures, and the difference is the finding. The capital-spending map is striped: whole columns turn amber in 2021 and 2022 and blue in 2023 and 2024, because fabs are bought in cycles and everyone reads the same market. The research map is almost all amber. Companies cut plant when demand falls; they very rarely cut research, because a missed design generation cannot be bought back later. Intel in 2025 is the clearest exception, at a company in financial difficulty.

Look also at the bottom block. The cloud buyers’ rows are amber in almost every year and darkest in 2024 and 2025. No block above them is as consistent.

Intensity

How much of each dollar of sales goes back in

Company	Kind	Year	Sales	Plant, share of sales	Research, share of sales	Both
Wolfspeed	Fab or packaging owner	FY2024	$0.8 bn	168%	23%	191%
Arm	Designer or software	FY2025	$4.9 bn	11%	56%	68%
Meta	Cloud buyer	FY2025	$201 bn	35%	29%	63%
Intel	Fab or packaging owner	FY2025	$52.9 bn	28%	26%	54%
Microsoft	Cloud buyer	FY2025	$332 bn	35%	11%	46%
UMC	Fab or packaging owner	FY2024	$7.2 bn	38%	7%	45%
TSMC	Fab or packaging owner	FY2024	$90.2 bn	33%	7%	40%
Google	Cloud buyer	FY2025	$403 bn	23%	15%	38%
Synopsys	Designer or software	FY2025	$7.1 bn	2%	35%	38%
Texas Instruments	Fab or packaging owner	FY2025	$17.7 bn	26%	12%	38%
Tower Semiconductor	Fab or packaging owner	FY2025	$1.6 bn	28%	6%	34%
ASE	Fab or packaging owner	FY2025	$20.7 bn	26%	5%	31%
Marvell	Designer or software	FY2025	$8.2 bn	4%	25%	30%
Qualcomm	Designer or software	FY2026	$43.1 bn	6%	24%	29%
Micron	Fab or packaging owner	FY2026	$133 bn	23%	4%	27%
AMD	Designer or software	FY2025	$34.6 bn	3%	23%	26%
Microchip	Fab or packaging owner	FY2025	$4.7 bn	2%	23%	25%
Teradyne	Machines, materials	FY2025	$3.2 bn	7%	16%	23%
NXP	Fab or packaging owner	FY2025	$12.3 bn	3%	19%	22%
Analog Devices	Fab or packaging owner	FY2025	$11.0 bn	5%	16%	21%
Applied Materials	Machines, materials	FY2025	$28.4 bn	8%	13%	21%
Entegris	Machines, materials	FY2025	$3.2 bn	9%	10%	20%
ASML	Machines, materials	FY2025	$36.9 bn	5%	14%	19%
Amazon	Cloud buyer	FY2025	$717 bn	18%	—	18%

Latest fiscal year in the filings, ranked by plant and research together as a share of sales. Acquisitions are not counted. TSMC is shown for 2024. [152]

Size and effort are different rankings. The largest spenders are not the most committed: Nvidia’s research bill is the industry’s largest but a small share of sales that have grown eightfold in three years. The highest shares belong to companies that are either building ahead of income (Wolfspeed, Intel) or are firms whose only product is design work (Arm, Synopsys, Marvell). Meta now puts back a larger share of its sales than TSMC does. A manufacturer that reinvests 40% of sales or more is taking a risk on demand it cannot yet see; that is the normal condition of a leading-edge fab owner and the reason so few remain.

Private against public

What the subsidies look like next to this

Put the two halves of this page together. The United States’ chip act was $52.7 billion over several years. China’s national fund raised about $98 billion over ten. TSMC alone spent $40.9 billion in 2025 and plans $52 to 56 billion in 2026: one company, in one year, spends about what the American act provides in total. [153] An industry forecast put spending on fab machines alone at about $110 billion in 2025. [157]

So public money does not build the industry. It moves where a small part of the private money lands. A subsidy is effective when it tips a decision a company was already close to making, as with TSMC in Arizona and Kumamoto, and weak when it has to substitute for a customer, as Intel’s falling plant spending shows despite the largest American award. The states that matter most in the next five years are therefore not only the ones writing cheques. They are the ones whose rules decide where four cloud companies may build and whom three or four manufacturers may sell to.

What would change this reading. A fall in the cloud buyers’ spending would reach the chip companies within a year, first as cancelled orders for memory and packaging, later as cuts at TSMC. The heatmap shows how fast that happened in 2023. The research rows would hold; the plant rows would not.

Limits. The filings cover companies that report to the American regulator: 40 of the 119 in this site’s directory. Samsung, SK hynix, SMIC, Tokyo Electron, Infineon and most Chinese and Japanese firms are missing; three of them are added to one chart from press reports and are not comparable line for line. Fiscal years differ: a year ending in January to June is counted with the calendar year before it, so Microsoft’s “2025” runs to June 2026 and Nvidia’s to January 2026. Amounts in Taiwan dollars and euros are converted at rough yearly average rates. TSMC’s 2025 figure is from its earnings call. The cloud companies’ figures are for the whole company, including warehouses and offices; Amazon’s especially. Capital spending is cash paid for property and equipment and leaves out leases, which are large for cloud companies. Group totals count only companies with all seven years, so they are lower than the true totals. Read on 13 November 2026.

Library · news, research and analysis, updated every day

Library: news, research and a daily analysis

Every morning this tab collects the day’s chip news and the newest research, and writes a briefing that analyses both. Below it is everything collected so far, then books and the references cited across the site.

Today’s briefing · news and research, written automatically

Loading the latest briefing…

Read the day’s strategy and what it means for Southeast Asia →

This section is rewritten once a day without a person in the loop. A program collects recent chip-war headlines from news search feeds, and a language model writes the briefing from those headlines and their one-line summaries only. Each day’s briefing is kept in the archive as it was written. It has not read the full reports and no editor has checked it, so it can be wrong or miss the point of a story. Each item links to the reports it rests on: read them before relying on anything here. The other tabs hold the checked analysis, current to 12 November 2026.

Everything collected

All news and research

Filter

Loading the library…

How this list is made. Once a day a program adds new items and keeps the old ones, so the list grows. News comes from news search feeds on chip topics. Papers come from eleven arXiv searches, on export controls, the chip supply chain, computing governance, accelerator design, chip manufacturing, memory and packaging, rare earths, industrial policy, computing sovereignty, hardware security and design software; arXiv papers are preprints and most have not been peer reviewed. Papers also include each day’s new arXiv submissions in hardware architecture. Journal items come from Nature Electronics, Nature Nanotechnology, three Nature subject feeds (electronic devices, semiconductors, electrical engineering), chip-related items in Nature, and Physical Review Applied. Science and Science Advances refuse automated reading and are not included. Trade press is IEEE Spectrum, Semiconductor Engineering, EE Times, TrendForce, SemiWiki, Semiconductor Digest, eeNews Europe, Asia Times, and chip-related items from The Register, Tom’s Hardware, Nikkei Asia and the South China Morning Post. Think tanks and analysis are CSET, CSIS, ITIF, Lawfare, ChinaTalk, SemiAnalysis and Interconnected. Nothing here is selected or checked by a person, the keyword filters let through some items that are not about the chip contest, and the collection began on 13 November 2026, so earlier work is missing.

Reading

Five books, and the limits of this page

Chris Miller, Chip War (2022). The standard history, from the first transistor to the 2022 controls. It explains how the industry became so concentrated and why states came to see that as a weapon. [28]
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire (2023). On how the United States turned networks it sat at the centre of, in finance and technology, into tools of coercion, and what that does to the networks.
Edward Fishman, Chokepoints (2025). An account by a former official of how sanctions and export controls were designed and used against Iran, Russia and China.
Dan Wang, Breakneck (2025). On why China builds physical industry faster than the United States, which bears on who wins a contest decided by plants and machines.
Marc Hijink, Focus: The ASML Way (2023). A history of the one company that makes EUV machines, and of how hard the machine is to copy.
T. R. Reid, The Chip (1984, revised 2001). How Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce separately invented the integrated circuit. The clearest account of what a chip is.
Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire (1997). The invention of the transistor at Bell Labs, and the physics behind it.
Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory (2012). Bell Labs as an institution: why one laboratory produced the transistor, the laser and information theory.
Arnold Thackray, David Brock and Rachel Jones, Moore’s Law (2015). A biography of Gordon Moore and of the prediction that organised the industry for fifty years.
Michael Malone, The Intel Trinity (2014). Noyce, Moore and Grove, and how Intel came to dominate processors.
Andrew Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive (1996). Intel’s chief executive on leaving the memory business to Japan. A view from inside an earlier chip war.
John Mathews and Dong-Sung Cho, Tiger Technology (2000). How Korea, Taiwan and Singapore built chip industries from nothing, by policy.
Daniel Nenni and Paul McLellan, Fabless (2013). How design and manufacturing came apart, which is the split the whole contest now runs along.
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Underground Empire (2023). How the United States learned to use the networks it sits at the centre of, including chips, as instruments of coercion.
Ed Conway, Material World (2023). Six materials that the modern economy rests on, with sand and silicon among them. Good on how physical the chain is.
Jacob Helberg, The Wires of War (2021). An argument for treating technology supply chains as a front in a contest with China.
Tae Kim, The Nvidia Way (2024). A company history of Nvidia and of how graphics chips became the engines of machine learning.
Stephen Witt, The Thinking Machine (2025). A biography of Nvidia’s founder and of the bet on accelerated computing.
Eva Dou, House of Huawei (2025). The history of the company at the centre of the American controls.
Patrick McGee, Apple in China (2025). How one company’s supply chain trained a generation of Chinese electronics makers.

Limits. Sources for 2025 and 2026 were read through search summaries, not in full, and several are trade press reports of analyst estimates or of unnamed officials. Events before 2025, the supply-chain shares other than those cited, the Ukrainian intelligence reports of computing modules in drones, and the book descriptions are written from memory and were not checked. Smuggling charges are allegations. Capacity, revenue and market-share figures for Chinese firms are forecasts. No source dated after September 2026 was found on the state of the truce.

References

Sources cited on this site

[1] World Semiconductor Trade Statistics. (2026). Global semiconductor market grows 26% in 2025 to $796B. Industry statistics body: full-year 2025 sales. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.wsts.org

[2] eeNews Europe; TelecomLead. (2025–2026). Global semiconductor market on track to hit $1T by 2026; WSTS raises semiconductor forecast. Trade press reports of the autumn 2025 and spring 2026 forecasts. The spring figure was found only in secondary reports. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.eenewseurope.com

[3] Focus Taiwan (CNA). (2026, 9 September). TSMC’s global foundry market share hits record 72.5% in Q2. News agency report of TrendForce revenue rankings for April to June 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. focustaiwan.tw

[4] Taipei Times. (2026, 14 March). TSMC nets nearly 70% of 2025 foundry market. Report of TrendForce full-year 2025 figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. news.ltn.com.tw

[5] Bureau of Industry and Security. (2026, January). Department of Commerce revises license review policy for semiconductors exported to China. United States government press release on case-by-case review for the Nvidia H200 class. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.bis.gov

[6] The Register. (2026, 14 January). Trump administration sets GPU export rules that put Chinese buyers at the back of the queue. Trade press account of the January 2026 rule and the earlier H20 history. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.theregister.com

[7] East Asia Forum. (2026, 11 March). US chip export controls have cooled down. Academic commentary on the easing of controls and their use as bargaining leverage. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. eastasiaforum.org

[8] Quartz. (2026, 31 May). US Commerce Department closes loophole on Nvidia chips for Chinese firms abroad. Report of guidance applying licence rules to Chinese-headquartered firms outside China. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. qz.com

[9] Tech Times. (2026, 15 July). Nvidia H200 shipments to China called ‘trivial’ as Blackwell loophole draws fire. Report of testimony to Congress by a Commerce Department official. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.techtimes.com

[10] Nvidia Corporation. (2026). Form 10-K for fiscal year 2026. Company annual filing: no revenue yet under the H200 licensing programme. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.sec.gov

[11] Tom’s Hardware. (2026). China’s chip champions ramp up production of accelerators at domestic fabs, but memory and fab capacity are towering bottlenecks. Trade press, citing J.P. Morgan and SemiAnalysis estimates. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.tomshardware.com

[12] TrendForce. (2026, 25 February). China reportedly aims to boost 7nm and 5nm output fivefold. Market research firm’s news summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.trendforce.com

[13] Tom’s Hardware. (2026). Huawei expects $12 billion in accelerator chip revenue this year as Nvidia’s China market share hits zero. Trade press report of company expectations. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.tomshardware.com

[14] Invezz. (2025, 29 September). Huawei to double chip output in 2026, targeting 1.6 million dies. Secondary report of Bloomberg reporting on Ascend output plans. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. invezz.com

[15] TrendForce. (2026, 20 February). China reportedly ramps up chip tool push, sets 70% target by 2027. Market research firm’s news summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.trendforce.com

[16] TrendForce. (2026, 2 September). China’s DUV could reach high-volume production in 2–5 years; EUV reportedly unlikely within a decade. Market research firm’s news summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.trendforce.com

[17] Yole Group. (2026). Mainland China semiconductor equipment industry 2026. Market research report summary: localisation rates by segment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.yolegroup.com

[18] Tom’s Hardware. (2026). China begins mass production of domestic immersion DUV lithography machines. Trade press, citing The Information. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.tomshardware.com

[19] American Enterprise Institute. (2026). The lithography loophole: how China is printing its way to chip self-sufficiency. Think-tank analysis of China’s installed base of lithography machines. Read partly through a Chinese-language search summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. ctse.aei.org

[20] Fastmarkets. (2025, November). China suspends export prohibition on gallium, germanium, antimony, superhard materials to US. Commodity price reporter: suspension to 27 November 2026, military end-user ban kept. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.fastmarkets.com

[21] Reuters, via Yahoo Finance. (2025). A timeline of the Sino-Dutch row over the control of chipmaker Nexperia. News agency timeline. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. finance.yahoo.com

[22] Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (2026, 20 March). Exposure of major Chinese-linked chip smuggling operations shows limits of industry self-policing. Think-tank policy brief on the March 2026 indictments. The charges are allegations. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.fdd.org

[23] Global Trade Alert. (2026). Subsidising the chokepoint: strategic convergence and its limits. Research report: capital of the three phases of China’s national chip fund. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. globaltradealert.org

[24] MUFG Americas. (2026, September). Chart of the day: global government chip incentives. Bank research note comparing national programmes. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.mufgamericas.com

[25] Center for Strategic and International Studies. A world of Chips Acts: the future of U.S.–EU semiconductor collaboration. Think-tank analysis of how much of each act is new money. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.csis.org

[26] Center for European Policy Analysis. Western chips power Russia’s war. Think-tank article on re-export routes. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. cepa.org

[27] Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. (2024). Report: challenges of export controls enforcement: how Russia continues to import components for its military production. Summary of the January 2024 study by the Kyiv School of Economics Institute and the Yermak-McFaul group. Read through a search summary. Accessed 12 November 2026. www.business-humanrights.org

[28] Miller, C. (2022). Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. New York: Scribner. The standard history, and the source of this site’s name. Described from memory, not checked against the text.

[29] LuatVietnam. (2024). Decision 1018/QD-TTg 2024: Strategy for development of Vietnam’s semiconductor industry through 2030, vision to 2050. English summary of the Prime Minister’s decision of 21 September 2024. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. luatvietnam.vn

[30] VnEconomy. (2024, 23 September). Vietnam unveils semiconductor industry development strategy. Report of the strategy’s three phases and targets. Other outlets give different target figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. en.vneconomy.vn

[31] VnExpress International. (2026, January). Vietnam breaks ground on first chip manufacturing plant. Report of the Viettel groundbreaking at Hoa Lac on 16 January 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. e.vnexpress.net

[32] TrendForce. (2026, 22 January). Vietnam breaks ground on first domestic chip plant, reportedly aims trial production by 2027. Trade press report, with the project’s approved cost and a comparison with the cost of an advanced fab. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[33] VnEconomy. (2026, January). Việt Nam sẽ bước vào nhóm số ít quốc gia sở hữu năng lực chế tạo chip bán dẫn. Vietnamese-language report of the groundbreaking, Viettel’s schedule to 2030 and its 28-nanometre security chip. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. vneconomy.vn

[34] The Investor. (2026, January). FPT, Viettel team up to build strategic semiconductor capabilities. Report of the FPT–Viettel partnership and FPT’s packaging and testing plant in Bac Ninh. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theinvestor.vn

[35] The Investor. (2026). Intel urged to expand chip packaging, testing operations in Vietnam. Report describing Intel’s Ho Chi Minh City plant, its share of Intel’s assembly and test output, and its workforce. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theinvestor.vn

[36] Germany Trade and Invest. (2026). Halbleiterindustrie nimmt Vietnam ins Visier. German trade agency overview of foreign chip investments in Vietnam, including Amkor, Hana Micron and Victory Giant. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gtai.de

[37] VnEconomy. (2026, July). Ngành chip Việt Nam thừa kỹ sư thiết kế vật lý, khát kiến trúc sư trưởng. Vietnamese-language report on the mix of design skills: many physical-design engineers, few chief architects. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. vneconomy.vn

[38] Báo Đầu tư. (2025). Giải cơn khát nhân lực bán dẫn. Vietnamese-language report on the 50,000-engineer programme under Decision 1017 and the present count of design engineers. Counts differ between outlets (about 5,000 to 7,000). Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. baodautu.vn

[39] Việt Nam News. (2026, September). Power shortage risk rises as AI, data centres and rail drive demand. Report of projected electricity shortfalls for 2027 to 2030 and of delayed transmission projects. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. vietnamnews.vn

[40] VnExpress International. (2025, December). Vietnam bans raw rare-earth export in new mineral law. Report of the amendments to the Law on Geology and Mineral Resources passed on 11 December 2025. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. e.vnexpress.net

[41] DIGITIMES Asia. (2025, 12 December). Vietnam bans raw rare earth exports. Trade press report of the amended law, state designation of rare-earth enterprises, and the 2025 reserve estimate. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. digitimes.com

[42] The Star. (2026, 21 February). Trump to remove Vietnam from restricted tech list, says Hanoi. News agency report of the Vietnamese government’s statement after To Lam’s visit to Washington. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thestar.com.my

[43] RANE Worldview. (2026, 16 July). Vietnam, U.S.: Washington maintains pressure on Hanoi in trade negotiations. Situation report quoting the US Trade Representative on the conditions for access to high-technology equipment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ranenetwork.com

[44] Vietcetera. (2026, November). The Jensen Huang fallout: how Nvidia’s Megaspeed headache reaches Vietnam’s AI boom. Analysis citing a C4ADS study of diverted shipments. The Megaspeed matter is an investigation; no public finding of a violation was reported. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. vietcetera.com

[45] Việt Nam News. (2026). Viettel partners with NVIDIA to build sovereign AI ecosystem. Report of Viettel’s computing agreement; background on the December 2024 Nvidia agreement with the government is from Radio Free Asia. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. vietnamnews.vn

[46] AI Weekly. (2026). Commerce drafts rule to shut China’s remote AI-chip access. Summary of reporting on the draft remote-access rule and the Remote Access Security Act. Secondary source. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aiweekly.co

[47] VietnamPlus. (2026). Vietnam set to capitalise on global trade shifts. Report giving China’s share of Vietnam’s imports in 2025. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. en.vietnamplus.vn

[48] Allen & Gledhill. (2025). Vietnam’s new Data Law to come into effect 1 July 2025. Law firm note on Law No. 60/2024/QH15: core and important data, transfer assessments, the National Data Center. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. allenandgledhill.com

[49] Rajah & Tann Asia. (2025). New Law on Personal Data Protection comes into operation on 1 January 2026. Law firm note on Law No. 91/2025/QH15: cross-border transfer assessments and penalties. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. rajahtannasia.com

[50] Vietnam Investment Review. (2026, November). First Vietnam–South Korea AI and Semiconductor conference set to open. Report before the 12 November 2026 meeting in Hanoi. The count of eight agreements is from next-day headlines in VnEconomy and VietnamPlus, not read in full. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. vir.com.vn

[51] Lowy Institute. (2026). Taiwan’s two-speed AI economy. Analysis of the chip boom’s weight in Taiwan’s economy and of who benefits. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. lowyinstitute.org

[52] AmCham Taiwan, Taiwan Business Topics. (2026, February). How long can Taiwan ride the AI wave?. Business magazine report with export and growth figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. topics.amcham.com.tw

[53] Liberty Times. (2026). 台積電2奈米今年最大月產能14萬片量產一年就直追3奈米. Chinese-language report of 2-nanometre production in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung and its capacity. Capacity figures are supply-chain estimates. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ec.ltn.com.tw

[54] TrendForce. (2026, 16 July). TSMC boosts Arizona investment by US$100B, plans 4 more fabs for 2nm and advanced packaging. Trade press report relaying Bloomberg; other reports give different totals for the American commitment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[55] TrendForce. (2025, 23 December). Samsung set to benefit from TSMC’s N-2 rule as AMD, Google reportedly eye U.S. 2nm production. Trade press report on Taiwan’s rule that processes moved abroad must trail the leading edge by two generations. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[56] Taipei Times. (2025, 2 October). Taiwan will not agree to 50-50 chip production deal with US, negotiator says. Report of the vice premier’s rejection of the American proposal. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taipeitimes.com

[57] Automotive Logistics. (2026, January). Taiwan to face lower tariffs and invest in US chip manufacturing in new trade deal. Trade press report of the 15 January 2026 agreement and its chip-tariff terms. Its later status was not checked. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. automotivelogistics.media

[58] Evertiq. (2025, 16 June). Taiwan adds China’s Huawei and SMIC to export control list. Trade press report of the June 2025 update to the Strategic High-Tech Commodities Entity List. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. evertiq.com

[59] Atlantic Council. (2026). The Iran war tests Taiwan’s energy resilience. Think-tank analysis of gas stocks, import dependence and the fuel mix. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. atlanticcouncil.org

[60] Australian Strategic Policy Institute, The Strategist. (2026). Taiwan worsens its vulnerability to a Chinese energy blockade. Think-tank commentary on gas dependence under blockade. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aspistrategist.org.au

[61] Design & Reuse. (2026, April). NEDO approves Rapidus FY2026 plan and budget for 2nm semiconductor projects. Trade press report of the state agency’s approval and the year’s budget. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. design-reuse.com

[62] Hokkaido Shimbun. (2026). 「2ナノ級」半導体量産へ国内企業結集ラピダス資金調達にめど. Japanese-language report of the funding round: state and 32 private firms, the state as largest shareholder with a golden share. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. hokkaido-np.co.jp

[63] Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun. (2026). ラピダス、本格生産は28年度次世代半導体の国産化、北海道. Japanese-language report that full production is expected in fiscal 2028, after a start in late fiscal 2027. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. kumanichi.com

[64] Focus Taiwan (CNA). (2026, 31 March). Taiwan approves 3nm technology for TSMC’s second Kumamoto fab. News agency report of the Taiwanese ministry’s approval. Title paraphrased from the search summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. focustaiwan.tw

[65] Tom’s Hardware. (2025). TSMC’s second Japanese fab reportedly delayed, mass production pushed to 2029. Trade press report on the timing of the second Kumamoto fab. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tomshardware.com

[66] TrendForce. (2025, 3 December). Japan rumored to curb photoresist exports as China targets 40% self-sufficiency by 2026. Trade press report; the curb itself was a rumour and was not confirmed. Market shares for wafers, photoresist and equipment are from a Nikkei survey of 2025 read through a secondary summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[67] Greenberg Traurig. (2026, February). China imposes escalated export controls on dual-use items to Japan. Law firm note on the 6 January 2026 measure and the entity list of 24 February. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gtlaw.com

[68] South China Morning Post. (2026). China cuts exports of two hi-tech metals to Japan, increases rare earth shipments. Report of customs data on gallium, germanium and magnets. Title paraphrased from the search summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. scmp.com

[69] Asia Times. (2026, July). China cites 40 Japanese firms for advancing remilitarization. Report of the second list of Japanese firms barred from receiving dual-use goods. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. asiatimes.com

[70] Thomson Reuters. (2025, 19 November). Japan updates export control regulations: key changes and business implications. Regulatory note on Japan’s amended export control rules. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thomsonreuters.com

[71] Fortune. (2026, 22 March). Musk’s Terafab chip project for Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. Report of the announcement in Austin. Title paraphrased from the search summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fortune.com

[72] Built In. (2026). What is Elon Musk’s Terafab project?. Explainer giving cost estimates and the two-fab design. Secondary source. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. builtin.com

[73] South China Morning Post. (2026). Nvidia ships first H200s to China, forecasts no data centre computing revenue. Report of Nvidia’s quarterly results and China outlook. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. scmp.com

[74] Caixin Global. (2026, 18 March). Nvidia gets license to sell advanced H200 chips to China. Report of the licence and its terms. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. caixinglobal.com

[75] Caixin Global. (2026, 29 January). ASML expects China revenue drop following backlog-fueled surge. Report of ASML’s results and its forecast of China’s share of sales. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. caixinglobal.com

[76] Counterpoint Research. (2026). Global DRAM and HBM market share: quarterly. Market research tracker; shares differ between quarters and between research firms. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. counterpointresearch.com

[77] TrendForce. (2026, 28 January). SK hynix reportedly to supply about two-thirds of Nvidia HBM4; Samsung targets early delivery. Trade press report of supply shares for the next generation of stacked memory. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[78] Korea JoongAng Daily. (2025, 28 July). Samsung Foundry bags $16.5B contract with Tesla. Report of the contract disclosed by Samsung and confirmed by Tesla’s chief executive. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. koreajoongangdaily.com

[79] The Next Web. (2026). US government’s Intel stake jumps to $36B after CHIPS Act grants were converted to equity. Report of the state shareholding and its value. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thenextweb.com

[80] Tom’s Hardware. (2026). Huawei expects $12 billion in AI chip revenue this year as Nvidia’s China market share hits zero. Trade press report of Huawei’s revenue target. Unit plans come from analyst estimates. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tomshardware.com

[81] Caixin Global. (2025, 19 September). Huawei unveils three-year AI chip roadmap as Nvidia faces setbacks in China. Report of the Ascend roadmap to 2028. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. caixinglobal.com

[82] Tom’s Hardware. (2026). Cambricon targets 500,000 AI chips in 2026 as China accelerates domestic hardware push. Trade press report of Cambricon’s output target and its limits. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tomshardware.com

[83] Al Jazeera. (2026, 1 October). South Korea’s exports hit record high on AI boom. Report of export records and the share of chips in exports. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aljazeera.com

[84] New Straits Times. (2026, September). South Korea exports surpass full-year record, hit US$709.4bil. News agency report of cumulative exports and chip shipments to early September. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. nst.com.my

[85] Korea Economic Institute of America. (2026). How far can South Korea’s export rally go?. Think-tank analysis of the export boom and the risk from Chinese memory makers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. keia.org

[86] Tom’s Hardware. (2025, December). US grants Samsung and SK hynix 2026 licenses for chipmaking tool shipments to China. Trade press report, from Reuters, of the annual licences that replaced the standing exemption. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tomshardware.com

[87] The Korea Times. (2026, 29 January). National Assembly passes special bill on supporting semiconductor industry. Report of the Semiconductor Special Act and the removal of the working-hours exemption. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. koreatimes.co.kr

[88] The Korea Herald. (2026, August). Presidential commission, special funding created; labor issue deferred. Report on the Act taking effect. Only the headline and summary were seen. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. koreaherald.com

[89] Congressional Research Service. (2026, 17 September). U.S.–South Korea bilateral trade relations (IF10733). Summary of the November 2025 trade and investment deal and the status of chip tariff terms. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. everycrsreport.com

[90] Kuki News. (2025, 6 December). 반도체 수출 역대급인데…소부장 국산화 30%대 ‘취약한 뿌리’. Korean-language report that home supply of materials, parts and equipment is in the 30% range. Only the headline and summary were seen. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. kukinews.com

[91] TrendForce. (2025, 11 August). Nvidia, AMD make historic deal, reportedly pay 15% of H20, MI308 China sales for export licenses. Trade press report relaying the Financial Times. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[92] Asia Times. (2025, December). AMD’s MI308 chips may face H20-like headwinds in China. Report on the licensed chip and the Chinese response. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. asiatimes.com

[93] StorageNewsletter. (2026, 2 October). Micron Technology: fiscal 4Q26 and FY26 financial results. Trade summary of Micron’s results. Figures were not checked against the filing. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. storagenewsletter.com

[94] Business Standard. (2025, 3 July). US rolls back chip software export curbs on China; Siemens, Synopsys, Cadence resume operations. News agency report of the rescinded licence letters. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. business-standard.com

[95] Yahoo Finance (Reuters). (2025, October). Applied Materials’ shares drop as stringent US export curbs weigh on China business. Report of the company’s warning about the affiliates rule. Its later suspension is from secondary reports. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. finance.yahoo.com

[96] AnySilicon. (2026, August). SMIC Q2 2026 revenue surpasses $3 billion as AI demand tightens foundry capacity. Trade summary of SMIC’s quarterly results. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. anysilicon.com

[97] Electrek. (2026, 22 March). Tesla, SpaceX “Terafab” chip factory announcement. Critical report of the March announcement, with the capacity and compute targets. Title paraphrased from the search summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. electrek.co

[98] Manufacturing Dive. (2026). SpaceX to invest $16B in first phase of Terafab project in Grimes County, Texas. Trade report of the site and the first-phase commitment announced with the Texas governor’s office. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. manufacturingdive.com

[99] Commercial Search. (2026). SpaceX JV eyes new Texas site for $55B manufacturing project. Property-trade report of the county filing and the tax abatement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. commercialsearch.com

[100] Tom’s Hardware. (2026, November). Elon Musk’s Terafab targets 1 million wafers a month after 2032. Trade press report, from Japanese press, of targets given informally to equipment makers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tomshardware.com

[101] Seoul Economic Daily. (2026, 10 November). Musk’s Terafab orders Japanese chip equipment, targets 2028 output. Report of equipment orders and the production target. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. en.sedaily.com

[102] 24/7 Wall St. (2026, 7 November). Musk says his Terafab chip plant could cost $1 trillion. Report of remarks at an investor conference on 6 November. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. 247wallst.com

[103] Benzinga. (2026, November). Elon Musk “softened his stance” as TSMC eyes Terafab role: report. Report that a larger role for TSMC is being weighed. Secondary source. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. benzinga.com

[104] The Edge Singapore (Bloomberg). (2026). Musk’s Terafab fever dream exposes reality of AI chip crunch. Report quoting Bernstein analysts’ estimate of the capital a full-scale Terafab would need. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theedgesingapore.com

[105] Yole Group. (2026). Elon’s Terafab dream. Market-research commentary with a cost estimate. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. yolegroup.com

[106] TrendForce. (2026, 10 August). Samsung’s HBM4 yield reportedly hits 80%. Trade press report; the yield figure is from unnamed sources. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[107] Al Jazeera. (2026, 12 November). Xi Jinping says Taiwan’s ‘complete reunification’ with China will happen. News report with agency material from AFP and Reuters. Read in full on 13 November 2026. aljazeera.com

[108] The Defense Post. (2026, 11 August). Ukraine finds 5,816 Western, Asian components in Russian weapon systems. Report of the Ukrainian defence intelligence tally. The figures are Ukrainian government claims. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thedefensepost.com

[109] The Kyiv Independent. (2026). Exclusive: American, European microchips found in Russia’s latest missile-like drone. Investigation of the electronics in the Geran-5. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. kyivindependent.com

[110] ArmyInform. (2026, 18 August). Nvidia Jetson microcomputer found in Russia’s new Monokhrom missile: Defence Intelligence. Ukrainian defence ministry outlet reporting the intelligence directorate’s finding. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. armyinform.com.ua

[111] Tom’s Hardware. (2025). Russia allegedly field-testing deadly next-gen AI drone powered by Nvidia Jetson Orin. Trade press report of a Ukrainian official’s account of the MS001 variant. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tomshardware.com

[112] Ukrinform. (2026). Russia replacing American components in Shahed drones with Chinese ones: Ukraine intel. Report of the intelligence directorate’s component shares. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ukrinform.net

[113] Euromaidan Press. (2026, 26 January). Ukraine will build 7 million drones in 2026, and it still won’t be enough. Report of production figures and targets. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euromaidanpress.com

[114] Associated Press, via ABC News. (2026, October). The not-so-secret vulnerability in Ukraine’s drone arsenal? Chinese technology. News agency report citing Ukrainian customs data on imported drone parts. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. abcnews.com

[115] DroneLife. (2026, 11 March). Ukraine’s drone industry and the Chinese parts supply chain. Trade report relaying a New York Times account of drones built without Chinese parts. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dronelife.com

[116] War on the Rocks. (2026). The United States is repeating its silicon mistake with gallium nitride. Commentary on gallium nitride in radars and electronic warfare. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. warontherocks.com

[117] Forecast International. (2026, 9 September). Critical minerals: how little known elements determine U.S. national defense strategy. Defence-market analysis with figures on gallium stockpiles and supplier exposure. Secondary source. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. forecastinternational.com

[118] The Defense Post. (2026, 21 July). US seeks to limit key materials from China, others in defense supply chains. Report on procurement rules for minerals and magnets. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thedefensepost.com

[119] Intel. (2026, July). Intel completes RAMP-C program, accelerating momentum for Secure Enclave. Company announcement. The award of up to $3 billion is from trade press reports of 2024. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. intel.com

[120] Defense News. (2022, 26 July). After years of inattention, Congress scrambles to save defense supply chain. Report from the debate on the CHIPS Act, with chip counts for weapons given by officials and contractors. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensenews.com

[121] Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group. (2021, April). Strengthening the global semiconductor supply chain in an uncertain era. Industry study; the finding on concentration is repeated in its 2024 follow-up. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. semiconductors.org

[122] Evertiq. (2025, 26 December). Global semiconductor supply chain remains concentrated, exposing bottlenecks. Trade report of a briefing drawing on IISS, SIA and BCG data. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. evertiq.com

[123] SoftwareSeni. (2026). TSMC CoWoS packaging: the silent bottleneck in the AI chip supply chain. Secondary analysis collecting analysts’ estimates of packaging capacity and allocation. The figures are projections. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. softwareseni.com

[124] TrendForce. (2026, 20 July). TSMC’s $265B U.S. bet: “no food left on the table” despite 4–5x higher fab construction costs. Trade press report of the chief financial officer’s remarks. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[125] TechInsights. (2025). TSMC’s true cost: Arizona versus Taiwan. Cost model comparing wafer processing in the two places. Summary only was seen. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. techinsights.com

[126] Bloomberg. (2024, 3 April). How Taiwan quake puts world’s most advanced chips at risk. News report of the April 2024 earthquake and its effect on fabs. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bloomberg.com

[127] Taipei Times. (2024, 4 October). Chipmakers assess quartz supply after Hurricane Helene. Report on the Spruce Pine mines and chipmakers’ statements. Title paraphrased from the search summary. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taipeitimes.com

[128] TrendForce. (2026, 25 February). China reportedly aims to boost 7nm, 5nm output fivefold. Trade press report relaying Nikkei on capacity targets for advanced chips. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[129] TechNode. (2026, 17 September). Huawei’s Ascend 960 supernode. Report from Huawei’s annual conference on deployed systems and the revised roadmap. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technode.com

[130] TrendForce. (2025, 18 September). Huawei unveils Ascend 950 with in-house HBM in 2026, touts SuperPoD to rival Nvidia. Trade press report of the roadmap and the first chip with Huawei’s own stacked memory. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[131] TechNews 科技新報. (2026, 28 July). 長鑫存儲列入首批國產 DUV 採購企業. Chinese-language report, relaying The Information and Reuters, of small-batch production of a domestic immersion lithography machine. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technews.tw

[132] TechNews 科技新報. (2026, 6 March). 中國半導體高層呼籲整合資源打造 ASML 替代體系. Chinese-language report of industry leaders’ call for a national lithography effort and their assessment of the gap. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technews.tw

[133] TechNews 科技新報. (2026, 16 July). 長鑫存儲上市募資 579 億人民幣，推進下一階段 DRAM 與產能布局. Chinese-language report of the Shanghai listing and the use of proceeds. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technews.tw

[134] 华尔街见闻. (2026). 北方华创2025年营收增长逾三成，净利润小幅下降. Chinese-language report of Naura’s annual results. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wallstreetcn.com

[135] 华尔街见闻. (2026). 中微公司2025年营收同比大增36.6%，归母净利润增长30.7%. Chinese-language report of AMEC’s annual results. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wallstreetcn.com

[136] 聯合新聞網. (2026). 陸拚半導體自主大基金三期進入「實戰」. Chinese-language report on the third national chip fund and its sub-funds. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. udn.com

[137] 凤凰网科技. (2026). 成熟制程与8英寸产能转向中国企业. Chinese-language report relaying Nikkei, TrendForce and SEMI figures on foundry rankings and mature capacity. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tech.ifeng.com

[138] 虎嗅. (2026). 中国芯片产业的规模与口径. Chinese-language analysis of market-share measures and of domestic equipment shares. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. huxiu.com

[139] All About Industries. (2026). Self-sufficient China aims to meet 80% of its own chip needs by 2030. Report of an industry roadmap drawn up by Chinese chip executives. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. all-about-industries.com

[140] 界面新闻. (2025). 新凯来：深圳国资全资控股的半导体设备企业. Chinese-language report on SiCarrier’s ownership and products. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. jiemian.com

[141] Electronics360. (2025). Report: Huawei assembles homegrown chip ecosystem amid US sanctions. Report on Huawei’s investments in domestic chip suppliers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. electronics360.globalspec.com

[142] 自由時報. (2026). 年增29.5% 台灣半導體業今年產值估破8兆. Taiwanese report of the research institute’s and industry association’s 2026 output forecast by segment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ec.ltn.com.tw

[143] TVBS 新聞. (2026, January). 台積電法說：2奈米需求爆、先進封裝翻倍增、資本支出創高. Taiwanese report of TSMC’s investor conference: capital spending and where it goes. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.tvbs.com.tw

[144] TechNews 科技新報. (2026, 21 September). 台積電 2 奈米與 3 奈米產能大增. Taiwanese report of the 2- and 3-nanometre ramp and the next processes. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technews.tw

[145] 中央社. (2025, 18 December). 國科會：國家核心關鍵技術採 N-2 原則. News agency report of the science council’s statement on the two-generation rule. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cna.com.tw

[146] 中央社. (2025, 27 April). 產創三讀強化對外審查經部：台積電先進技術必留台灣. News agency report of the amended law on outward investment review. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cna.com.tw

[147] TechNews 科技新報. (2026, 27 April). 台積電 2 奈米洩密案宣判，被告工程師遭最重判處 10 年徒刑. Taiwanese report of the verdict in the 2-nanometre trade-secret case. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technews.tw

[148] 中央社. (2026, 16 January). 台美關稅協議：對等關稅15%、半導體232最優惠待遇. News agency report of the terms announced by Taiwan’s government. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cna.com.tw

[149] 數位時代. (2026). 半導體用電2035年翻倍，產業協會談核電重啟. Taiwanese report of the utility chairman’s forecast for chip and server electricity demand. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bnext.com.tw

[150] RECCESSARY. (2026). 台積電2025永續報告書：用電量與占比. Report of TSMC’s electricity use from its sustainability report. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. reccessary.com

[151] TechNews 科技新報. (2026, 4 February). 聯發科：今年 ASIC 營收逾 10 億美元，2027 年比重二成. Taiwanese report of MediaTek’s custom-chip targets; later reports raise them. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technews.tw

[152] U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2026). EDGAR company facts: annual reports on forms 10-K and 20-F. Official filings. Capital spending is the cash paid for property, plant and equipment; research spending is the expense in the income statement. Read by this site’s script on 13 November 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. sec.gov

[153] MarketBeat. (2026, 15 January). Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing fourth-quarter earnings call highlights. Report of the company’s call: capital spending of $40.9 billion in 2025 and a budget of $52 to 56 billion for 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. marketbeat.com

[154] Samsung Electronics. (2026). 2025 capex results. Regulatory announcement: capital spending of about ₩52.7 trillion in 2025, for the whole company including displays. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. investegate.co.uk

[155] Edaily. (2026, 10 June). Chipmakers’ investment ranking compiled by CEO Score. Korean press report of a data firm’s ranking. SK hynix’s capital spending is this site’s subtraction of its research spending from the combined figure. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. edaily.co.kr

[156] TrendForce. (2026, 11 February). SMIC posts record $9.3B in 2025 sales. Trade press report of unaudited results: capital spending of about $8.1 billion in 2025, with 2026 expected at about the same level. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[157] SEMI. (2025, March). Global fab equipment investment expected to reach $110 billion in 2025. Industry association forecast, made in March 2025 and not updated here. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. semi.org

[158] Semiconductor Industry Association. (2026, 27 July). 2026 State of the Industry Report: Historic Growth Amid Intensifying Global Competition. Industry association report page. Supports 2025 world sales, the US-headquartered share of 53.4% and research spending. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. semiconductors.org

[159] Evertiq. (2025, 26 December). Global semiconductor supply chain remains concentrated, exposing bottlenecks. Trade press summary of a GSIS briefing citing IISS, SIA and BCG data. Supports country shares by segment of the chain. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. evertiq.com

[160] US Government Accountability Office. (2026, 6 August). Semiconductors: Commerce Needs Plan to Meet CHIPS for America R&D Requirements (GAO-26-109121). Congressional audit report. Supports CHIPS award and payment totals, the equity factor, amended awards and cancelled research awards. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gao.gov

[161] Intel Corporation. (2025, 22 August). Intel and Trump Administration Reach Historic Agreement to Accelerate American Technology and Manufacturing Leadership. Company press release. Supports the terms of the government’s 9.9% stake, its funding sources and the warrant. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. intc.com

[162] EY. (2026, 15 January). US Section 232 proclamation imposes 25% tariff on certain semiconductors. Tax advisory alert. Supports the rate, scope, exemptions and the two-phase plan of the 14 January 2026 proclamation. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taxnews.ey.com

[163] ArentFox Schiff. (2026, 16 January). BIS Relaxes Export License Review for H200 Chips to China and Macau – But Adds Compliance Burdens and Certification Risk. Law firm alert. Supports the 15 January 2026 rule, its performance thresholds and the conditions attached to licences. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. afslaw.com

[164] CNBC. (2026, 14 July). U.S. trade official says ‘very few’ Nvidia H200 AI chips have been shipped to China. News report on congressional testimony. Supports the low volume of licensed shipments, the December 2025 decision and Nvidia’s stance. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cnbc.com

[165] TrendForce. (2026, 20 July). TSMC’s $265B U.S. Bet: ‘No Food Left on the Table’ Despite 4-5x Higher Fab Construction Costs. Industry news service. Supports TSMC’s US investment total, Arizona nodes and timing, and the construction cost gap. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[166] The Motley Fool. (2026, 30 October). Intel (INTC) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript. Transcript of Intel’s 29 October 2026 call. Supports the 18A ramp, foundry revenue and loss, and external foundry revenue. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fool.com

[167] Electrek. (2026, 13 July). Samsung’s Texas fab enters production for Tesla’s AI5 chip on 2nm. Trade news report. Supports the node, the April equipment installation and the 2027 volume target at Samsung’s Taylor fab. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. electrek.co

[168] TrendForce. (2026, 17 June). TSMC, Amkor Sign 10-Year Arizona Advanced Packaging Pact to Complete the U.S. Chip Supply Chain. Industry news service. Supports the packaging gap for Arizona-made chips and the 2028 and 2029 plant dates. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[169] Fastmarkets. (2025, 11 November). China suspends export prohibition on gallium, germanium, antimony, superhard materials to US. Commodity price reporting agency. Supports the December 2024 ban, its suspension to 27 November 2026 and what stayed in force. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fastmarkets.com

[170] StorageNewsletter. (2026, 27 October). ASML: Fiscal 3Q26 Financial Results. Trade reprint of ASML’s results release, used for third-quarter 2026 sales, margin, service revenue, guidance and the capacity statement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. storagenewsletter.com

[171] AI Weekly, citing South China Morning Post. (2026, 15 October). ASML Q3 China Equipment Sales Soar 109% QoQ to 23% of System Shipments as Memory Makers Stockpile. News alert summarising a South China Morning Post report, used for China’s share of ASML machine sales and the stockpiling explanation. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aiweekly.co

[172] IO+. (2026, 12 October). ASML caught between US and China over MATCH Act. Dutch technology news site, used for the terms of the US bill, the DUV installed base in China, service revenue at risk and the 2019 EUV block. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ioplus.nl

[173] Bits&Chips. (2026, 24 June). Dutch minister pushes back on US bid to tighten China chip controls. Dutch trade press report on minister Sjoerdsma’s Washington visit, used for the Dutch position, the scope of current DUV controls and Pax Silica. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bits-chips.com

[174] Rijksoverheid. (2025, 15 January). Klever: aanscherping exportcontrole op geavanceerde productieapparatuur voor halfgeleiders. Dutch government news release, in Dutch, used for the dates and scope of the national export licence rule. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. rijksoverheid.nl

[175] DutchNews. (2026, 11 February). Court orders investigation into chipmaker Nexperia. English-language Dutch news report, used for the court ruling, the 1952 law, China’s delivery halt and the damages claim. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dutchnews.nl

[176] IO+. (2025, 19 November). Dutch government suspends intervention at chipmaker Nexperia. Dutch technology news site, used for the suspension of the Goods Availability Act order and the power to reinstate it. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ioplus.nl

[177] Bits&Chips. (2026, 4 November). Nexperia sues Wingtech and founder Zhang for damages. Dutch trade press report, used for the state of the Nexperia dispute in November 2026 and the two lawsuits. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bits-chips.com

[178] DutchNews. (2026, 8 September). ASML begins building new 20,000 workplace Eindhoven campus. English-language Dutch news report, used for the campus size, timing and the €2.5 billion state pledge. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dutchnews.nl

[179] Implicator. (2026, 26 July). Zeiss Oberkochen expansion and ASML’s EUV optics capacity. Technology news analysis that quotes ASML’s 2025 annual report, used for the Zeiss dependence, the 24.9% stake, purchases, loans and EUV capacity plans. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. implicator.ai

[180] TechNews. (2026, 1 September). High-NA EUV moving towards the era of high-volume production. Taiwanese technology news report, in Chinese, used for the number of high-NA machines in use, throughput and availability. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. finance.technews.tw

[181] ASM International. (2026, 27 October). ASM reports third quarter 2026 results. Company press release as carried by a press-release site, used for ASM’s revenue, margin, China comment and 2027 outlook. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. generation-nt.com

[182] Infineon Technologies, via AAP. (2026, 2 July). Infineon opens the world’s largest fab for power semiconductors and analog/mixed-signal technologies in Dresden. Company press release that supports the €5 billion investment, 1,000 jobs, the early opening, the product uses and the energy and water figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aap.com.au

[183] dpa-AFX, via Der Aktionär. (2026, 14 September). ROUNDUP: Richtfest für neue Dresdner ESMC-Mikrochip-Fabrik: Meilenstein. News agency report in German on the topping-out ceremony that supports the €10 billion cost, €5 billion federal aid, ownership split, 12 nanometre limit, 2027 start and the Silicon Saxony figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. deraktionaer.de

[184] eeNews Europe. (2026, 12 August). Chips Act 2.0, Part 1: Europe’s second semiconductor push. Trade press analysis that supports the 3 June 2026 proposal, its contents and missing budget, the auditors’ 11.7% forecast, the 2027 timetable and the planned capacity of the Dresden joint venture. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. eenewseurope.com

[185] eeNews Europe. (2025, 29 July). Intel cancels German fab, looks to sell off edge chip business. Trade press report that supports the cancellation of the Magdeburg fab, the €6.8 billion in incentives and the reasons Intel gave. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. eenewseurope.com

[186] Börsen-Zeitung, with Reuters. (2025, 24 October). Chip-Mangel führt zu Kurzarbeit bei Autozulieferern. German financial daily that supports the Bosch short-time work application in Salzgitter, Volkswagen’s position, the affected parts and the economics ministry’s response. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. boersen-zeitung.de

[187] Rusche, C., Wirtschaftsdienst. (2026, January). Wie abhängig sind Deutschland und die EU von Chipimporten?. Open-access economics journal article based on Eurostat trade data that supports the import shares, the Nexperia timeline and the easing by November 2025. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wirtschaftsdienst.eu

[188] heise online. (2025, 11 December). Globalfoundries receives 495 million euros for foundry expansion. Technology news report that supports the €495 million aid, the €1.1 billion expansion, the 22 nanometre class process, the wafer capacity and the crisis-priority condition. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. heise.de

[189] Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt. (2026, 27 October). Hightech aus Deutschland: Bundesforschungsministerin Bär besucht TRUMPF. Federal research ministry notice that supports Trumpf’s role as supplier of EUV lasers, the value chain with ASML and Zeiss, and microelectronics as one of six key technologies. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bmftr.bund.de

[190] ZEISS, via Viet Nam News Media OutReach. (2025, 18 December). ZEISS concludes fiscal year 2024/25 with solid growth. Company press release, as republished by a news wire, that supports the segment revenue of €5.055 billion and its 23% growth. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. vietnamnews.vn

[191] Rödl & Partner. (2026, 27 April). Strompreisentlastungen: Industriestrompreis kommt. Law and audit firm briefing in German that supports the approval date, the 2026 to 2028 period, the 50% coverage, the 5 cent floor and the eligibility of chip production. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. roedl.com

[192] electrive.net. (2026, 3 November). Bosch stellt Halbleitergeschäft ab 2028 neu auf. German trade press report that supports Bosch’s new Semiconductors division, the €5 billion revenue target, the €3 billion invested in Dresden and Reutlingen and the opening to outside customers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. electrive.net

[193] Verdict. (2024, 24 October). Wolfspeed German chip plant plans. Business news report that supports the suspension of the Ensdorf plant, the €515 million in promised state funding and the reason given. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. verdict.co.uk

[194] Business Today. (2026, 15 July). Cabinet approves Semicon 2.0 with budget outlay of ₹1.27 lakh crore. Indian business news report on the Cabinet decision. It supports the budget, the six pillars, the 12 approved projects and the three units in commercial production. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. businesstoday.in

[195] Kaur, G., Light Reading. (2026, 20 July). India widens semiconductor strategy beyond fabs. Trade press report. It supports the dollar value of the budget, the lower subsidy rates and the 2029 goal for domestic applications. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. lightreading.com

[196] TrendForce. (2026, 20 July). Tata’s India fab reportedly to launch at 90nm instead of 28nm, commercial production delayed to mid-2028. Industry analyst news item relaying Bloomberg and company statements. It supports the Dholera timeline, the node plan and PSMC’s role. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[197] Pattanaik, A., Verdict. (2026, 18 May). ASML, Tata Electronics partner on India’s first chip fab. Business news report on the Tata and ASML agreement. It supports the lithography supply deal, the 300mm wafer size and the $11 billion commitment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. verdict.co.uk

[198] Entrepreneur India. (2026, 18 September). Micron to Scale Sanand Chip Output to Hundreds of Millions. Business news report of Micron’s chief executive speaking at SEMICON India 2026. It supports the Sanand start date, investment and output targets. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. india.entrepreneur.com

[199] Sahi. (2026, 18 September). CG Power Boosts India Semiconductor Push As Advanced Packaging Emerges As Growth Engine. Indian market news report. It supports CG Semi’s production start, first shipment to Renesas, capacity and investment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. sahi.com

[200] Autocar Professional. (2026, 5 October). Tata Electronics Begins Semiconductor Pilot In Assam, Automotive Modules In Focus. Automotive trade press report. It supports the Assam pilot start, investment, design capacity, packaging types and named customers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. autocarpro.in

[201] Press Information Bureau, Government of India. (2026, 4 January). Design Linked Incentive Scheme: Catalyzing India’s Semiconductor Design Ecosystem. Official government backgrounder. It supports the DLI project counts, tape-outs, incentive caps, the first-phase budget and C-DAC’s role. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. static.pib.gov.in

[202] Press Information Bureau, Government of India. (2025, 15 December). DHRUV64: India’s First 1.0 GHz, 64-bit dual-core Microprocessor. Official government backgrounder. It supports the 20% design engineer share, the DHRUV64 details and the launch date of the India Semiconductor Mission. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. static.pib.gov.in

[203] The Tribune (ANI). (2025, 2 September). Around 20% of world’s chip design engineers based in India, key to global semiconductor ecosystem: Report. News agency report on a Bastion Research study. It supports the split of design work between the United States and India and the firms named. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tribuneindia.com

[204] Kapoor, A., & Kartik, The Sunday Guardian. (2026, last updated 23 August). As SEMICON 2026 arrives, where does India’s chip ambition really stand?. Opinion analysis by policy researchers. It supports the 95% import share, demand forecast, critical mineral dependence and the Dholera power and water plans. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. sundayguardianlive.com

[205] Bhandari, K., Carnegie India. (2026, 3 March). India Signs the Pax Silica: A Counter to Pax Sinica?. Think tank commentary. It supports India’s signing of Pax Silica, the history of United States chip licensing for India and the hedging argument. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. carnegieendowment.org

[206] Malay Mail. (2026, 4 September). Malaysia’s chip ambitions: From assembly hub to semiconductor powerhouse. News explainer citing MIDA, Matrade and a MITI parliamentary reply that supports the 13% and 7% shares, export and investment figures, strategy targets and Arm progress. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. malaymail.com

[207] Digital News Asia. (2024, 28 May). Malaysia unveils 3-phase US$5.3bil National Semiconductor Strategy to strengthen position in all-out global semicon war. Trade press report of the strategy launch that supports the three phases, five targets and RM25 billion in fiscal support. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. digitalnewsasia.com

[208] The Sun Malaysia. (2026, date not shown on page). Malaysia targets 2028 chip design, 2030 market debut under Arm collaboration. Newspaper report of the Economy Minister’s statement that supports the RM1.1 billion value, eight packages to five firms, 2028 and 2030 dates and training numbers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thesun.my

[209] Yicai Global. (2026, 13 January). China’s Forehope Electronic to Invest USD300 Million Building IC Packaging, Testing Plant in Malaysia. Chinese business news report of a company announcement that supports the Forehope plant in Penang and its early status. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. yicaiglobal.com

[210] Donovan & Ho. (2025, 3 October). MITI Directive on Export, Transshipment and Transit of Advanced Artificial Intelligence Chips. Malaysian law firm briefing that supports the 14 July 2025 permit rule, the 30-day notice, required documents and the amendments proposed in 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dnh.com.my

[211] Khaleej Times (AFP). (2026, 26 June). Malaysian customs foil $13-million AI chip smuggling bid. News agency report that supports the 5 June 2026 raid, the 72 servers and their value. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. khaleejtimes.com

[212] CRN Asia. (2026, date not shown on page). Intel’s Malaysian packaging complex set for first-phase operations this year. Trade press report that supports the RM12 billion commitment, 99% completion, the earlier hold and Intel’s presence since 1972. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. crnasia.com

[213] Bernama. (2026, 13 October). Malaysia’s Semiconductor Exports To US Remain Exempt From Tariffs - Johari. National news agency report of the trade minister’s statement that supports the chip exemption and the state of the Section 301 talks. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bernama.com

[214] Griffith Asia Institute. (2026, 27 May). Malaysia and the United States: The rise and fall of a reciprocal trade agreement. University blog analysis that supports the 47% and 19% rates, the October 2025 agreement, the February 2026 court ruling and the Section 301 investigation. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. blogs.griffith.edu.au

[215] The Edge Malaysia, via EdgeProp. (2026, 25 June). Malaysia’s data centres using only half of approved power, water capacity, says minister. Business news report of a ministerial reply that supports the power and water figures and the approval process. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. edgeprop.my

[216] New Straits Times. (2026, 31 August). Johor data centre boom hits capacity wall. Newspaper report citing Knight Frank that supports Johor’s live capacity, pipeline, vacancy and rising utility costs. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. nst.com.my

[217] Free Malaysia Today (AFP). (2026, 8 April). Lynas says planning ‘full suite’ of rare earths in Malaysia. News agency report from Kuantan that supports the licence renewal, market share and heavy rare earth plans. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. freemalaysiatoday.com

[218] Singapore Economic Development Board. (2026, 22 February). The AI boom has made memory chips the star of the show; Singapore stakes its role in advanced packaging. Government agency article giving Singapore’s share of chip and equipment output, the industry’s share of the economy and jobs, Micron’s flash memory share and the industry association’s view of gaps. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. edb.gov.sg

[219] Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore. (2026, 3 February). Written reply to PQ on value of locally produced high-end AI chips and efforts to overcome existing key constraints from 2020 to 2025. Minister’s written parliamentary reply giving output for 2020 and 2024, the land and energy constraint and the government’s three measures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. meti.gov.sg

[220] Bernama. (2026, 6 November). Micron Strengthens Singapore Footprint With US$24 Bln Investment In AI-driven Manufacturing. News agency report on Micron’s new wafer fab and its packaging plant for high-bandwidth memory, with amounts and start dates. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bernama.com

[221] Singapore Economic Development Board. (2026, 28 September). VSMC Celebrates the Grand Opening of Its First 300mm Fab in Singapore. Company release hosted by the government agency, supporting the joint venture’s owners, nodes, capacity, jobs and production schedule. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. edb.gov.sg

[222] Singapore Economic Development Board. (2025, 1 April). UMC unveils new fab expansion in Singapore in grand opening ceremony. Company release hosted by the government agency, supporting UMC’s nodes, investment, capacity and the claim that these are the most advanced foundry processes in Singapore. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. edb.gov.sg

[223] AnySilicon. (2026, 30 September). GlobalFoundries Singapore Tops 90% Utilization as AI Drives Silicon Photonics Expansion. Trade news site relaying a DIGITIMES report, supporting GlobalFoundries’ Singapore capacity, utilisation, technologies and its purchase of Advanced Micro Foundry. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. anysilicon.com

[224] TrendForce. (2026, 11 June). Applied Materials Opens $500M Singapore Site, Aims to Double Global Capacity on AI Demand. Market research firm’s news item supporting Applied Materials’ Singapore investment, staff numbers and share of the company’s production capacity. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[225] Liu, H.-W., Oxford Business Law Blog. (2026, 8 October). Policing What Passes Through: Singapore’s Answer to US Chip Controls. Legal analysis by a Singapore law professor, supporting how the control law works, the use of fraud charges and the pending United States measures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. blogs.law.ox.ac.uk

[226] Tan, E., Reed Smith. (2025, 24 April). Singapore targets businesses and individuals violating or circumventing other countries’ export controls on advanced semiconductor and AI technologies. Law firm briefing supporting the April 2025 advisory, the declaration circular, the raids and the value of the fraud cases. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. reedsmith.com

[227] Reuters, via The Standard. (2026, 2 April). Singapore charges one more individual with AI chip fraud. News agency report supporting the fourth charge, the route of the servers to Malaysia and Nvidia’s billing share against physical arrivals. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thestandard.com.hk

[228] EY. (2026, 15 January). US Section 232 proclamation imposes 25% tariff on certain semiconductors. Tax advisory alert supporting the rate, scope, exemptions and start date of the January 2026 chip duty and the option of broader tariffs. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taxnews.ey.com

[229] The Straits Times, via British Chamber of Commerce Singapore. (2026, 28 July). Trump hits Singapore with new 12.5% tariff, affecting one-third of exports to US. Newspaper report supporting the July 2026 tariff, its start date, the share of exports covered and the exemption for semiconductors. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. britcham.org.sg

[230] 澎湃新闻 [The Paper]. (2026, May). 究竟｜“韬定律”将如何影响半导体产业演进路径 [How will the Tao law affect the path of the semiconductor industry?]. Detailed report of the speech and paper; supports the date and venue, the paper’s argument, logic folding, the figures claimed, the forecast, the share price reaction and the analysts’ remarks. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[231] 澎湃评论 [The Paper, commentary]. (2026, May). 经纬度：“韬定律”发布，中国企业要做规则定义者 [The Tao law: Chinese firms want to define the rules]. Editorial; supports the reading of the law as breaking dependence on one measure, the two-track argument, the phrase “rule definer” and the stated limit for large training chips. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[232] IT之家 [IT Home]. (2026, 25 May). 中国芯片走出不同于西方的路，玉渊谭天谈我国半导体领域高压下实现突破 [China’s chips take a path different from the West’s: a state television account on breakthroughs under pressure]. Report of a post by a social media account of the state broadcaster; supports its two conclusions and its description of China’s path. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. ithome.com

[233] 魏少军 [Wei, S.], via 投资界 [PEdaily]. (2026, 21 July). 东方算芯魏少军：人工智能芯片发展需要颠覆性技术 [Wei Shaojun: SI chips need disruptive technology]. Partial transcript of a keynote at the World SI Conference on 18 July 2026; supports every quotation and claim attributed to the speaker. Published transcript read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. pedaily.cn

[234] 雷少华 [Lei, S.], 北京大学国际战略研究院 [Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University]. (2024, 24 June). 中美经贸关系发展：回顾、现状与趋势（2018—2024）, 国际战略研究简报第161期 [The development of China–US economic relations: review, present state and trends, 2018 to 2024. International and Strategic Studies Report, No. 161]. Supports the three aims, the three stages, the evidence he cites, his prediction and his conclusion. Read in full from the institute’s published file. Accessed 14 November 2026. iiss.pku.edu.cn

[235] 林壑平 [Lin, H.], 复旦发展研究院 [Fudan Development Institute]. (2025, 10 December). 美国观察｜美国芯片出口管制政策的博弈：维护国家安全和维持技术栈主导的拉锯 [America Watch: the contest in American chip export control policy, a tug-of-war between protecting national security and keeping technology stack dominance]. Commentary in the institute’s series; supports the two camps, every date and figure in the table, the quoted statements and the conclusion. Title shortened by one term. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. fddi.fudan.edu.cn

[236] 施锦芳 [Shi, J.], & 闫宇 [Yan, Y.]. (2026). 出口管制模式国际比较与发展趋势探析, 《战略决策研究》2026年第4期, 97–114, 143 [An international comparison of export control models and their trends. Journal of Strategy and Decision-Making, 2026(4)]. Repost of the journal article without footnotes; supports the four stages, the four models and their typical cases, the trends, the figures and the three recommendations in the abstract. Open text read in full; the final section was not available. Accessed 14 November 2026. aisixiang.com

[237] 刘典 [Liu, D.], 《中国信息安全》 [China Information Security], via 安全内参 [Secrss]. (2025, 4 September). 美国技术壁垒战略对我国科技发展的影响与对策 [The effect of the American technology barrier strategy on China’s science and technology, and responses]. Repost of an article from the journal’s fifth issue of 2025; supports the “compound blockade”, the effects listed, the criticism of China’s own system and the proposals. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. secrss.com

[238] 周小利 [Zhou, X.], 解放军报 [PLA Daily], via 新华网 [Xinhuanet]. (2025, 27 May). 智能化战争面面观：无人智能作战体系全方位赋能杀伤链 [Aspects of intelligent warfare: unmanned intelligent combat systems empower the kill chain in every respect]. Supports the five counts, “cheap, small, smart”, swarm raids, decentralised kill chains and the stages of the human role. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. xinhuanet.com

[239] 解放军报 [PLA Daily], via 新华网 [Xinhuanet]. (2025, 30 September). 军事论坛丨浅析智能化战争特点规律 [Military forum: a brief analysis of the features and laws of intelligent warfare]. Supports “control of intelligence”, the accelerator, multiplier and catalyst, the admission about unmanned equipment and the line on human control. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. xinhuanet.com

[240] 张龙 [Zhang, L.], 解放军报 [PLA Daily], via 中国社会科学网 [Chinese Social Sciences Net]. (2026, 11 June). 探析未来战争作战体系效能跃升机理 [On how the effectiveness of combat systems leaps in future war]. Supports the passages on bounded autonomy, local best choices and trustworthy, controllable, explainable action. Read in part: the introduction and the section on autonomy. Accessed 14 November 2026. cssn.cn

[241] 程明明 [Cheng, M.], 纪小柠 [Ji, X.], & 王蕾 [Wang, L.], 解放军报 [PLA Daily], via 中国社会科学网 [Chinese Social Sciences Net]. (2026, 17 June). 智能时代军事谋略的变与不变 [What changes and what does not in military stratagem in the intelligent age]. Supports “stratagem governs technology”, the four things algorithms cannot do and the passage on shaping rules. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. cssn.cn

[242] 王惠茹 [Wang, H.]. (2025). 论公法域外管辖的原则与限度：以美国出口管制法为切入, 《武大国际法评论》2025年第6期 [On the principles and limits of extraterritorial jurisdiction in public law, starting from American export control law. Wuhan University International Law Review, 2025(6)]. Repost of the journal article with footnotes; supports the three kinds of jurisdiction, the genuine link and proportionality tests, the account of American rules, the levels of indirect enforcement and the conclusion. Abstract, conclusion and the sections on legislative and enforcement jurisdiction read in full; the section on courts read in outline. Accessed 14 November 2026. aisixiang.com

[243] 复旦大学全球人工智能创新治理中心研究室 [Research office, Centre for Global SI Innovation Governance, Fudan University]: 张傲, 于玥, 栗子宜, 辛艳艳, & 姚旭. (2026, 20 May). 中美两国重启人工智能对话：元首会晤校准竞合路线 [China and the United States restart their dialogue on SI: the leaders’ meeting recalibrates the path of competition and cooperation]. Supports “limited release”, the licence figures as reported, the reasons given for non-delivery, the market and benchmark figures as cited, and the forecast. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. fddi.fudan.edu.cn

[244] 肖茜 [Xiao, Q.], 清华大学人工智能国际治理研究院 [Institute for SI International Governance, Tsinghua University], via 智源社区 [BAAI Hub]. (2026, 11 October). 美国究竟想如何赢得人工智能竞争？解析美国对华人工智能战略的背后逻辑 [How exactly does the United States want to win the SI competition? The logic behind its SI strategy toward China]. Repost of a commentary first published on a bilateral-relations account; the abbreviation in the original title is written out. Supports the four logics, who holds them, the prediction and the closing advice. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. hub.baai.ac.cn

[245] 赵忠秀 [Zhao, Z.]. (2026, 5 February, repost date). 中美体系竞争下的中国战略突围 [China’s strategic breakout under China–US systemic competition]. Supports the account of the technology contest, the figures as cited, the weaknesses and strengths listed, the 2026 to 2030 forecast and the three recommendations. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. aisixiang.com

[246] 清华大学战略与安全研究中心 [Centre for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University]: 肖茜, 孙成昊, 鲁传颖, 祁昊天, & 董汀. (2026, June). 中美人工智能发展、应用与治理：2026年人工智能与国际安全研究 [SI development, application and governance in China and the United States: research on SI and international security, 2026]. Collection of five short chapters; supports the two roads and their features (chapter by Lu Chuanying) and the three levels, the risks, the comparison with a security dilemma and the proposals (chapter by Qi Haotian). The two chapters used were read in full from the centre’s published file. Accessed 14 November 2026. ciss.tsinghua.edu.cn

[247] 吴心伯 [Wu, X.], 环球时报 [Global Times], via 爱思想 [Aisixiang]. (2026, May). 中美关系正走向更加稳定新阶段 [China–US relations are moving to a more stable new stage]. Supports tactical and strategic stability, the cause he gives for the improvement, the summit outcomes and his caveats. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. aisixiang.com

[248] 吴心伯 [Wu, X.], interviewed by 宋东泽 [Song, D.], 凤凰新闻 [Phoenix News], via 复旦发展研究院 [Fudan Development Institute]. (2026, 14 October). 中期选举对中美关系有何影响？吴心伯：比起民主党我更担心共和党 [How will the mid-term elections affect China–US relations? Wu Xinbo: I worry more about the Republicans than the Democrats]. Supports the statements on irreplaceability, the 1% boundary, Taiwan’s chip plants in the United States and cooperation on SI. Sections on Taiwan’s chip industry, supply chains and SI read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. fddi.fudan.edu.cn

[249] 证券时报 [Securities Times], via 同花顺 [10jqka]. (2026, 29 September). 智算中心“满载”与“闲置”并存冷热不均倒逼机制重构 [SI computing centres are “fully loaded” and “idle” at once: uneven use forces a rebuilding of the mechanism]. Newspaper investigation; supports the usage figures, the split by owner, cluster size and chip generation, the causes given by named and unnamed sources, and the described changes to approval. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[250] 科技日报 [Science and Technology Daily]. (2025, 17 July). 深瞳丨利用率仅三成，“沉睡”的算力如何激活 [In depth: with utilisation at only 30%, how can “sleeping” computing power be woken]. Supports the earlier 30% estimate, subsidy-led building, the rack power and single-chip-type findings, and the argument about inference demand from small firms. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. stdaily.com

[251] 黄心怡 [Huang, X.], 科创板日报 [STAR Market Daily], via 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026, 24 March). 阿里发布旗舰CPU玄铁C950 倪光南：RISC-V正从“备选”走向“主流” [Alibaba releases flagship processor design; Ni Guangnan: RISC-V is moving from “alternative” to “mainstream”]. Supports the academician’s quoted statements, the market share he cites, the design’s claimed performance, the number of production chips and the forecast cited. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[252] 胡喆 [Hu, Z.], 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2026, 26 March). 中国科学院启动下一代开源芯片与系统研发 [The Chinese Academy of Sciences starts development of next-generation open chips and systems]. Supports the release of the open processor and operating system, the description of the architecture, the participating firms, the vice-president’s statement and the training figures. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[253] 张甜甜 [Zhang, T.], 第一财经日报 [China Business News]. (2026, 23 October). 芯片人才市场“两头难”：毕业生入行门槛提高百万年薪却一将难求 [The chip talent market is “hard at both ends”: a higher bar for graduates, while million-yuan salaries cannot find a general]. Supports the posting and salary data, the estimate of qualified architects, the hiring ratios, the graduates’ account, the training schemes and the three named gaps. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. yicai.com

[254] 吴旭光 [Wu, X.], 科创板日报 [STAR Market Daily], via 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026, 24 September). 海外光刻胶巨头即将涨价，影响几何？多家国内产业链企业称“实际冲击有限” [Overseas photoresist giants are about to raise prices. What is the effect? Several domestic firms say “the real impact is limited”]. Supports the price rise, the fabs’ statements on cost, usage per wafer, the domestic makers’ capacity, orders and revenue, the estimated domestic shares, the market size and the obstacles named. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[255] 澎湃号·湃客 [The Paper, contributor platform]. (2026, 8 July). 国产半导体设备零部件，开始起势 [Domestic components for chip equipment begin to gather momentum]. Unsigned industry commentary; supports the test machines, the equipment and component shares, the spending breakdown, company progress, the obstacles listed and the forecast of exports. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[256] A股IPO观察 [A-share IPO Watch], 凤凰网财经 [Phoenix Finance]. (2026, 4 October). 国产半导体设备IPO：从龙头再融资到撤拆解五大核心风险 [Listings of domestic chip equipment makers: from leaders’ refinancing to withdrawals, five core risks taken apart]. Supports the features of the 2026 applications, the list of applicants, the leaders’ figures, the withdrawn case and the five risks. Read in full except the profiles of two listed firms. Accessed 14 November 2026. ifeng.com

[257] 张佳星 [Zhang, J.], 科技日报 [Science and Technology Daily]. (2026, 14 October). 电动汽车还在增长！这种算力核心载体增长更快，“中国造”加速走向全球 [Electric cars are still growing. This core carrier of computing power is growing faster: “made in China” speeds up its move into the world]. Report of the customs administration’s press conference; supports the 99.1% growth, the comparison with electric cars and the share of equipment manufacturing in export growth. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. stdaily.com

[258] 凤凰网财经 [Phoenix Finance], via 同花顺 [10jqka]. (2026, 3 September). 前7月出口额超去年全年，我国集成电路产业快速增长 [Exports in the first seven months exceed all of last year: China’s integrated circuit industry grows fast]. Supports the seven-month export value, the output figures, the university laboratory’s breakdown by memory, volume and price, and listed firms’ results. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[259] 王晶 [Wang, J.], 央广网 [China National Radio], via 扬子晚报网 [Yangtse Evening Post]. (2026, 16 October). 晶采观察丨“中国方案”赋能全球算力外贸新动能加速释放 [Commentary: “Chinese solutions” power the world’s computing, and new momentum in foreign trade is released faster]. Supports the customs spokesman’s statements on cause and related goods, the commentary’s framing and its caution. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. yzwb.net

[260] 黄修眉 [Huang, X.], & 陈俊清 [Chen, J.], 科创板日报 [STAR Market Daily], via 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2025, 21 November). 销售额首破千亿美元！中国芯片设计产业未来怎么走 [Sales pass $100 billion for the first time. Where does China’s chip design industry go next]. Report of the design industry’s annual conference; supports the 2025 sales forecast, growth rates, the 831 firms and their share, the product mix and the quoted judgements. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[261] 人民财讯 [People’s Financial News], via 东方财富网 [Eastmoney]. (2026, 26 June). 中半协：八成以上集成电路设计企业为小微企业 [Semiconductor industry association: over eight-tenths of integrated circuit design firms are small or micro enterprises]. Wire report of a speech in Shenzhen; supports the revised 2025 sales figure, the number of firms, the 87% share and the remark on talent. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. eastmoney.com

[262] 颜翊 [Yan, Y.], C114通信网 [C114 Communications Network]. (2026, 2 September). 【光互连观察02】光互连业绩爆发背后：上游“卡脖子”环节到底卡在哪 [Optical interconnect watch 02: behind the surge in results, where exactly are the upstream chokepoints]. Supports the profit figures, the three optical chips, the electrical chips, the indium phosphide supply figures and the position of Chinese firms on each. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. c114.com.cn

[263] 海星 [Haixing], 锦缎 [Jinduan], via 虎嗅 [Huxiu]. (2026, 26 October). FCC阴影下，中国光芯片的生死竞速 [Under the shadow of the FCC, a life-and-death race for China’s optical chips]. Supports the cost share and margins of optical chips, the account of the American regulator’s restrictions and the 2026 to 2028 window. Published summary and opening read; the full text was not read in detail. Accessed 14 November 2026. huxiu.com

[264] China Briefing. (2025, 10 November). How Will China’s Rare Earth Export Controls Impact Industries and Businesses?. Business advisory explainer, updated through November 2025, supporting the April and October 2025 rare earth rules, the 0.1 percent threshold, the chip-related review and the one-year suspension. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. china-briefing.com

[265] Shanghai Metals Market. (2026, 9 November). China Extends Suspension of Rare Earth Export Controls Until January 2027. Metals trade news report of Announcement No. 58 of 2026, supporting the list of suspended announcements and the new end date of 10 January 2027. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.metal.com

[266] Global Times. (2025, 4 March). China adds 10 US firms to unreliable entity list for arms sales or so-called military-tech co-op with Taiwan region. Chinese state media report supporting the March 2025 listings, their legal effect and the export ban on Illumina. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. globaltimes.cn

[267] Associated Press, via WSLS. (2026, 29 June). China imposes export controls on 40 Japanese entities as tensions with Tokyo rise. News agency report supporting the February and June 2026 rounds against Japanese entities and the effect of the control list and watch list. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wsls.com

[268] Euronews with AP. (2025, 15 September). Nvidia violated antitrust laws, China says, amid trade talks with the US. News report supporting the Nvidia preliminary finding, the Mellanox deal value, the analog chip anti-dumping case, the anti-discrimination probe and the Madrid talks. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euronews.com

[269] TechNode. (2025, 10 October). China’s SAMR Opens Case to Investigate Qualcomm’s Autotalks Acquisition. Technology news report supporting the date and legal ground of the Qualcomm case. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. technode.com

[270] Reuters, via The Daily Star. (2025, 5 November). China bans foreign AI chips from state-funded data centres. News agency report from unnamed sources supporting the data-centre guidance, the 30 percent threshold, Nvidia’s market share, state funding and the Micron ban of 2023. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thedailystar.net

[271] South China Morning Post, via Yahoo Finance. (2025, 21 November). A timeline of the Sino-Dutch row over the control of chipmaker Nexperia. Newspaper timeline supporting each dated step of the Nexperia dispute, the Dongguan output share and the 30 October 2025 leaders’ meeting. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. finance.yahoo.com

[272] Xinhua News Agency. (2026, 26 January). 全国科技工作会议在京召开丁薛祥出席会议并讲话. Chinese state news agency report supporting Ding Xuexiang’s title as director of the Central Science and Technology Commission and the self-reliance goal for the plan period. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.cn

[273] Triolo, P., American Affairs. (2026, 20 February). Innovation under Pressure: China’s Semiconductor Industry at a Crossroads. Analyst essay supporting who leads chip policy, the roles of the ministries, the 50 percent tool guidance, the venture guidance fund and the unconfirmed 2028 target. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. americanaffairsjournal.org

[274] Securities Daily, via China Securities Journal. (2024, 31 May). 国家大基金三期的三个“超”有何新意. Chinese financial press article supporting the capital of the three fund phases, the shareholders, the state banks’ stake and the 15-year term. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cs.com.cn

[275] TrendForce. (2025, 10 December). China Reportedly Adds Huawei, Cambricon AI Chips to Procurement List Ahead of H200 Approval. Industry research news item, citing the Financial Times, supporting the procurement list change, the earlier processor lists and the 2026 market share projection. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[276] Shanghai Securities News, via 10jqka. (2025, 29 December). 2025 IPO包容向新：科创不息，未来已来. Chinese financial press review supporting the June 2025 listing reform, the 2025 listing totals and the sums raised by Moore Threads and Xi’an Eswin. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. stock.10jqka.com.cn

[277] Decrypt. (2026, 26 May). China Imposes Travel Limits on AI Workers at Private Firms: Report. Technology news summary of a Bloomberg report, supporting the travel approval requirement, the firms named and the limits of what is known. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. decrypt.co

[278] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 22 June). 商务部公告2026年第23号公布将10家美国实体列入出口管制管控名单决定 [Announcement No. 23 of 2026: ten American entities placed on the export control list]. Supports the ten names, the measures and the reach to organisations and individuals of any country. Read in full, with the list, as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[279] 人民日报客户端 [People’s Daily app]. (2026, 22 June). 商务部：将10家美国实体列入出口管制管控名单 [Commerce ministry: ten American entities placed on the export control list]. Press coverage of the listing; supports the reason attributed to the ministry’s spokesperson, the American additions to its list of Chinese military companies. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. peopleapp.com

[280] 外交部 [Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. (2024, 23 May). 中国就“致命性自主武器系统”问题向联合国秘书长提交的文件 [China’s submission to the United Nations Secretary-General on lethal autonomous weapons systems]. Supports the four points: the forum, definition first and the word lethal, the adequacy of existing law, and classification into acceptable and unacceptable systems with a ban modelled on the blinding laser protocol. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mfa.gov.cn

[281] 外交部 [Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. (2025, 29 October). 中国代表团在第80届联大一委关于常规武器的专题发言 [Statement of the Chinese delegation on conventional weapons at the First Committee of the 80th General Assembly]. Supports the call for restraint, the convention as the most appropriate forum, support for a binding instrument when conditions are ripe, and definition first. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mfa.gov.cn

[282] 中国 [China]. (2025, 27 November). 工作文件 CCW/MSP/2025/WP.15 [Working paper submitted to the Meeting of High Contracting Parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons]. Supports China’s account of its participation, the papers it has submitted, and its support for the 2026 review conference. Read in full from the United Nations document library. Accessed 14 November 2026. docs-library.unoda.org

[283] 段志超、王雨婷、张雪晨、杨可依 [Duan, Z., Wang, Y., Zhang, X., & Yang, K.], 汉坤律师事务所 [Han Kun Law Offices]. (2026, 19 October). 春风可度玉门关：拟修订技术出口目录对七类人工智能企业的适用边界 [How the proposed revision of the technology export catalogue applies to seven kinds of SI company]. Law firm analysis of the annex to Announcement No. 48; supports the model, agent, chip design, cluster and speech entries and their thresholds, the comparisons with American and South Korean rules, the estimate for Chinese models and the open questions. Read in large part as carried on a Chinese security news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. secrss.com

[284] 张国勋、陈际红、吴佳蔚 [Zhang, G., Chen, J., & Wu, J.]. (2026, 23 October). 人工智能技术出海监管新动向：《中国禁止出口限制出口技术目录》修订征求意见稿解读与合规应对（上） [New rules for SI technology going abroad: reading the draft revision of the technology export catalogue, part one]. Law firm analysis; supports the model and cluster thresholds, the data exception, and the point that partial open-sourcing does not release unpublished technology. Read in large part as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. sohu.com

[285] 曲克 [Qu, K.], 人民日报海外版 [People’s Daily Overseas Edition]. (2026, 24 March). 今年3月1日起开始施行修订后的对外贸易法新在哪儿 [In force from 1 March: what is new in the revised Foreign Trade Law]. Supports the history of the law, the legislature’s description of the revision as enriching the legal toolbox, and the changes to penalties. Read in full as carried by a Chinese news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. chinanews.com.cn

[286] 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2025, 27 December). 人大常委会丨新修订的对外贸易法自2026年3月1日起施行 [Standing Committee: revised Foreign Trade Law to take effect on 1 March 2026]. Supports the passage of the law on 27 December 2025, its effective date, the added countermeasures and the adjustment assistance system. Read in full on the agency’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. xinhuanet.com

[287] 王文涛 [Wang, W.], 商务部部长 [Minister of Commerce]. (2025, 8 September). 关于《中华人民共和国对外贸易法（修订草案）》的说明 [Explanation of the draft revision of the Foreign Trade Law]. Delivered to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress; supports the stated reasons for the revision, the countermeasures on foreign persons, the penalty for assisting evasion, and the security ground for trade restrictions. Read in full on the legislature’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. npc.gov.cn

[288] 高雅 [Gao, Y.], 第一财经 [Yicai]. (2025, December). 统筹开放与安全，对外贸易法修订为外贸高质量发展提供保障｜专家解读 [Balancing openness and security: experts read the revised Foreign Trade Law]. Supports the trade lawyers’ readings of Articles 17 to 19, 29, 30, 40, 51 and 55 of the final text. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. yicai.com

[289] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 5 August). 商务部公告2026年第33号公布对相关进口打印复印办公设备发起对外贸易国家安全立案调查 [Announcement No. 33 of 2026: opening a foreign-trade national-security investigation into certain imported printing and copying office equipment]. Supports the legal basis, the definition of the product and of foreign system software, the seven subjects of investigation, the procedure and the twelve-month limit. Read in full as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[290] 冯迪凡 [Feng, D.], 第一财经 [Yicai]. (2026, 5 August). 商务部：对相关进口打印复印办公设备发起对外贸易国家安全立案调查 [Commerce ministry opens a foreign-trade national-security investigation into imported printing and copying equipment]. Supports the spokesperson’s statement that this is China’s first such investigation. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. yicai.com

[291] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], via 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026, 6 January). 商务部公告2026年第1号关于加强两用物项对日本出口管制的公告，及新闻发言人答记者问 [Announcement No. 1 of 2026 on strengthening export controls on dual-use items to Japan, with the spokesperson’s answer]. Supports the text of the ban, the liability of persons in any country, and the stated reason. Read in a news service’s reproduction of the ministry’s text. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[292] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 24 February). 商务部公告2026年第11号公布将20家日本实体列入出口管制管控名单 [Announcement No. 11 of 2026: twenty Japanese entities placed on the export control list]. Supports the twenty names, the stated ground and the measures. Read in full, with the list, on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[293] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 24 February). 商务部公告2026年第12号公布将20家日本实体列入关注名单 [Announcement No. 12 of 2026: twenty Japanese entities placed on the watch list]. Supports the twenty names, the ground of unverifiable end users and end uses, the licensing consequences, the lifting of the review time limit and the route to removal. Read in full, with the list, on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[294] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], via 澎湃新闻 [The Paper]. (2026, 29 June). 商务部：将20家日本实体列入关注名单 [Commerce ministry places twenty Japanese entities on the watch list]. Supports the second watch list, its twenty names and its terms. Read in full, with the list, in a news outlet’s reproduction; the announcement number is not given. Accessed 14 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[295] 蒋睿馨、熊祎 [Jiang, R., & Xiong, Y.], 汉坤律师事务所 [Han Kun Law Offices]. (2026, 25 February). 中国出口管制快讯：40家日本企业被商务部分级列管对日出口合规要求再收紧 [China export control alert: forty Japanese companies listed in two tiers]. Law firm note; supports the description of the two lists, the kinds of entity on each and the advice to exporters. Read in full from the firm’s published file. Accessed 14 November 2026. hankunlaw.com

[296] 三里河工作室 [Sanlihe studio], 中国新闻社 [China News Service]. (2026, 11 January). 中国出手反制日本“再军事化”意图 [China moves against Japan’s “remilitarisation”]. Commentary; supports the spokesperson’s statement on purpose and civilian trade, the reported consideration of tighter rare-earth licensing, and the Japanese economists’ estimates. Read in full as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. ifeng.com

[297] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 5 August). 商务部令2026年第2号关于对应用DNA科学公司等6家美国实体采取反制措施的决定 [Order No. 2 of 2026: decision on countermeasures against six American entities]. Supports the stated ground, the legal basis, the approval by the national coordination mechanism, the six names and the measure. Read in full, with the list, as carried by a Beijing newspaper. Accessed 14 November 2026. bjd.com.cn

[298] 中国青年报 [China Youth Daily]. (2026, 6 August). 商务部长王文涛，签署第2号、第3号商务部令 [Commerce minister signs Orders No. 2 and No. 3]. Supports Order No. 3, the spokesperson’s account of the American measures, the list of five countermeasures and the statement that they are restrained. Read in full as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. 163.com

[299] 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2025, 2 August). 尊湃剽窃华为芯片技术，前海思14名员工获刑，被罚1350万元 [Start-up copied Huawei chip technology: fourteen former HiSilicon employees sentenced, fined 13.5 million yuan]. Supports the fourteen sentences and fines, the police account of how the information was taken, the forty technical points, the arrests of April 2023 and the start-up’s investors. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. nbd.com.cn

[300] 最高人民检察院 [Supreme People’s Procuratorate]. (2026, 2 April). 最高检发布检察机关服务新质生产力发展典型案例 [Model cases of prosecutors serving the development of new productive forces]. Supports the publication of the case as the first of six model cases, the date of the verdict and the absence of an appeal. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. spp.gov.cn

[301] 国家安全部 [Ministry of State Security], via 科技日报 [Science and Technology Daily]. (2026, 23 April). 稀土公司副总向境外泄露7项国家秘密国家安全部披露详情 [Rare-earth company deputy manager leaked seven state secrets abroad: the Ministry of State Security gives details]. The ministry’s public-account article on supply-chain security; supports the semiconductor engineer case, the rare-earth stockpile case and the guidance on hardware, software and staff. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. stdaily.com

[302] 国家安全部 [Ministry of State Security]. (2026, 17 May). 窃密“魔高一尺” 守密须“道高一丈” [As theft of secrets grows more skilled, protection must grow more so]. The ministry’s public-account article; supports the statement that foreign intelligence targets rare earths, solar, semiconductors, advanced chips and SI. Read in full as carried on a financial news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. eastmoney.com

[303] 国家安全部 [Ministry of State Security], via 科技日报 [Science and Technology Daily]. (2025, 21 July). 警惕“电子间谍”！境外生产芯片可能故意留“后门” [Beware the electronic spy: chips made abroad may carry a deliberate backdoor]. The ministry’s public-account article; supports the three kinds of backdoor described and the advice to use domestic chips and operating systems in sensitive posts. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. stdaily.com

[304] 央视新闻 [CCTV News]. (2026, 30 May). 警惕身边的泄密风险丨“芯”怀鬼胎 [Beware the leak risks around you: ill intent in the chip]. State television commentary; supports the call for full domestic control of hardware and software. Read in full as carried by a provincial newspaper. Accessed 14 November 2026. yzwb.net

[305] 汪斌 [Wang, B.], 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2025, 19 May). 至少6家稀土磁材企业出口许可获批！业内：预计今年稀土开采指标增幅约3.7% [At least six rare-earth magnet makers receive export licences]. Supports the six firms, the batch-by-batch and recipe-by-recipe procedure, the review time, the first shipment, the effect on revenue and the analyst’s price and capacity figures. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[306] 谢希瑶、黄韬铭 [Xie, X., & Huang, T.], 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2025, 18 December). 商务部回应稀土出口管制：已批准部分通用许可申请 [Commerce ministry on rare-earth export controls: some general licence applications approved]. Supports the spokesperson’s statement on general licences and the question that prompted it. Read in full as carried by a national newspaper’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. cn.chinadaily.com.cn

[307] 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency], via 中国政府网 [central government site]. (2025, 30 September). 国务院办公厅印发《关于在政府采购中实施本国产品标准及相关政策的通知》 [State Council General Office issues the notice on applying a domestic product standard in government procurement]. Supports the definition of a domestic product, the 20% preference, the five-year schedule and transitions, the interim rule, equal treatment and the treaty clause. Read in full on the central government’s site; a report of the notice, not its full text. Accessed 14 November 2026. gov.cn

[308] 申铖 [Shen, C.], 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2025, 30 September). 新华解码丨完善政府采购制度内外资企业一视同仁 [Improving government procurement: domestic and foreign-invested firms treated alike]. Supports the officials’ and experts’ explanations, the absence of an earlier definition, the remarks on foreign-invested firms and the transition period. Read in full on the agency’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[309] 经济参考报 [Economic Information Daily]. (2025, 9 October). 明确本国产品标准内外资企业一视同仁 3万亿政府采购市场迎“新标准” [A new standard for the three-trillion-yuan government procurement market]. Supports the 2023 procurement total, the reference to the procurement law, and the securities firm’s list of the main categories bought. Read in large part as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[310] 王文博、袁小康 [Wang, W., & Yuan, X.], 经济参考报 [Economic Information Daily]. (2026, 18 August). 推动形成万亿级产业生态汽车芯片五项认证认可行业标准发布 [Five certification standards for automotive chips issued]. Supports the regulator’s announcement and description of the standards, the stated aims, and the experts’ remarks on repeated testing and international standards. Read in full as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[311] 濮振宇 [Pu, Z.], 经济观察报 [Economic Observer]. (2026, 20 August). 汽车芯片迎来“国考大纲” 企业“各自为战”时代终结 [Automotive chips get a national syllabus]. Supports the effective date, the structure of the five standards, the carmakers’ association figures, the time and cost of certification, the 2025 review system, the official’s remarks and the limits of the scheme. Read in large part as carried on a business news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. huxiu.com

[312] 科技日报 [Science and Technology Daily]. (2026, 14 August). 我国汽车芯片五项认证认可行业标准发布 [China issues five certification standards for automotive chips]. Supports the statement that the domestic share has passed 25% and that domestic car chips ship in the billions a year. Relevant passage read. Accessed 14 November 2026. stdaily.com

[313] 张宝莲 [Zhang, B.], 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2026, 27 May). 长鑫科技科创板IPO过会国产内存芯片龙头迎里程碑事件，拟募资295亿元投三大方向 [ChangXin’s STAR Market listing passes the committee]. Report of the prospectus; supports the planned proceeds and their uses, 2025 results, first-quarter 2026 results, ownership, accumulated losses, market structure and stated risks. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. nbd.com.cn

[314] 澎湃新闻 [The Paper]. (2026, 23 July). 长鑫科技：将于7月27日在科创板上市 [ChangXin to list on the STAR Market on 27 July]. Supports the listing date, the approval timeline, the products and the prospectus’s explanation of the price rise. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[315] 王碧微 [Wang, B.], 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026, 15 July). 长鑫科技的下一“战” [ChangXin’s next battle]. Supports the offer price, valuation and amount raised, revenue and profit for 2023 to 2025 and the 2026 forecasts, market share, customers, suppliers and the contract price estimate. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[316] 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2025, 14 August). 司法部、外交部、公安部、国家移民局负责人就《国务院关于修改〈中华人民共和国外国人入境出境管理条例〉的决定》答记者问 [Officials of four agencies answer questions on the decision amending the regulation on entry and exit of foreigners]. Supports the order and its date, who qualifies for the K visa, the absence of a sponsor requirement, the promised terms, permitted activities and implementation steps. Read in full on the agency’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[317] 于治国、张雯琦、王雨珂 [Yu, Z., Zhang, W., & Wang, Y.], 中伦律师事务所 [Zhong Lun Law Firm]. (2026, 14 August). 2026年上半年中国出口管制执法和行政处罚综述及合规启示 [Survey of China’s export-control enforcement and administrative penalties in the first half of 2026]. Law firm survey of published customs penalty decisions; supports every count, share and example in the section, and the reference to Announcement No. 26 of 2026. Read in full on the firm’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. zhonglun.com

[318] 周圆、唐诗凝 [Zhou, Y., & Tang, S.], 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2026, 20 July). 我国智能算力规模达2185EFLOPS [China’s intelligent computing capacity reaches 2,185 exaflops]. Report of the State Council Information Office press conference; supports the capacity figure, its growth, occupancy, the links between hubs, the ministry’s next steps and the figures on SI use. Read in full on the agency’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[319] 王菁 [Wang, J.], 新华财经 [Xinhua Finance]. (2026, 22 August). 数读我国绿色算力：十组数据背后的时代答卷 [China’s green computing power in ten figures]. Supports the regional shares, the end-of-March figure, the Inner Mongolia figure and the daily token count. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. cnfin.com

[320] 张蕊 [Zhang, R.], 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2026, 28 July). 国家数据局：鼓励基于词元应用的商业模式创新，探索词元交易等新型交易模式 [National Data Administration encourages business models based on tokens]. Report of the administration’s press conference; supports the 2.4 million petaflops figure, the share in the eight hubs and the capacity connected to the national platform. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. nbd.com.cn

[321] 王晶 [Wang, J.], 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2026, 17 September). 华为更新昇腾路线图：960DT上市比原计划提前三个季度，首次引入NPO方案 [Huawei updates the Ascend roadmap: 960DT three quarters ahead of plan]. Report of the 2026 Huawei Connect speech; supports the revised schedule, the extension to 2029, the supernode deployments, the Atlas 960 figures, the communication and simulation claims and the 2025 statement on process availability. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. mrjjxw.com

[322] 李彪 [Li, B.], 界面新闻 [Jiemian News]. (2025, 18 September). 华为公布昇腾AI芯片三年发展路线图 [Huawei publishes a three-year roadmap for Ascend chips]. Report of the 2025 Huawei Connect speech; supports the original schedule, the specifications of the 910C and 950, the statement about TSMC and supernodes, and the journalist’s comparison with Nvidia. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. jiemian.com

[323] 上海市人民政府 [Shanghai Municipal People’s Government]. (2026). 上海市加快推进新型工业化构建现代化产业体系“十五五”规划（沪府发〔2026〕8号） [Shanghai plan for new industrialisation and a modern industrial system, 2026 to 2030]. Supports the formula for integrated circuits, the districts, the design, product, manufacturing, packaging and tool aims, mergers, the trillion-yuan clusters and bonded operation. Published file searched and the passages on integrated circuits read. Accessed 14 November 2026. shanghai.gov.cn

[324] 上海市人民政府办公厅 [General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government]. (2026, 27 July). 上海市战略性新兴产业发展“十五五”规划（沪府办发〔2026〕19号） [Shanghai plan for strategic emerging industries, 2026 to 2030]. Supports the targets for 2030, the three priorities for integrated circuits, and the roles of Zhangjiang and Lingang. Published file searched and the passages on integrated circuits read. Accessed 14 November 2026. shanghai.gov.cn

[325] 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026). 聚焦上海张江“十五五”规划：集成电路+人工智能+生物医药三大先导产业规模目标增至2.5万亿元 [Zhangjiang’s plan to 2030: three lead industries to reach 2.5 trillion yuan]. Supports the Zhangjiang target. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cls.cn

[326] 新华网 [Xinhuanet]. (2026, 15 September). 电子信息制造业擘画“十五五”蓝图 2030年规上企业营收力争突破30万亿元 [Electronics manufacturing plan to 2030: revenue of larger firms to pass 30 trillion yuan]. Supports the joint issue of the plan, its four headings, seventeen tasks and nine columns, the 2030 targets and the first task on integrated circuits. Read in full on the agency’s site; a report of the plan, not its text. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[327] 崔爽 [Cui, S.], 科技日报 [Science and Technology Daily]. (2026, 16 September). 电子信息制造业“十五五”规划印发推动集成电路全链条攻关 [Electronics manufacturing plan issued: whole-chain work on integrated circuits]. Supports the ministry’s remarks, the list of tasks under each heading, the targets and the research institute official’s recommendations. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. stdaily.com

[328] 祝嫣然 [Zhu, Y.], 第一财经 [Yicai]. (2026, September). 电子信息制造业迎重磅规划，明确四大方向、30万亿营收目标 [A major plan for electronics manufacturing: four directions and a 30 trillion yuan target]. Supports the four new growth areas, the task on open and unified interfaces between chips, operating systems, frameworks and models, and the ministry’s remarks on risk. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. yicai.com

[329] 汤普济 [Tang, P.], 观察者网 [Guancha]. (2026, 15 September). “中国半导体工厂35%设备是国产”，韩企感到订单压力 [“35% of the equipment in Chinese chip plants is domestic”: Korean firms feel the pressure]. Report of a South Korean trade paper’s research; supports the domestic share estimates, delivery times, the Chinese firms’ growth figures, the Korean firms’ losses, and the equipment named in the electronics plan. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. guancha.cn

[330] 中芯国际集成电路制造有限公司 [Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation]. (2026, 12 November). 2026年第三季度报告 [Third-quarter report, 2026]. Supports third-quarter revenue, gross margin, their changes on the quarter and the fourth-quarter forecast. Management commentary read in a financial portal’s reproduction; the tables were not legible. Accessed 14 November 2026. sina.com.cn

[331] 同花顺 [Tonghuashun]. (2026, 13 August). 中芯国际第二季度业绩出炉，财报透露这些信号 [SMIC’s second-quarter results]. Supports second-quarter revenue, margin, profit, wafers sold, utilisation, capacity, the split by application and the management’s remarks. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[332] 哈富证券 [Hafoo Securities], via 东方财富网 [Eastmoney]. (2026, 11 November). 中芯国际Q3财报周四盘后放榜，涨价红利释放，毛利率能否触及28%？ [SMIC third-quarter preview]. Securities firm preview; supports the price rises from February 2026, capital spending, added capacity, depreciation and the sources of demand. Read in full as carried on a financial portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. sina.com.cn

[333] 电子工程专辑 [EE Times China]. (2026, 13 November). 中芯国际预计2026年收入超120亿美元，四季度营收指引环比增长4%至6% [SMIC expects 2026 revenue above $12 billion]. Supports third-quarter utilisation, the full-year outlook and management’s remarks on costs and the fourth quarter. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. eet-china.com

[334] 同花顺 [Tonghuashun]. (2026, 31 August). 上半年净利增逾九成半导体设备行业呈结构性分化 [Chip equipment makers’ first-half profit up more than 90%]. Summary of the half-year reports of 27 listed chip equipment makers; supports the combined revenue, profit and prepayments, the leading firms’ figures, the count of firms with falling profit and the experts’ remarks. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[335] 刘旭强 [Liu, X.], 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2026, 16 June). “第一省会”闯关，撑起集成电路“第三极”？ [Can Guangzhou hold up the “third pole” of integrated circuits?]. Supports Guangdong’s output and import figures, the provincial programme, CanSemi’s history, losses, state support, fourth phase and listing approval, and the association official’s remarks. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. nbd.com.cn

[336] 刘珊、昌道励 [Liu, S., & Chang, D.], 南方日报 [Nanfang Daily]. (2026, 2 September). “广州第一芯”撬动大湾区集成电路版图 [Guangzhou’s first chip plant and the Greater Bay Area’s chip map]. Supports the regulator’s registration on 28 August 2026, the fourth phase’s capacity and process range, and cumulative shipments. Opening sections read as carried by a national news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. chinanews.com

[337] 蒋睿馨、熊祎、时悦 [Jiang, R., Xiong, Y., & Shi, Y.], 汉坤律师事务所 [Han Kun Law Offices]. (2026, 15 January). 中国出口管制的常态化演进：2025年政策与执法回顾与解析 [The normalisation of China’s export controls: a review of policy and enforcement in 2025]. Law firm annual review; supports the change in the test for control, the advance opinion procedure, the customs query power, the draft licence measures, the timeline and net totals of listings, the countermeasure orders, the penalty counts and two cases, joint enforcement and the conditions for a general licence. Read in full from the firm’s published file. Accessed 14 November 2026. hankunlaw.com

[338] 同花顺 [Tonghuashun]. (2026, 22 August). 长存控股科创板IPO获受理夯实国产存储产业发展根基 [YMTC’s STAR Market listing application accepted]. Report of the prospectus; supports the acceptance date, market rank, technology account, research figures, 2025 and first-quarter 2026 results. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[339] 投资界 [PEdaily]. (2026, August). 长江存储冲刺IPO：一个季度赚334亿 [YMTC heads for a listing: 33.4 billion yuan in one quarter]. Report of the prospectus; supports the amount sought and its uses, 2023 and 2024 results, ownership, the staff shareholding, the earlier valuation and the counselling timeline. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. pedaily.cn

[340] 于卫宁 [Yu, W.], 国家统计局 [National Bureau of Statistics]. (2026, 27 October). 1—9月份规模以上工业企业利润较快增长新动能引领作用明显 [Profits of larger industrial firms grew fairly fast in January to September]. The bureau’s chief industrial statistician’s commentary; supports the nine-month figures for all industry, electronics, related sectors, high-technology manufacturing and ownership types. Read in full on the bureau’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. stats.gov.cn

[341] 国家统计局 [National Bureau of Statistics], via 同花顺 [Tonghuashun]. (2026, 27 August). 国家统计局：1—7月份以算力芯片、存储芯片为代表的集成电路行业利润同比增长18.5倍 [Statistics bureau: integrated circuit industry profit grew 18.5 times in January to July]. Reproduction of the bureau’s release; supports the seven-month figures for all industry, electronics, integrated circuits and ownership types, and the bureau’s explanation. Read as reproduced by a financial data service. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[342] 北京市人民政府 [Beijing Municipal People’s Government]. (2026, September). 北京市“十五五”时期高精尖产业发展规划 [Beijing plan for the development of advanced industries, 2026 to 2030]. Supports the targets for 2030, the passage on integrated circuits, the RISC-V test grounds, and the district assignments. Published file searched and the passages on integrated circuits read. Accessed 14 November 2026. beijing.gov.cn

[343] 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026). 全球登顶！我国碳化硅衬底产业实现自主引领，天岳先进多项指标居世界第一 [Top of the world: China’s silicon carbide substrate industry achieves independent leadership]. Report of a Japanese research firm’s market shares; supports the 2023 and 2025 world shares, the six-inch and eight-inch shares, the twelve-inch claim and the link to electric cars. Read in large part. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[344] 时代商业研究院 [Time Business Research Institute], 时代周报 [Time Weekly]. (2026, 6 November). 天岳先进8英寸衬底放量驱动盈利拐点确认，成长逻辑进入兑现验证期 [SICC’s eight-inch substrates drive a turn to profit]. Supports the bankruptcy filing and the South Korean exit, the price war and clearing of capacity, and the company’s third-quarter 2026 results. Relevant passages read as carried by a financial data service. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[345] 第一财经 [Yicai]. (2026, 23 October). 寒武纪前三季度营收净利润双双翻倍，营收95亿元、存货116亿元 [Cambricon’s nine-month revenue and profit both double]. Report of the third-quarter report; supports quarterly and nine-month revenue and profit, cash flow, cash, inventory, prepayments, liabilities, the three-year target and the second designer’s forecast. Read in full as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. sina.com.cn

[346] 观点网 [Guandian]. (2026, 23 October). 寒武纪的两本账：147亿备货，37亿利润 [Cambricon’s two ledgers: 14.7 billion in stock, 3.7 billion in profit]. Supports the combined stock and prepayment figure, the product line share, customer concentration, the order estimate, the flagship’s specifications and 2025 output. Relevant passages read as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. sina.com.cn

[347] 万联证券 [Wanlian Securities], as reported in the Chinese financial press. (2026, September). 2026年1至8月并购重组市场统计 [Merger and restructuring market statistics, January to August 2026]. Supports the count of semiconductor merger events and its change on the year. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dfcfw.com

[348] 心智观察所 [Xinzhi Observatory]. (2026). 华虹“吞并”华力微，一个三年之约 [Hua Hong absorbs Huali Micro: a three-year promise]. Supports the terms of the Hua Hong transaction, the shareholder vote, the plant acquired and the one excluded, the listing undertaking, utilisation and the target’s results. Relevant passages read as carried on a business news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. huxiu.com

[349] 证券市场周刊 [Capital Week]. (2026). 半导体行业并购潮起！谁在“买买买” [A wave of mergers in semiconductors: who is buying]. Supports the characterisation of 2026 deals, the purchase of the power-device maker and investors’ objection, the test company’s valuation and the direction of deals. Relevant passages read as carried on a business news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. huxiu.com

[350] 顾梦轩、李正豪 [Gu, M., & Li, Z.], 中国经营报 [China Business Journal]. (2026, 23 May). 20个交易日股价上涨8.6倍盛合晶微成先进封测“黑马” [Up 8.6 times in twenty trading days: SJ Semiconductor, the dark horse of advanced packaging]. Supports the market share and bumping capacity figures, the share price rise and market value, first-quarter 2026 results and analysts’ remarks on validation. Relevant passages read as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.qq.com

[351] 大众证券报 [Dazhong Securities News]. (2026, 26 June). 【价值发现】盛合晶微：先进封装龙头成长动能充沛 [SJ Semiconductor: the advanced packaging leader]. Supports the firm’s positions by segment, 2025 revenue and profit, growth rate, technologies in development and use of proceeds. Relevant passages read as carried by a financial data service. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[352] 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026, April). 盛合晶微科创板上市 [SJ Semiconductor lists on the STAR Market]. Supports the listing date, amount raised, its record for the sector and earlier revenue figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cls.cn

[353] 半导体产业纵横 [Semiconductor Industry Observation]. (2026, 27 March). 国产EDA，谁在啃硬骨头？ [Domestic design software: who is doing the hard part?]. Trade publication survey; supports the three listed makers, the acquisitions, the barrier at advanced nodes and the reported timing-analysis tool. Relevant passages read as carried on a business news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. 36kr.com

[354] 朱成呈 [Zhu, C.], 时代周报 [Time Weekly]. (2025, 4 June). 断供阴云下，国产EDA能否扛起大旗？ [Under the cloud of a cut-off, can domestic design software carry the flag?]. Supports the three foreign firms’ notices, the market values, the expert’s assessment of strengths and gaps, the role of acquisitions and the world market figures. Relevant passages read as carried on a business news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. huxiu.com

[355] Atkinson, 科技新報 [TechNews]. (2026, 9 April). 中國長鑫存儲量產 12 層堆疊 HBM，與韓系廠商技術落差三年內 [China’s CXMT begins volume production of twelve-layer stacked memory]. Taiwanese technology site citing foreign reports; supports the April 2026 production report, the yield comparison, the capacity share and the stated gap. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. technews.tw

[356] 陳又瑄 [Chen, Y.], 工商時報 [Commercial Times]. (2026, 4 November). 長鑫HBM良率低也沒賺錢！為何全球記憶體股嚇跌？ [CXMT’s stacked memory has low yield and makes no money: why did memory shares fall?]. Taiwanese business daily; supports the November 2026 report of small-volume production and its yield, the October announcement, the share price reaction, the Chinese designers’ price rises and the paper’s explanation. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ctee.com.tw

[357] 全国人民代表大会常务委员会 [Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress]. (2020, 17 October). 中华人民共和国出口管制法 [Export Control Law of the People’s Republic of China]. Statute, in Chinese; supports the scope and definitions, the control list and temporary control, the catch-all, the control list of buyers, and articles 44, 45 and 48. Read in full from a copy in an international legal database. Accessed 13 November 2026. faolex.fao.org

[358] 国务院 [State Council]. (2024, 30 September; published 19 October). 中华人民共和国两用物项出口管制条例（国务院令第792号） [Regulation on Export Control of Dual-Use Items, State Council Order No. 792]. Regulation, in Chinese; supports the 50 articles and six chapters, the three kinds of licence and their terms, the 45-day limit, the control and watch lists, articles 43, 48 and 49, the penalties, the date in force and the four regulations repealed. Read on the government’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. gov.cn

[359] 国务院 [State Council]. (2025, 23 March). 实施《中华人民共和国反外国制裁法》的规定（国务院令第803号） [Provisions on Implementing the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, State Council Order No. 803]. Regulation, in Chinese; supports the adoption and effective dates, the 22 articles, the grounds for listing, the measures in articles 7 to 9, the consequences in article 13 and the provisions on compliance with foreign measures and on lawsuits in articles 17 to 19. Read on a ministry’s copy of the order. Accessed 13 November 2026. mee.gov.cn

[360] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 新华网 [Xinhua]. (2025, 9 October). 商务部公布对境外相关稀土物项实施出口管制的决定（商务部公告2025年第61号） [Decision to control exports of certain rare-earth items abroad, Announcement No. 61 of 2025]. Official announcement, in Chinese; supports the three categories, the 0.1% threshold, the refusal for military users and listed parties and their 50% subsidiaries, the case-by-case review for 14-nanometre logic, 256-layer memory and military SI, the humanitarian exemption, the compliance notices and the dates. Read on the news agency’s page; annexes not read. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.cn

[361] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 中国日报网 [China Daily]. (2024, 3 December). 商务部：加强相关两用物项对美国出口管制（商务部公告2024年第46号） [Strengthening export controls on dual-use items to the United States, Announcement No. 46 of 2024]. Official announcement, in Chinese; supports the three clauses, including the liability of parties in any country or region. Read on the newspaper’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cn.chinadaily.com.cn

[362] 澎湃新闻 [The Paper]. (2025, 10 November). 大外交｜元首会晤后中美连续释放经贸缓和信号，专家：美方勿轻易打破共识 [After the leaders’ meeting, China and the United States send signals of easing on trade]. News report, in Chinese; supports Announcement 70 of 7 November 2025 and the six announcements it suspended to 10 November 2026, and the suspension of the second clause of Announcement 46 to 27 November 2026 with the military ban left in place. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[363] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2025, 11 November). 商务部新闻发言人就美方暂停实施出口管制穿透性规则答记者问 [Commerce ministry spokesperson on the American suspension of the affiliates rule]. Official statement, in Chinese; supports the one-year American suspension of the 50% affiliates rule from 10 November 2025 to 9 November 2026. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cls.cn

[364] 界面新闻 [Jiemian News]. (2024, 4 December). 科技早报｜四大行业协会呼吁谨慎采购美国芯片 [Four industry associations urge caution in buying American chips]. News digest, in Chinese; supports the four associations, the date and the common points of their statements. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. jiemian.com

[365] 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2025, 11 April). 事关“原产地”认定规则，中国半导体行业协会紧急通知 [China Semiconductor Industry Association’s urgent notice on rules of origin]. News report of the association’s notice, in Chinese; supports the wafer-fabrication test of origin, the declaration advice and the legal basis cited. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cls.cn

[366] 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency], carried by 中国政府网 [gov.cn]. (2025, 29 October). 聚焦“十五五”规划建议｜着眼取得决定性突破加强重点领域关键核心技术攻关 [On the proposal for the fifteenth five-year plan: decisive breakthroughs in core technologies]. Official news article quoting the plan proposal, in Chinese; supports the sentence on the whole-nation system, extraordinary measures and the list of fields beginning with integrated circuits, and the 28 October 2025 publication. Read on the government’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. gov.cn

[367] 黄修眉、陈俊清, 科创板日报 [Star Market Daily], carried by 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2025, 21 November). 销售额首破千亿美元！中国芯片设计产业未来怎么走 [Sales pass $100 billion for the first time: where China’s chip design industry goes next]. News report of Wei Shaojun’s annual industry report, in Chinese; supports the 2025 sales forecast and growth rate, the count and share of larger firms, the product and regional breakdown and his assessment of the industry. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cls.cn

[368] 胡含嫣, 澎湃新闻 [The Paper]. (2025, 31 July). 国家网信办就H20算力芯片漏洞后门安全风险约谈英伟达公司 [Cyberspace Administration summons Nvidia over loophole and back-door risks in H20 chips]. News report of the regulator’s notice, in Chinese; supports the date, the request made of Nvidia, the laws cited and the background on American tracking proposals. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[369] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 新华网 [Xinhua]. (2025, 13 September). 商务部：对原产于美国的进口相关模拟芯片发起反倾销立案调查（商务部公告2025年第27号） [Anti-dumping investigation into certain analogue chips from the United States, Announcement No. 27 of 2025]. Official announcement, in Chinese; supports the applicant and date, the products and process range, the investigation periods and the deadline. Read on the news agency’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.cn

[370] 国务院 [State Council]. (2020, 4 August). 国务院关于印发新时期促进集成电路产业和软件产业高质量发展若干政策的通知（国发〔2020〕8号） [Notice on policies to promote the high-quality development of the integrated circuit and software industries in the new period, Guofa (2020) No. 8]. Policy document, in Chinese; supports the tax holidays by process node and operating term, the loss carry-forward, the terms for design, equipment, materials, packaging, test and software firms, the import duty and value added tax terms, the warnings on duplicate construction and poaching, the application regardless of ownership and the earlier policies replaced. Read on the government’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. gov.cn

[371] 国务院 [State Council]. (2025, 21 August; published 27 August). 国务院关于深入实施“人工智能+”行动的意见（国发〔2025〕11号） [Opinion on deepening the “AI Plus” action, Guofa (2025) No. 11]. Policy document, in Chinese; supports the 2027 and 2030 targets and the section on computing power, including support for chips and their software, large clusters and the national computing network. Read on a regulator’s copy of the document. Accessed 13 November 2026. cac.gov.cn

[372] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 新华网 [Xinhua]. (2025, 9 May). 国家出口管制工作协调机制办公室部署开展打击战略矿产走私出口专项行动 [Office of the national export control coordination mechanism launches a special campaign against smuggling of strategic minerals]. Official notice, in Chinese; supports the date and place, the seven bodies taking part, the minerals named, the smuggling methods and the requirements set. Read on the news agency’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.cn

[373] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 澎湃新闻 [The Paper]. (2025, 19 July). 国家出口管制工作协调机制办公室部署推进打击战略矿产走私出口专项行动 [Office of the national export control coordination mechanism pushes forward the campaign against smuggling of strategic minerals]. Official notice, in Chinese; supports the Nanning meeting, the results reported without figures, and the proposed joint enforcement centre, listing of evading end users, compliance guidance and exporter checks. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[374] 央视新闻 [CCTV News], carried by 第一财经 [Yicai]. (2025, 18 July). 境外间谍利用寄递手段窃取我国稀土国安机关最新提示 [Foreign spies use parcel delivery to steal China’s rare earths: a notice from the state security organs]. State media report of a Ministry of State Security article, in Chinese; supports the contractor case, the forged origin labels, the false declarations, the concealment methods, the small parcels, the action taken and the hotline. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. yicai.com

[375] 不可靠实体清单工作机制 [Unreliable Entity List Working Mechanism], carried by 新华网 [Xinhua]. (2025, 9 October). 不可靠实体清单工作机制关于将反无人机技术公司等外国实体列入不可靠实体清单的公告（2025年第10号） [Announcement No. 10 of 2025 on placing Dedrone and other foreign entities on the unreliable entity list]. Official announcement, in Chinese; supports the fourteen entities, the TechInsights affiliates, the laws cited, the three measures including the bar on sending data, and the effective date. Read on the news agency’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.cn

[376] 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2025, 22 December). 商务部回应安世半导体问题：督促企业尽快通过协商解决内部纠纷 [Commerce ministry on Nexperia: firms urged to settle their internal dispute through talks]. Official statement, in Chinese; supports the exemption for compliant civilian exports, the demands made of the Netherlands and the call for the firms to negotiate. Read on the news agency’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.cn

[377] 国务院 [State Council]. (2024, 22 June). 稀土管理条例（国务院令第785号） [Rare Earth Management Regulation, State Council Order No. 785]. Regulation, in Chinese; supports the dates and 32 articles, state ownership and protective mining, the closed list of producers, total quantity control, the tracing system, the trade and reserve articles, the ban on illegal product and the penalties. Read on a ministry’s copy of the order. Accessed 13 November 2026. mee.gov.cn

[378] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 中国日报网 [China Daily]. (2025, 9 October). 商务部公告2025年第62号公布对稀土相关技术实施出口管制的决定 [Announcement No. 62 of 2025: decision to control exports of rare-earth technologies]. Official announcement, in Chinese; supports the two control codes, the definitions, the rule on uncontrolled items, the wide definition of export, the ban on substantial help abroad, the exclusions and the effective date. Read on the newspaper’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cn.chinadaily.com.cn

[379] 经济日报 [Economic Daily], carried by 中国日报网 [China Daily]. (2023, 22 May). 美光公司在华销售的产品未通过网络安全审查 [Micron’s products sold in China fail cybersecurity review]. State newspaper report of the Cybersecurity Review Office’s notice, in Chinese; supports the finding, the instruction to operators of critical information infrastructure, the law cited and the absence of technical detail. Read on the newspaper’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cn.chinadaily.com.cn

[380] 36氪 [36Kr]. (2025, 15 September). 违反反垄断法，英伟达在中国被进一步调查 [Nvidia faces further investigation in China for violating the Anti-Monopoly Law]. News report, in Chinese; supports the regulator’s 15 September 2025 statement, the December 2024 opening of the case and the 2020 conditions on bundling and continued supply. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. 36kr.com

[381] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], carried by 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2025, 13 September). 商务部：就美国对华集成电路领域相关措施发起反歧视立案调查（商务部公告2025年第50号） [Anti-discrimination investigation into American measures on China’s integrated circuit sector, Announcement No. 50 of 2025]. Official announcement, in Chinese; supports the legal basis, the American measures listed, the methods of investigation, the three-month term and the comment and consultation periods. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. nbd.com.cn

[382] IT之家 [ITHome]. (2025, 16 September). 龙芯“三剑客”之一，3B6000M 处理器入选安全可靠最高等级 II 级认证 [Loongson’s 3B6000M processor receives the highest security and reliability grade, Level II]. Technology news report, in Chinese; supports the evaluation centre’s Notice No. 3 of 2025, its date, the grade given and the link drawn to use in government, finance and energy. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. ithome.com

[383] 国务院新闻办公室 [State Council Information Office]. (2021, 29 December). 《中国的出口管制》白皮书 [White paper: China’s Export Controls]. Government white paper, in Chinese; supports the structure, the passage opposing abuse of export controls, the principles stated, the figures on regulations, enforcement, training and dialogues, and the description of lists, licensing and enforcement. Read on a public text archive. Accessed 13 November 2026. zh.wikisource.org

[384] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2020, 19 September). 不可靠实体清单规定（商务部令2020年第4号） [Provisions on the Unreliable Entity List, Order No. 4 of 2020]. Ministry order, in Chinese; supports the 14 articles, the two grounds for listing, the working mechanism, the investigation and fast-track procedure, the correction period, the measures in article 10, the permission to deal in special circumstances and removal from the list. Read on a public text archive. Accessed 13 November 2026. zh.wikisource.org

[385] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2021, 9 January). 阻断外国法律与措施不当域外适用办法（商务部令2021年第1号） [Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extraterritorial Application of Foreign Legislation and Other Measures, Order No. 1 of 2021]. Ministry order, in Chinese; supports the 16 articles, the scope, the 30-day report, the factors weighed, the prohibition order, exemptions, the right to sue for compensation, government support, countermeasures and penalties. Read on a legal information site’s copy. Accessed 13 November 2026. fadada.com

[386] 上海市人民政府 [Shanghai Municipal People’s Government], carried by 投资界 [PEdaily]. (2022, 19 January). 新时期促进上海市集成电路产业和软件产业高质量发展若干政策 [Policies to promote the high-quality development of Shanghai’s integrated circuit and software industries in the new period]. City policy, in Chinese; supports the 27 articles and start date, the 30% and ¥100 million terms for equipment, materials, software and tape-outs, the verification payments and 30% home-made purchasing share, the 50% refund for design software, the team awards and the finance terms. Read in full on a news site’s reproduction. Accessed 13 November 2026. pedaily.cn

[387] 南方日报 [Nanfang Daily], carried by 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2025, 6 July). 深圳出台10条举措促进半导体与集成电路产业高质量发展 [Shenzhen issues ten measures to promote its semiconductor and integrated circuit industry]. Newspaper report, in Chinese; supports the ten measures and their fields, the ¥5 billion fund registered in May 2025 and its targets, the reference to the whole-nation system and the first-half 2025 output figure. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cls.cn

[388] 第一财经 [Yicai]. (2025, 16 October). 芯片产业“惊喜”，为何集中在深圳出现｜湾区观察 [Why the chip industry’s surprises are appearing in Shenzhen]. Newspaper feature, in Chinese; supports the 30% and ¥3 million tape-out support, the 30% and ¥10 million support for equipment, parts and packaging research, the count of supported firms and the fund’s focus on early and growth-stage firms. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. yicai.com

[389] 刘斌、李秋静 [Liu, B., & Li, Q.]. (2023, December). 美国对华出口管制与中国企业创新 [American export controls on China and Chinese firms’ innovation]. 财经研究 [Journal of Finance and Economics], 49(12). Chinese journal article; supports the 2013 to 2021 sample, the double effect on output and spending, the mechanisms, and the figures it cites on licence approvals, joint patents and chip self-sufficiency. Abstract, data and main results read from the journal’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. qks.shufe.edu.cn

[390] 倪红福、彭思仪、钟道诚 [Ni, H., Peng, S., & Zhong, D.]. (2025, August). 战略主动视角下产学研合作创新的驱动因素研究 [Drivers of industry-university-research collaboration from the view of strategic initiative]. 中国工业经济 [China Industrial Economics], 2025(8), 159–177. Chinese journal article; supports the 2013 to 2022 sample and its size, the 11.26% rise in joint patenting, the results by patent type and firm type, and the findings on subsidy, tax and supply-chain risk awareness. Abstract, method and main results read from the journal’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. ciejournal.ajcass.com

[391] 马新啸、梁正一、赵艳平、武一帆 [Ma, X., Liang, Z., Zhao, Y., & Wu, Y.]. (2025, April). 失之东隅，收之桑榆：美国出口管制与中国企业数字化转型 [American export controls and the digital transformation of Chinese firms]. 财经研究 [Journal of Finance and Economics], 51(4). Chinese journal article; supports the 16.07% rise in digitalisation, its mechanisms and regional differences, the policy recommendations and the figure it cites on Huawei’s research staff. Abstract, main results and conclusions read from the journal’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. qks.sufe.edu.cn

[392] 界面新闻 [Jiemian News]. (2023, 31 July). 四部门：决定对特定无人驾驶航空飞行器或无人驾驶飞艇相关物项实施出口管制 [Four bodies decide to control exports of items related to certain unmanned aircraft and airships]. News reproduction of Announcements 27 and 28 of 2023, in Chinese; supports the issuing bodies, the component thresholds, the criteria and term of the temporary control, the military-use clause and the effective date. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. jiemian.com

[393] 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2024, 31 July). 三部门：优化调整无人机出口管制措施，9月1日起正式实施 [Three bodies adjust drone export control measures, in force from 1 September]. News reproduction of the 2024 announcement, in Chinese; supports the issuing bodies, the controlled items and thresholds, the military-use clause and its penalty, the repeal of the 2023 announcements and the effective date. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cls.cn

[394] 澎湃新闻 [The Paper]. (2024, 31 July). 商务部就优化调整无人机出口管制措施应询答问 [Commerce ministry answers questions on the adjustment of drone export controls]. News report of the ministry’s answers, in Chinese; supports the changes made, the addition of inertial measurement units, the lifting of the temporary control and the ministry’s stated position. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. thepaper.cn

[395] 外交部 [Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. (2021, 14 December). 中国关于规范人工智能军事应用的立场文件 [Position paper of China on regulating military applications of artificial intelligence]. Official position paper, in Chinese; supports the eight headings and the statements on absolute advantage, human control, responsibility, proliferation, rule-making and technology barriers. Read on the ministry’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. mfa.gov.cn

[396] 外交部 [Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. (n.d.). 中国根据联大第79/239（2024）号决议就人工智能军事应用机遇和挑战问题提交的文件 [China’s submission under General Assembly resolution 79/239 (2024) on the opportunities and challenges of military applications of artificial intelligence]. Official submission, in Chinese; supports the five principles, the references to the 2021 paper and the 2023 governance initiative, the language on human control and the absence of a position on a binding instrument. Read on the ministry’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. mfa.gov.cn

[397] 国务院新闻办公室 [State Council Information Office], carried by 人民政协网 [CPPCC news site]. (2019, 24 July). 《新时代的中国国防》白皮书 [White paper: China’s National Defense in the New Era]. Government white paper, in Chinese, preface and first chapter only; supports the sentences on new technologies in the military field, intelligent warfare and unfinished mechanisation. Preface and first chapter read on a news site’s partial reproduction. Accessed 13 November 2026. rmzxw.com.cn

[398] 全国人民代表大会 [National People’s Congress]. (2026, 13 March). 中华人民共和国国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划纲要 [Outline of the fifteenth five-year plan for national economic and social development]. Full text of the plan for 2026 to 2030; supports every quotation from the plan, the chapter structure, the research spending target and the passages on chips, minerals, backup industry, computing power, export control, counter-sanctions, the armed forces and Taiwan. Full text read and searched on the central government’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. gov.cn

[399] 中国共产党中央委员会 [Central Committee of the Communist Party of China]. (2025, 28 October). 中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议 [Recommendations for formulating the fifteenth five-year plan]. Party document adopted in October 2025; supports the earlier form of the chip sentence, the wording on export control and security review, and the strategic hinterland and backup of key industries. Full text read and searched on the central government’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. gov.cn

[400] 全国人民代表大会 [National People’s Congress]. (2021, 13 March). 中华人民共和国国民经济和社会发展第十四个五年规划和2035年远景目标纲要 [Outline of the fourteenth five-year plan and long-range objectives through 2035]. Full text of the plan for 2021 to 2025; supports the comparison: where integrated circuits appear, and the absence of the terms for extraordinary measures, export control, counter-sanctions and rare earths. Full text searched on the central government’s site for the terms compared. Accessed 14 November 2026. gov.cn

[401] 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2026, 13 March). 新华社受权播发“十五五”规划纲要 [Xinhua publishes the outline of the fifteenth five-year plan]. Supports the approval by the National People’s Congress on 12 March 2026 and the eighteen parts of the plan. Read on the agency’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[402] 刘宝亮 [Liu, B.], 中国经济导报 [China Economic Herald]. (2026, 10 September). 中国集成电路产业迎来新一轮高速增长 [China’s integrated circuit industry enters a new round of fast growth]. Article in the planning commission’s newspaper, carried on the commission’s site; supports 2025 output and exports, exports, imports and the deficit for January to July 2026, chips as the largest export category, investment and utilisation, the tax exemption, the staff shortage, the remarks of the commission’s spokesperson and the weaknesses the article lists. Read in full on the commission’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. ndrc.gov.cn

[403] 商务部、海关总署 [Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs]. (2025, 9 October). 商务部海关总署公告2025年第55号公布对超硬材料相关物项实施出口管制的决定 [Announcement No. 55 of 2025: export controls on superhard material items]. Supports the listed items and thresholds, the State Council’s approval, the customs declaration clause and the date of 8 November 2025. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[404] 商务部、海关总署 [Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs]. (2025, 9 October). 商务部海关总署公告2025年第56号公布对部分稀土设备和原辅料相关物项实施出口管制的决定 [Announcement No. 56 of 2025: export controls on certain rare-earth equipment and inputs]. Supports the twenty-six classes of equipment, the ores and extractants, the thresholds quoted and the customs clause. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[405] 商务部、海关总署 [Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs]. (2025, 9 October). 商务部海关总署公告2025年第57号公布对部分中重稀土相关物项实施出口管制的决定 [Announcement No. 57 of 2025: export controls on certain medium and heavy rare-earth items]. Supports the five rare earths, the forms covered and the effective date. Read as carried by the state news agency, through a reading tool. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[406] 商务部、海关总署 [Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs]. (2025, 9 October). 商务部海关总署公告2025年第58号公布对锂电池和人造石墨负极材料相关物项实施出口管制的决定 [Announcement No. 58 of 2025: export controls on lithium battery and artificial graphite anode items]. Supports the battery, cathode, anode, equipment and technology items and their thresholds. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[407] 商务部、海关总署 [Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs]. (2025, 7 November). 商务部、海关总署公告2025年第70号公布暂停实施商务部、海关总署公告2025年第55号、56号、57号、58号及商务部公告2025年第61号、62号的决定 [Announcement No. 70 of 2025: suspension of Announcements 55, 56, 57, 58, 61 and 62]. Supports the suspension from 7 November 2025 to 10 November 2026 and its one-sentence form. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[408] 商务部、海关总署 [Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs]. (2026, 9 November). 商务部、海关总署公告2026年第58号公布继续暂停实施商务部、海关总署公告2025年第55号、56号、57号、58号及商务部公告2025年第61号、62号的决定 [Announcement No. 58 of 2026: continued suspension of Announcements 55, 56, 57, 58, 61 and 62 of 2025]. Supports the continued suspension from 11 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. Read in full as reproduced on the site of the ministry’s Dalian office. Accessed 14 November 2026. dltb.mofcom.gov.cn

[409] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2024, 3 December). 商务部公告2024年第46号关于加强相关两用物项对美国出口管制的公告 [Announcement No. 46 of 2024 on strengthening export controls on dual-use items to the United States]. Supports the two paragraphs of the announcement and the liability of persons in any country. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[410] 黄昂瑾 [Huang, A.], 央广网 [China National Radio]. (2025, 9 November). 商务部：暂停实施《关于加强相关两用物项对美国出口管制的公告》第二款 [Commerce ministry suspends the second paragraph of the announcement on dual-use exports to the United States]. State broadcaster’s report of the ministry’s notice; supports the suspension of the second paragraph of No. 46 until 27 November 2026. Read on the broadcaster’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. finance.cnr.cn

[411] 商务部新闻办公室 [Ministry of Commerce, Information Office]. (2025, 9 October). 商务部新闻发言人就加强稀土相关物项出口管制应询答记者问 [Spokesperson’s answers on strengthening export controls on rare-earth items]. Supports the ministry’s stated reasons, the reference to the April 2025 controls and the 2001 technology catalogue, the limited scope, licensing and humanitarian exemption. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. mofcom.gov.cn

[412] 谢希瑶、黄韬铭 [Xie, X., & Huang, T.], 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2026, 9 April). 商务部回应稀土出口管制：中美将通过经贸磋商机制保持沟通 [Commerce ministry on rare-earth export controls: China and the United States will keep in contact through the trade consultation mechanism]. Supports the spokesperson’s statement that the October 2025 measures were suspended to 10 November 2026 under the Kuala Lumpur consensus. Read on the ministry’s export control information site. Accessed 14 November 2026. exportcontrol.mofcom.gov.cn

[413] 财联社 [Cailian Press]. (2026, 7 August). 海关总署：1至7月集成电路累计出口金额达2160亿美元同比增长99.5% [Customs: integrated circuit exports reach $216.0 billion in January to July, up 99.5%]. News service report of the customs release; supports the seven-month and July export figures. Read through a reading tool. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[414] 张怀水 [Zhang, H.], 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2026, 10 November). 同比大涨35.2%！10月出口继续高位运行，集成电路、自动数据处理设备等产品出口金额翻倍 [October exports up 35.2%: integrated circuit and computer exports double in value]. Supports the October rise of 137.1%, the estimate of a 143% rise in export prices, and the trade chamber spokesperson’s remark on imports. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. 21jingji.com

[415] 通信世界 [Communications World]. (2026, 10 November). 10月集成电路出口大增137.1%：拆开量价与结构，通信算力供应链影响几何 [October chip exports up 137.1%: separating volume, price and structure]. Trade paper analysis; supports the October figure of $39.594 billion, the comparison with cars and phones, and the cautions about who exports and what the total can show. Read in full as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. sohu.com

[416] 国际电子商情 [Electronics Supply and Manufacturing China]. (2026, November). 前10个月中国进出口增长20%，集成电路出口同比增137%成最大引擎 [China’s trade up 20% in the first ten months; chip exports the largest engine]. Trade publication report of customs data; supports the ten-month export value and volume and the ten-month import volume and value. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. esmchina.com

[417] 深圳市博科供应链管理有限公司 [Boke Supply Chain Management]. (2026, January). 2025年全年重要外贸数据一览 [Key foreign trade figures for 2025]. A trade services firm’s summary of customs figures; supports 2025 chip export and import volumes and yuan values. Read on the firm’s site; a secondary summary of customs data. Accessed 14 November 2026. bokahk.com

[418] 张杰 [Zhang, J.], 爱集微 [Jiwei]. (2026, 11 March). 海关总署：2026年1至2月中国集成电路出口额同比大增69% [Customs: China’s chip exports up 69% in January and February 2026]. Trade press report of the customs release of 10 March 2026; supports the two-month export and import values and volumes. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. laoyaoba.com

[419] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], via 中国日报网 [China Daily]. (2025, 14 November). 商务部新闻发言人就荷兰经济大臣涉安世半导体言论答记者问 [Spokesperson’s answer on the Dutch economy minister’s remarks about Nexperia]. Supports the ministry’s account of the Dutch order of 30 September and the ruling of 8 October 2025, the 99% trust, the Goods Availability Act, the exemption for civilian exports, the refusal to supply wafers and the lesson the ministry draws. Read in full on the newspaper’s Chinese site. Accessed 14 November 2026. cn.chinadaily.com.cn

[420] 新华社 [Xinhua News Agency]. (2025, 19 November). 商务部回应安世半导体中荷磋商：中方对荷方主动暂停行政令表示欢迎 [Commerce ministry on the China–Netherlands talks over Nexperia: China welcomes the suspension of the order]. Supports the talks of 18 and 19 November 2025, the suspension of the order, and the ministry’s statement that the court ruling remains the obstacle. Read in full on the agency’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[421] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], via 中国新闻网 [China News Service]. (2025, 22 December). 商务部新闻发言人就安世半导体问题答记者问 [Spokesperson’s answers on Nexperia]. Supports the low wafer stocks at Dongguan, shortages at carmakers in China, the exemption for compliant civilian exports and the first talks between Wingtech and Nexperia’s Dutch management. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. chinanews.com.cn

[422] 陈晴 [Chen, Q.], 每日经济新闻 [National Business Daily]. (2026, 12 February). 安世控制权危机升级：荷兰企业法庭启动正式调查，闻泰科技被“架空”进入第二阶段 [Nexperia control crisis escalates: Dutch Enterprise Chamber opens formal investigation]. Press report of Wingtech’s announcement; supports the ruling of 11 February 2026, the loss forecast, the rating cut, the convertible bond, and Nexperia’s products, customers and plants. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. nbd.com.cn

[423] 中华网 [China.com]. (2026, 5 November). 安世半导体控制权争议再起波澜 20亿美元索赔压顶 [Nexperia control dispute flares again with a $2 billion claim]. Press report of Wingtech’s announcements of 3 November 2026; supports the $2 billion suit, the administrator’s restructuring proposal, the Dongguan suit, the asset freeze and the preservation order. First page of three read. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.china.com

[424] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 24 July). 商务部公告2026年第30号公布将14家欧盟实体列入出口管制管控名单 [Announcement No. 30 of 2026: fourteen European Union entities placed on the export control list]. Supports the fourteen names and countries, the measures and the reach to persons abroad. Read in full, with the list, as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[425] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 24 April). 商务部公告2026年第20号公布将7家欧盟实体列入出口管制管控名单 [Announcement No. 20 of 2026: seven European Union entities placed on the export control list]. Supports the seven names and countries and the measures. Read in full, with the list, as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[426] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce]. (2026, 24 July). 商务部新闻发言人就将14家欧盟实体列入出口管制管控名单答记者问 [Spokesperson’s answer on placing fourteen European Union entities on the export control list]. Supports the stated reason: the European Union’s twenty-first sanctions package and its listing of fourteen mainland and Hong Kong firms. Read as reproduced on a financial news site. Accessed 14 November 2026. itiger.com

[427] 商务部、海关总署、中央军委装备发展部 [Ministry of Commerce, General Administration of Customs and Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission]. (2026, 19 October). 商务部海关总署中央军委装备发展部公告2026年第49号公布优化调整无人机相关物项出口管制措施的决定 [Announcement No. 49 of 2026: decision to optimise and adjust export controls on drone-related items]. Supports every item and threshold quoted, the approving bodies, the licence facilitation measures and the date of 18 November 2026. Read in full as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[428] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], via 同花顺 [Tonghuashun]. (2026, 5 August). 商务部：加强无人机相关两用物项对美国出口管制 [Commerce ministry: strengthening export controls on drone-related dual-use items to the United States]. Supports the case-by-case strict review of listed drones, key parts and technology bound for the United States, the exclusion of licence facilitation and immediate effect. Read as reproduced by a financial data service. Accessed 14 November 2026. 10jqka.com.cn

[429] 商务部、科技部 [Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology]. (2026, 16 October). 商务部科技部公告2026年第48号就修订《中国禁止出口限制出口技术目录》公开征求意见并对相关技术出口实施临时登记管理，及商务部新闻发言人答记者问 [Announcement No. 48 of 2026 on revising the catalogue of technologies prohibited or restricted for export and on temporary registration, with the spokesperson’s answers]. Supports the forty technologies and their split, the SI, biomedicine and solar entries named, the exclusions and automatic licences, the registration requirement and the ministry’s stated reasons. Announcement and explanation read in full in a reproduction of the ministry’s release; the annexes were not opened. Accessed 14 November 2026. secrss.com

[430] 商务部 [Ministry of Commerce], via 科技日报 [Science and Technology Daily]. (2025, 15 July). 《中国禁止出口限制出口技术目录》有哪些增减？ [What has been added to and removed from the catalogue of technologies prohibited or restricted for export?]. The spokesperson’s explanation of Announcement No. 28 of 2025; supports how the catalogue works, its history since 2001, and the 2025 entries on battery cathodes, lithium and gallium. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. stdaily.com

[431] 商务部、海关总署 [Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs]. (2026, 19 October). 商务部海关总署公告2026年第50号公布对盾构机等物项实施出口管制的决定 [Announcement No. 50 of 2026: export controls on tunnel boring machines and other items]. Supports the items controlled, the rule for countries that have disputes with China, the undertakings and the date of 18 November 2026. Read in full as carried by the state news agency. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[432] 全球半导体观察 [Global Semiconductor Observer]. (2026, 2 November). 重磅！国家大基金三期再出手 [The third national fund moves again]. Trade press report of Silan Microelectronics’ announcement of 28 October 2026, with a review of the fund’s investments in 2025 and 2026. Read in full as carried on a financial news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. sina.com.cn

[433] 余诗琪 [Yu, S.], 科创板日报 [STAR Market Daily]. (2025, 14 September). 半导体国资母基金“实战元年”：大基金三期即将出手，长三角“撒钱” [The year state chip funds went to work: the third national fund is about to invest]. Supports the three vehicles and their capital, the first investment, and the Shanghai and Wuhan funds. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. cls.cn

[434] 张荃 [Zhang, Q.], 观察者网 [Guancha]. (2026, 3 January). 国家大基金，大比例增持中芯国际H股 [National fund raises its stake in SMIC]. Report of SMIC’s announcements of 29 and 30 December 2025; supports the purchase of 49% of SMIC North, the capital increase at SMIC South and the description of its processes. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. guancha.cn

[435] 李强 [Li, Q.], 国务院 [State Council]. (2026, 5 March). 政府工作报告 [Report on the work of the government]. Delivered to the National People’s Congress; supports the list of emerging pillar industries, the instruction to state firms, and the fast track for listings and mergers. Full text read and searched on the state news agency’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.cn

[436] 环球网 [Huanqiu]. (2026, 29 May). 国家大基金密集减持三只半导体龙头业内称属常规市场化退出 [National fund sells down three chip leaders; industry calls it a routine exit]. Supports the May 2026 share sales, the count of notices over the year and the analysts’ description of the cycle. Read in full as carried on a news portal. Accessed 14 November 2026. news.qq.com

[437] Freshfields. (2025, 20 June). BIS rescinds AI Diffusion Rule, issues notice of high-probability enforcement. Law-firm briefing: what the January 2025 country-tier rule contained, the 13 May 2025 rescission, the reasons BIS gave and the guidance issued the same day. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. freshfields.com

[438] Holland & Knight. (2026, 5 June). BIS Publishes Guidance on License Requirements for Advanced Computing Items. Law-firm alert: the 31 May 2026 guidance, the headquarters-based licence requirement, and the absence of a replacement rule as of June 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. hklaw.com

[439] Morgan Lewis. (2026, 16 January). BIS Revises Export Review Policy for Advanced AI Chips Destined for China and Macau. Law-firm summary of the 15 January 2026 rule: the performance thresholds, the conditions for case-by-case review and what stays under presumed denial. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. morganlewis.com

[440] European Commission. (2025, 1 August). General-purpose AI obligations under the AI Act. Official fact page: the 2 August 2025 start date, the 10²³ and 10²⁵ FLOP thresholds, and the statement that the higher threshold is under review. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu

[441] Arnold & Porter. (2024, 13 September). Advanced AI Models and Computing Clusters. Law-firm advisory on the 11 September 2024 BIS proposal: reporting thresholds for training runs and clusters, quarterly reporting, and its basis in Executive Order 14110. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. arnoldporter.com

[442] King & Spalding. (2025, 14 February). Trump Administration Early Executive Orders Signal Shift in AI Policy. Law-firm article: Executive Order 14148 revoked Executive Order 14110 on the first day of the new administration, and Executive Order 14179 followed on 23 January 2025. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. kslaw.com

[443] Reuters, via The Standard. (2025, 5 November). China bans foreign AI chips from state-funded data centres, sources say. News report from unnamed sources: the domestic-chip requirement for state-funded data centres and the 30% completion test. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thestandard.com.hk

[444] Sastry, G., Heim, L., Belfield, H., Anderljung, M., and others. (2024, 13 February). Computing Power and the Governance of Artificial Intelligence. Research paper by 19 authors: why computing power is a workable handle for governance, the proposals built on it and the risks of doing it badly. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. arxiv.org

[445] The Register. (2025, 3 July). Gone in 40 days: US drops ban on export of chip design tools to China. News report: the 23 May 2025 licence requirement on design software, its removal on 2 July 2025 and the lack of an official reason. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theregister.com

[446] TrendForce. (2025, 15 October). SiCarrier Subsidiaries Reportedly Launch China’s Fully-Independent EDA, 3nm Test Equipment. Trade-press report: 2024 global shares of the three leading design software firms, China’s self-sufficiency rate and the October 2025 product launch. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[447] The Register. (2022, 14 December). Arm processor technology and China. News report relaying the Financial Times: Arm’s conclusion that Neoverse V-series licences for Alibaba would not be approved, and Arm’s statement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theregister.com

[448] Feldgoise, J., Center for Security and Emerging Technology. (2024, 22 January). RISC-V: What it is and Why it Matters. Research-centre explainer: what RISC-V is, its Swiss governing body, the November 2023 letter from House members and why restriction is difficult. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cset.georgetown.edu

[449] Cheung, S., Jamestown Foundation. (2026, 10 November). RISC-V Open-Source Chip Push Puts Strategy Over Capability. Think-tank analysis: China’s national and local RISC-V policy, Chinese membership of RISC-V International and the performance of Chinese RISC-V chips. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. jamestown.org

[450] Light Reading. (2019, 24 May). Huawei Restricted From WiFi & Electronics Standards Groups. News report: how JEDEC, the SD Association and the Wi-Fi Alliance handled Huawei’s membership after the May 2019 US order. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. lightreading.com

[451] Crosignani, M., Han, L., Macchiavelli, M., & Silva, A. F., Federal Reserve Bank of New York. (2024, April; revised 2025, February). Securing Technological Leadership? The Cost of Export Controls on Firms (Staff Report No. 1096). Central bank staff report; supports the comparison method, the retreat from listed and unlisted Chinese customers, the absence of new customers in three years, the 2.5% share price fall, the $857 million and $130 billion figures, the lending result and the response of listed Chinese firms. Summary, introduction and main results read from the publisher’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. newyorkfed.org

[452] Crosignani, M., Han, L., Macchiavelli, M., & Silva, A. F., Liberty Street Economics. (2024, 12 April). The Anatomy of Export Controls. Authors’ summary of the first version of the paper; supports the 50 to 75% and 60 to 68% figures and the twenty-day window. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org

[453] Long, T., Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. (2025, 10 November). Decoupling Risks: How Semiconductor Export Controls Could Harm US Chipmakers and Innovation. Think-tank model; supports the four scenarios, the $77 billion, $14 billion and job figures, the 17.7% research intensity and the model’s assumptions. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. itif.org

[454] Cao, Y., de Nicola, F., Mattoo, A., & Timmis, J., World Bank. (2024, October). Technological Decoupling? The Impact on Innovation of US Restrictions on Chinese Firms (Policy Research Working Paper 10950). Working paper; supports the 182 firms, the 9.9% and 14.0% falls, the role of American collaborators, the results by firm strength and the effects on neighbouring fields and on American firms. Summary, introduction and main results read from the publisher’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. worldbank.org

[455] Hu, H., Yang, S., Zeng, L., & Zhang, X. (2024). U.S.–China trade conflicts and R&D investment: evidence from the BIS entity lists. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11. Journal article; supports the 16.58% rise in research intensity, the subsidy, inventory and risk-taking channels, the larger effect in state-owned firms and the flat or negative effect on output. Abstract read on a bibliographic page. Accessed 13 November 2026. ideas.repec.org

[456] Hayakawa, K., & Yang, C.-H., Institute of Developing Economies. (2025, January). Technology Sanction and Firm R&D: Evidence From the US-China Trade Dispute (IDE Discussion Paper No. 950). Discussion paper; supports the 2015 to 2022 sample, the absence of a rise in research spending, the fall in total assets and the inventory and state-support results. Abstract read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. ide.go.jp

[457] House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. (2025, 7 October). Selling the Forges of the Future: How the CCP Gets its Key Equipment for Making Semiconductors from U.S., Dutch, and Japanese Companies. Congressional investigation using sales data supplied by five equipment makers; supports the $38 billion, 39%, 66% and 69% figures, the five restricted customers, the ASML unit shares, sales to restricted entities by firm, the SMIC licence counts, the Chinese toolmakers’ market shares and the nine recommendations. Summary, findings and recommendations read from the publisher’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. chinaselectcommittee.house.gov

[458] TechInsights. (2025, 11 December). SMIC N+3 Confirmed: Kirin 9030 Analysis Reveals How Close SMIC Is to 5nm. Teardown firm’s public summary; supports the identification of the N+3 process, its description as a scaled 7-nanometre-class process and the comparison with TSMC and Samsung 5-nanometre processes. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. techinsights.com

[459] McGuire, C., Council on Foreign Relations. (2025, 15 December). China’s AI Chip Deficit: Why Huawei Can’t Catch Nvidia and U.S. Export Controls Should Remain. Think-tank analysis; supports the 5 and 17 times performance gaps, the production assumptions, Huawei’s 5%, 4% and 2% share of Nvidia’s computing power, the method and its exclusions. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. cfr.org

[460] Somala, V., Epoch AI. (2026, 4 September; updated 24 September). Will Huawei Catch Up to Nvidia by 2030?. Research report; supports the under 4% output share, the 2025 and 2026 unit and computing figures, the three to four year lag, the memory constraint and stockpile, the transistor densities and the stated limits of the H100-equivalent. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. epoch.ai

[461] Lind, J., & Mastanduno, M. (2025, 15 September). Hard Then, Harder Now: CoCom’s Lessons and the Challenge of Crafting Effective Export Controls Against China. Texas National Security Review, 8(4), 8–33. Peer-reviewed journal article; supports CoCom’s dates, membership and informal status, the 1978 and Defense Department lead estimates, the KGB effort, the exceptions of the 1970s, the Toshiba-Kongsberg and pipeline episodes, the trade share, the recent list expansions and the three lessons and advice. Read on the publisher’s page and checked against the journal file. Accessed 13 November 2026. tnsr.org

[462] Ottinger, L., ChinaTalk. (2025, 30 May). The Cold War History of Export Controls. Commentary; supports the argument that CoCom worked, the 45-year span, the smuggling and diversion cases, the software updates in the Toshiba case, the Soviet competition for imported computers and the judgment that enforcement was the weak point. Read on the publisher’s page. Accessed 13 November 2026. chinatalk.media

[463] Makioka, R., & Zhang, H., Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry. (2023, March). The Impact of Export Controls on International Trade: Evidence from the Japan–Korea Trade Dispute in the Semiconductor Industry (RIETI Discussion Paper 23-E-017). Discussion paper; supports the July 2019 licence change, Japan’s share of Korean imports, the 87.9% and 97.5% falls, the persistence to 2021, the 94.6% rise in exports to the United States, the shift in Korean sourcing, the rise in production in Korea and the equipment exports to China. Abstract, introduction, data and conclusions read from the publisher’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. rieti.go.jp

[464] Hufbauer, G. C., & Hogan, M., Peterson Institute for International Economics. (2025, January). Industrial Policy through the CHIPS and Science Act: A Preliminary Report (PIIE Briefing 25-1). Think-tank evaluation; supports the five questions and answers, the grant, research and tax credit amounts, the job counts and the $185,000 figure, the rearranged OECD subsidy shares, the fab cost comparison and the remarks on research and on post-2020 subsidies. Summary, findings and subsidy tables read from the publisher’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. piie.com

[465] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2019, December). Measuring distortions in international markets: The semiconductor value chain (OECD Trade Policy Paper No. 234). Intergovernmental study; supports the 21 firms, the total above $50 billion for 2014 to 2018, the concentration of below-market debt and equity in one jurisdiction and the finding that all firms received research or investment support. Abstract read on a bibliographic page; the paper itself could not be opened. Accessed 13 November 2026. ideas.repec.org

[466] Jia, R., Roberts, M. E., Wang, Y., & Yang, E., National Bureau of Economic Research. (2022, April; revised 2023, February). The Impact of U.S.-China Tensions on U.S. Science (NBER Working Paper 29941). Working paper; supports the investigations and case counts, the sample of over 113,000 scientists, the 2.1%, 10.1% and 5.7% falls, the larger effect on Asian scientists and on fields reliant on federal funding and joint work, and the authors’ conclusion. Abstract, introduction and conclusions read from the publisher’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. nber.org

[467] Xie, Y., Lin, X., Li, J., He, Q., & Huang, J. (2022, September). Caught in the Crossfire: Fears of Chinese-American Scientists (preprint of the article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2023). Research article; supports the analysis of 2.3 million papers, the rise in return migration after 2018, the survey of 1,304 faculty and its percentages, and the authors’ description of the sample. Preprint read from the repository’s file. Accessed 13 November 2026. arxiv.org

[468] Manufacturing Dive. (2024, 7 October). Biden signs law allowing CHIPS Act projects to forgo environmental review. Trade news report: supports the signing date and scope of the Building Chips in America Act and the opposition to it. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. manufacturingdive.com

[469] TrendForce. (2025, 20 February). Building a Fab in the U.S. Reportedly Costs Double and Requires Twice the Time as in Taiwan. Industry news summary of remarks by an Exyte executive: supports the build times for Taiwan, the United States, Europe, Singapore and Malaysia and the cost comparison. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[470] European Parliamentary Research Service. (2026, 16 July). The European Chips Act: Lessons learnt from three years of implementation. Parliamentary briefing: supports the state-aid approval counts, the 3 June 2026 proposal with faster permitting, and the finding that skills schemes run in silos. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. eprs.europarl.europa.eu

[471] TrendForce DataTrack. (2026, 24 July). AI Demand Drives Semiconductor Electricity Consumption to Double Over Ten Years, Prompting a Reassessment of Taiwan’s Electricity Pricing and Cost-Sharing Mechanisms. Market research note citing a Taipower internal assessment: supports the electricity forecasts for Taiwan’s chip industry and the draft self-generation rule. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. datatrack.trendforce.com

[472] DigitalToday. (2026, 28 May). Power grid delays put Yongin semiconductor cluster investment at risk. Korean trade news report relaying a National Assembly Research Service study: supports the Yongin power need, local supply, transmission plan and opposition. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. digitaltoday.co.kr

[473] Kyunghyang Shinmun. (2026, 10 November). How Kumamoto made a ‘semiconductor blitzkrieg’ possible… It led with ‘one-stop’ governance, yet challenges abound. Newspaper report from Kumamoto: supports the groundwater volumes, the prefectural limit, the ordinance revision and PFAS monitoring. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. khan.co.kr

[474] Arizona’s Family. (2026, 24 August). Arizona’s chip footprint grows, but TSMC’s water demand sparks questions. Local television news report: supports TSMC’s daily water use in Arizona, its source, the recycling rate and the 2028 reclamation plant. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. azfamily.com

[475] ChemRadar. (2026, 10 June). ECHA Releases PFAS Restriction Draft Consultation Results: Electronics and Semiconductor Sector Draws Greatest Attention. Chemical compliance news brief: supports the timeline of the European PFAS restriction and the consultation figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. chemradar.com

[476] EMSNow. (2025, 27 June). Semiconductor industry faces critical talent crisis — one million additional skilled workers needed by 2030. Trade news report republished from Tom’s Hardware: supports the global, United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific shortage forecasts. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. emsnow.com

[477] Fragomen. (2026, 18 September). President Trump Extends $100,000 H-1B Fee, But Policy Currently Vacated by Court Order. Immigration law firm alert: supports the dates and scope of the H-1B fee, the court rulings, the extension and the proposed separate fee. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fragomen.com

[478] The Korea Times. (2026, 29 January). Korea, US discuss joint fact sheet, visa cooperation. Newspaper report: supports the Georgia detentions, the visa working group and the new B-1 criterion for specialized trainers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. koreatimes.co.kr

[479] The Asia Business Daily. (2026, 29 January). "Semiconductor Special Act" Passes National Assembly Plenary Session... Exemption from 52-Hour Workweek Omitted (Update). Newspaper report: supports the vote, the infrastructure and permit provisions of Korea’s chip act and the omission of the working-hours exemption. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. asiae.co.kr

[480] FIDI Focus. (2026, 27 July). Japan, South Korea and Taiwan launch ambitious initiatives to attract high-skilled tech talent. Relocation industry news summary of a Straits Times report: supports the visa schemes Japan, Korea and Taiwan use to recruit foreign engineers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fidifocus.org

[481] The Financial News. (2025, 23 July). National Core Technology Leakage Fine 1.5 Billion → 6.5 Billion... National Police Agency, 100-Day Intensive Crackdown. Newspaper report, machine-translated from Korean: supports the amended penalties for technology leaks and the police case counts for 2024. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fnnews.com

[482] 日刊工業新聞 [Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun], via ニュースイッチ [Newswitch]. (2026, 25 August). ラピダスに来年度1500億円、財政投融資で要求…経産省が過渡期措置 [Economy ministry to request 150 billion yen for Rapidus next year through the investment and loan programme]. Supports the research funding to date and planned, the equity request and total, the source of funds, the targets for private equity and loans, the production schedule and the customer talks. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. newswitch.jp

[483] 高橋祐二、工藤雄高、金子文太郎 [Takahashi, Y., Kudo, Y., & Kaneko, B.], 北海道新聞 [Hokkaido Shimbun]. (2026, 27 February). 「2ナノ級」半導体量産へ国内企業結集ラピダス資金調達にめど [Domestic firms rally behind 2-nanometre production: Rapidus sees its way to funding]. Supports the 32 companies, the 167.6 billion yen subscribed, the public and private total and the firms named. Opening and headline read; the rest is behind a paywall. Accessed 14 November 2026. hokkaido-np.co.jp

[484] 内閣府 [Cabinet Office]. (2026, June). 「重要経済安保情報の指定及びその解除、適性評価の実施並びに適合事業者の認定の状況に関する報告」の概要 [Summary of the report on designation of important economic security information, clearance assessments and certification of contractors]. Supports every figure on designations, documents, assessments, investigation requests, consent, certified contractors and the transition period. Read in full from the Cabinet Office’s published file. Accessed 14 November 2026. cao.go.jp

[485] 経済産業省 [Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry]. (2025, 11 November). 輸出貿易管理令の一部を改正する政令が閣議決定されました [Cabinet approves an order partly amending the Export Trade Control Order]. Supports the three items added to the control list, the dates of effect and the addition of technologies to the public and private dialogue scheme. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. meti.go.jp

[486] 서병곤 [Seo, B.], 이투데이 [Etoday]. (2026, 29 January). '반도체 특별법' 국회 통과⋯메모리ㆍ시스템ㆍ소부장 全주기 지원 [Semiconductor Special Act passes: support across memory, system chips and materials]. Supports the passage, the committee and account, clusters, infrastructure support, permits and feasibility exemption, scope and expected timing. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. etoday.co.kr

[487] 오창영 [Oh, C.], CEO스코어데일리 [CEO Score Daily]. (2026, 30 January). K-반도체 지원 ‘반도체특별법’ 국회 통과…“‘주 52시간제 예외’ 결국 빠졌다” [Semiconductor Special Act passes without the 52-hour exemption]. Supports the presidential committee, the support unit, the ten-year special account, the omission of the working-hours exemption and the supplementary note. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ceoscoredaily.com

[488] 강성수 [Kang, S.], MTN 머니투데이방송 [MTN]. (2026, 6 October). 5년간 산업기술 해외 유출 120건…국가핵심기술도 36건 [120 overseas leaks of industrial technology in five years, 36 of core technology]. Supports the count by year, the core technology and semiconductor figures, the sentencing outcomes and the lawmaker’s remark. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. mtn.co.kr

[489] MTN 머니투데이방송 [MTN]. (2024, 27 December). 우리 기술, 中에 유출 막는다…정부, 美경제스파이법 수준으로 벌금 강화 [Government raises fines for technology leaks toward the level of the American economic espionage law]. Supports the direction of the amendment; the final maximum fine, the change in what must be proved, the liability of brokers, the damages ceiling and the effective date are from other Korean reports. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. mtn.co.kr

[490] 経済産業省 [Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry]. (2026). AI・半導体産業基盤強化フレーム [SI and Semiconductor Industrial Base Reinforcement Frame]. Supports the frame’s size, period, investment and effect targets, the three conditions and the list of budget programmes. Read in full on the ministry’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. meti.go.jp

[491] 貿易知識庫, via 科技新報 [TechNews]. (2026, 21 July). 日本兆元補貼全面啟動，先進製程加速東移，台日合作走向競合 [Japan’s trillion-yen subsidies begin: advanced processes move east, and Taiwan and Japan go from cooperation toward competition]. Supports the fiscal 2026 budget figures and the upgrade of the second Kumamoto plant. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. technews.tw

[492] 뉴스토마토 [News Tomato]. (2026, 8 January). 전력 수급난에 이전설 ‘용인클러스터’…매몰비용 vs 지역균형 [Power shortage and talk of relocating the Yongin cluster]. Supports the power demand and amounts secured, the minister’s remark, the relocation proposal and the transmission dispute. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. newstomato.com

[493] 주간경향 [Weekly Kyunghyang]. (2026, 12 January). 용인에 올인한 대한민국…‘전기·물 없는 반도체 산단’ 해법을 찾아라 [Korea all-in on Yongin: a chip complex without power or water]. Supports the range of power demand, the water requirement, the gas-fired plants and the firms’ renewable pledge. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. khan.co.kr

[494] 경인일보 [Kyeongin Ilbo]. (2026). [뉴스분석] 정부가 일축한 용인 반도체 이전론… 남은 과제는? [The government dismisses moving the Yongin cluster: what remains]. Supports the government’s dismissal of relocation, the three-stage supply plan and the doubts about the alternative site. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. kyeongin.com

[495] 손차민 [Son, C.], 뉴시스 [Newsis]. (2026, 25 May). 한전만으론 한계…삼전·하닉, 용인산단 송전망 건설 가능해진다 [The utility alone is not enough: Samsung and SK hynix may build Yongin’s transmission lines]. Supports the three grid bills, private construction of transmission, the handover to the utility, average construction time, the delays and their cost. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. newsis.com

[496] 고성현 [Ko, S.], 디지털데일리 [Digital Daily]. (2025, 30 August). 美 정부, 삼성·SK하이닉스 中 법인 VEU 지위 철회 [US revokes validated end user status for Samsung’s and SK hynix’s Chinese units]. Supports the revocation, the 120-day notice, the need for individual licences and the Korean industry ministry’s position. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ddaily.co.kr

[497] 경향신문 [Kyunghyang Shinmun]. (2025, 30 December). 미, 삼성·SK 중국 반도체 공장 장비반입 규제 완화 [US eases rules on equipment for Samsung’s and SK’s Chinese chip plants]. Supports the earlier status, the planned revocation and the annual approval arrangement. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. khan.co.kr

[498] 세계일보 [Segye Ilbo]. (2025, 31 August). 美 “삼성·SK, 美반도체 장비 中 반입 건별 허가” [US: case-by-case licences for Samsung’s and SK’s equipment into China]. Supports the federal notice, the expected number of extra applications and China’s commerce ministry’s reaction. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. segye.com

[499] 송태희 [Song, T.], SBS Biz. (2025, December). '최악 피했다' 美, 삼성·SK 中반도체공장 장비반입 규제완화 [“The worst avoided”: US eases equipment rules for Korean chip plants in China]. Supports the plants concerned, the industry’s reaction and the remaining uncertainty. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. sbs.co.kr

[500] Congressional Research Service. (2026, 20 August). Section 301 and China: Mature-Node Semiconductors (IF12958). Research brief for the US Congress, read on a mirror site; it supports the investigation timeline, the 0% proposal and the share figures for mature chips. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. everycrsreport.com

[501] Evertiq. (2026, 4 November). Axcelis and Veeco push merger closing to Q1 2027. Trade press report; it supports the pending Chinese review of the Axcelis and Veeco merger, the new closing target and the planned new US filing. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. evertiq.com

[502] Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. (2026, 19 January). Blank Slate or Bargaining Chip?: Additional Section 301 Tariffs on Chinese Semiconductors Set for June 2027. Law firm analysis; it supports the 50% tariff and its start date, the 0% additional duty, the 2027 dates, the 18 tariff lines and the link to the trade truce. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. jdsupra.com

[503] Crowell & Moring LLP. (2026, 20 February). Section 5949 Proposed Rule Puts the FAR Council’s Chips on the Table. Law firm client alert; it supports the proposed federal purchase ban, the named companies, the 23 December 2027 start and the exemption for existing equipment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. crowell.com

[504] US Bureau of Industry and Security. (2025, 14 January). Commerce Finalizes Rule to Secure Connected Vehicle Supply Chains from Foreign Adversary Threats. Official press release; it supports the scope of the connected vehicle rule and the model years for software and hardware. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bis.gov

[505] TrendForce. (2024, 14 May). Foundry Capacity Market Share of Advanced Process to Decline in Taiwan, Korea until 2027, While US on the Rise. Market research note; it supports the forecast that China’s share of mature capacity rises from 33% in 2024 to 45% in 2027. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. trendforce.com

[506] The Register. (2024, 8 July). EU probes industry on China’s commodity chip production. Technology news report drawing on Reuters; it supports the two European Commission surveys, their September 2024 deadline and the working definition of mature chips. The title is paraphrased from the page address. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theregister.com

[507] eeNews Europe. (2026, 12 August). Chips Act 2: Europe’s second semiconductor push. Trade press analysis; it supports the 3 June 2026 proposal, its supply chain monitoring tools and its status as not yet law. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. eenewseurope.com

[508] CBT News. (2025, 12 November). GM orders suppliers to cut China ties, Reuters reports. Trade press summary of a Reuters report; it supports the General Motors directive to suppliers and its 2027 target. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cbtnews.com

[509] Automotive Logistics. (2026, 20 January). Carmakers take matters into their own hands to address Nexperia semiconductor shortage as internal dispute continues. Trade press report; it supports the carmakers’ direct wafer purchases and Honda’s estimate of lost output. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. automotivelogistics.media

[510] Fortune. (2023, 16 August). Intel calls off $5.4 billion Tower Semiconductor deal after failing to receive China regulatory approval. News report; it supports the end of the Intel and Tower deal, the missed Chinese approval and the $353 million fee. The title is paraphrased from the page address. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fortune.com

[511] Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. (2025, 25 September). China Is Clearing More Global Deals, Despite an Order To Unwind a Domestic Merger. Law firm analysis; it supports the Synopsys and Ansys conditions, the Qualcomm and Autotalks review, SAMR’s call-in power and the link between approvals and trade talks. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. skadden.com

[512] Fortune. (2025, 15 September). China says Nvidia violated antitrust law in its Mellanox deal as trade talks with Washington begin. News report; it supports the preliminary finding against Nvidia, the 2020 conditional approval, the timing of the probe and the possible fines. The title is paraphrased from the page address. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fortune.com

[513] US Federal Trade Commission. (2022, 14 February). Statement Regarding Termination of Nvidia Corp.’s Attempted Acquisition of Arm Ltd.. Official statement; it supports the $40 billion value, the 2 December 2021 lawsuit and the abandonment of the deal. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ftc.gov

[514] MP Materials. (2025, 10 July). MP Materials Announces Transformational Public-Private Partnership with the Department of Defense to Accelerate U.S. Rare Earth Magnet Independence. Company press release; supports the equity stake, price floor, offtake promise, loan, bank financing and 2028 commissioning of the 10X plant. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. mpmaterials.com

[515] Orrick. (2026, 1 October). Defense Supply Chain Compliance: Critical Minerals Waiver Cessation Takes Effect January 1, 2027. Law firm client note; supports Executive Order 14415 of 20 July 2026, the end of routine waivers and the mitigation plan requirement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. orrick.com

[516] Adamas Intelligence. (2026, 5 June). U.S. Defense Contractors Seek Second DFARS Delay as Pentagon’s $200B Deal Team Six Mobilizes for Rare Earth Independence. Trade analyst report; supports the scope of the magnet clause, its 1 January 2027 start, the earlier one-year extension and the contractors’ request for delay. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. adamasintel.com

[517] Baskaran, G., & Horvath, K., Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2025, 20 October). Unpacking the U.S.-Australia Critical Minerals Framework Agreement. Think tank analysis; supports the framework’s funding pledges, the Alcoa gallium refinery with Japan and American gallium consumption in 2024. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[518] MP Materials. (2025, 19 November). MP Materials and the U.S. Department of War Partner with the Saudi Arabian Mining Company Maaden to Develop Rare Earth Refinery Joint Venture. Company press release; supports the ownership split, Pentagon financing and the absence of a timetable for the Saudi refinery. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. mpmaterials.com

[519] Export-Import Bank of the United States. (2026, 2 February). EXIM Approves Project Vault Loan to Launch America’s Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve and Support Manufacturing Jobs. Government agency press release; supports the loan of up to $10 billion and the structure and members of Project Vault. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. exim.gov

[520] Bicer, A., Anadolu Agency. (2026, 17 June). G7 launches critical minerals alliance to cut dependence on China. News agency report; supports the alliance’s 2030 target, stockpile pledge and the unsettled status of price floors. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aa.com.tr

[521] Manufacturing Today. (2026, 18 September). $1.2 billion rare earth plant targets US magnet supply gap. Trade press report; supports the USA Rare Earth plant capacities and dates and the International Energy Agency’s 2024 figures for China’s share. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. manufacturing-today.com

[522] Freshfields. (2026, 27 August). When chips run short: the crisis regime of the Chips Act 2.0. Law firm briefing; supports the stages, trigger, tools and fines of the European crisis regime and how the 2026 proposal compares with the 2023 Act. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. freshfields.com

[523] Euronews. (2026, 21 May). European carmakers face EU pressure to diversify chip suppliers. News report on the draft law; supports Nexperia’s market shares, carmakers’ stock levels, the end of the export halt and the two-supplier rule. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euronews.com

[524] Jones, R. S., Korea Economic Institute of America. (2026, 27 May). How South Korea Is Trying to Increase Its Supply-Chain Resilience. Think tank analysis; supports the Korean framework act, its committee, 300 designated items, early-warning system and stockpile target. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. keia.org

[525] Hamamoto, R., TIMEWELL. (2026, 16 July). Economic security law basics. Private explainer on Japanese law; supports the list of sixteen specified critical materials and the dates they were designated. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. timewell.jp

[526] Aviation Week. (2025, 21 November). DOD Invests $29.9M In Domestic Production Of Gallium, Scandium. Trade press report; supports the Defense Production Act Title III award to ElementUSA. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aviationweek.com

[527] Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce. (2024, 6 December). BIS Publishes Assessment on the Use of Mature-Node Chips. Government press release; supports the use of the Defense Production Act for a chip survey and its findings on supply chain visibility. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bis.gov

[528] Asia Times. (2022, 15 October). China-based US chip experts face stay-go dilemma. News report: supports the date, scope and early effects of the US rule on American citizens working for Chinese chipmakers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. asiatimes.com

[529] Taipei Times. (2022, 21 May). Penalties set for economic espionage. News report on the law as passed: supports Taiwan’s prison terms, fines, travel approval rule and limits on Chinese firms. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taipeitimes.com

[530] Taipei Times. (2026, 28 April). Offenders sentenced up to 10 years for spying on TSMC. News report on the court ruling: supports the sentences, the fine on Tokyo Electron Taiwan and the timeline of the 2-nanometre case. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taipeitimes.com

[531] Taiwan News. (2026, 5 August). Taiwan investigates 17 Chinese firms for poaching tech talent. News report: supports the number of firms, sites and people in the 2026 sweep and the total of cases since 2020. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taiwannews.com.tw

[532] Korea JoongAng Daily. (2026, 1 October). China linked to three quarters of Korea’s chip tech leaks, but prison terms remain short. Newspaper analysis of court rulings: supports the counts of cases, defendants, sentences and the laws used in South Korea. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. koreajoongangdaily.com

[533] The Register. (2025, 10 July). Ex-ASML engineer who stole chip tech for Russia gets three years in Dutch prison. News report on the Rotterdam ruling: supports the sentence, the charges and what was taken from ASML and NXP. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theregister.com

[534] Reuters, in Taipei Times. (2023, 25 August). China quietly recruits overseas chip talent as US tightens curbs. Investigative report based on government documents: supports the Qiming programme, its bonuses and its link to the Thousand Talents Plan. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taipeitimes.com

[535] Asia Times. (2026, 4 August). China exit rules tightened to guard rare earth, battery secrets. News analysis: supports the dates and content of China’s 2026 exit-entry regulation and the rule on moving technology abroad through staff. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. asiatimes.com

[536] US Department of Justice. (2025, 28 July). Cadence Design Systems Agrees to Plead Guilty and Pay Over $140 Million for Unlawfully Exporting Semiconductor Design Tools to a Restricted PRC Military University. Official press release: supports the penalty amounts, the conduct, the dates and the number of exports in the Cadence case. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. justice.gov

[537] US Bureau of Industry and Security. (2023, 19 April). BIS Imposes $300 Million Penalty Against Seagate Technology LLC Related To Shipments To Huawei. Official press release: supports the penalty, the number and value of drives, the dates and the comparison with profit. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bis.gov

[538] Arnold & Porter. (2026, 3 March). BIS Announces $252.5 Million Settlement with Applied Materials over Alleged Unauthorized Reexports to China. Law firm advisory: supports the penalty, the 56 alleged violations, the dates, the transaction value and the settlement terms. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. arnoldporter.com

[539] US Department of Justice. (2026, 19 March). Three Charged with Conspiring to Unlawfully Divert Cutting Edge U.S. Artificial Intelligence Technology to China. Official press release: supports the charges, maximum sentences, server values and alleged methods in the March 2026 indictment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. justice.gov

[540] TechCrunch. (2025, 9 April). US may fine TSMC $1B over chip allegedly used in Huawei AI processor. News report citing Reuters: supports the possible fine, the chip found in Huawei’s processor and the blacklisting of Sophgo. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. techcrunch.com

[541] Fortune. (2025, 15 September). China says Nvidia violated antitrust laws as it ratchets up pressure ahead of U.S. trade talks. News report: supports China’s preliminary antitrust finding against Nvidia, the possible fine and the related anti-dumping inquiry. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fortune.com

[542] Junusova, A., & Reinsch, W. A., Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2024, 25 November). Rethinking the Wassenaar Minus One Strategy. Think-tank analysis; supports Wassenaar membership and unanimity, the 2024 national controls by date, the proposed alternatives and their criticisms. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[543] Bromley, M., & Maletta, G., Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (2026, 16 June). How to maintain multilateral cooperation on export controls in an era of geopolitical competition. Research institute backgrounder; supports Russia’s veto since 2022, Wassenaar’s role as a forum, the reported US travel restriction and the assessment of the MATCH Act. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. sipri.org

[544] World Trade Organization. (2025, 12 February). DS615: United States – Measures on Certain Semiconductor and other Products, and Related Services and Technologies. Official case summary; supports the filing date, revisions, third-party requests and the in-consultations status. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wto.org

[545] World Trade Organization. (2025, 10 January). United States – Measures on Certain Semiconductor and Other Products, and Related Services and Technologies: Communication from the United States (WT/DS615/8). Primary document hosted by italaw; supports the US statement that national security is not reviewable by WTO dispute settlement and its acceptance of consultations. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. italaw.com

[546] Latham & Watkins. (2025, 19 December). Congress Enacts Changes to Outbound Investment Security Program. Law-firm alert; supports the signing date, the COINS Act’s scope, sectors, countries, penalties, exceptions, sunset and the 450-day rulemaking period. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. lw.com

[547] Morrison Foerster. (2026, 4 November). Treasury Proposes Expanded Outbound Investment Security Regulations Under the COINS Act. Law-firm alert; supports the 22 October 2026 proposal, the comment deadline, the semiconductor provisions and the status of the existing rule. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. mofo.com

[548] Reed Smith. (2025, 21 January). EU is getting one step closer to outbound investment control. Law-firm alert; supports the date, non-binding status, scope and reporting deadline of the Commission’s outbound investment recommendation. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. reedsmith.com

[549] The Korea Times. (2023, 23 September). US finalizes national security ‘guardrails’ for CHIPS funding. News report; supports the 10-year limit, the 5 and 10 percent expansion caps and the dropped $100,000 limit. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. koreatimes.co.kr

[550] Arnold & Porter. (2026, 13 January). Executive Order Requires Chinese-Controlled Firm’s Divestment of EMCORE Corporation’s Digital Chips Business. Law-firm advisory; supports the 2 January 2026 order, the 180-day deadline and the non-notified review. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. arnoldporter.com

[551] Arnold & Porter. (2022, 28 November). UK Government Unwinds Chinese Acquisition of Welsh Wafers. Law-firm advisory; supports the 16 November 2022 Newport Wafer Fab order, the stake figures and the first use of retrospective powers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. arnoldporter.com

[552] Rinke, A., & Murray, M., Reuters via Euronews. (2022, 9 November). Germany blocks Chinese stake in two chipmakers over security concerns. News report; supports the two German vetoes of 9 November 2022 and the parties involved. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euronews.com

[553] Fonte, G., & Cao, E., Reuters via Euronews. (2021, 24 November). Italy’s Draghi vetoes third Chinese takeover this year. News report; supports the 18 November 2021 veto and the count of golden power uses since 2012. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euronews.com

[554] Debevoise & Plimpton. (2026, 17 July). Japan Expands Investment Screening Regime, Forms CFIUS-Like Investment Screening Panel. Law-firm alert; supports the June 2026 amendment, its new powers and the formation of the Japan Foreign Investment Commission. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. debevoise.com

[555] Just Auto via Yahoo Finance. (2025, 21 November). Dutch government lifts emergency controls on Nexperia. Trade press report; supports the use of the Goods Availability Act at Nexperia, what the order barred, its suspension and the court measures that remain. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. finance.yahoo.com

[556] Grunewald, E., & Fist, T., Center for a New American Security. (2025, 11 June). Countering AI Chip Smuggling Has Become a National Security Priority. Think-tank working paper; supports the 2024 smuggling estimate, the smuggling methods and the call for software location checks. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cnas.org

[557] Juniewicz, I., Epoch AI. (2026, 29 April). Diversion and resale: estimating compute smuggling to China. Research estimate; supports the cumulative figure through 2025, the count of alleged cases, the detection-rate assumption and the exclusion of offshore computing. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. epoch.ai

[558] Brass, A., Institute for AI Policy and Strategy. (2025, May). Location Verification for AI Chips. Policy issue brief; supports how delay-based checks work, their precision, cost, timetable and limits. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. iaps.ai

[559] Reber, D., Jr., Nvidia. (2025, 5 August). No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware.. Company statement; supports Nvidia’s public position against kill switches and back doors. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. blogs.nvidia.com

[560] Tang, D., Associated Press, via KSAT. (2025, 31 July). China summons Nvidia over ‘backdoor safety risks’ in H20 chips. News agency report; supports the summons by China’s internet regulator, Nvidia’s reply and the May 2025 introduction of the Chip Security Act. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ksat.com

[561] Mann, T., The Register. (2025, 10 December). Nvidia’s unreleased infrastructure management service isn’t for tracking GPUs, but it can. Trade press report; supports the description of Nvidia’s opt-in fleet software, its location method and the no-kill-switch statement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. theregister.com

[562] South China Morning Post, via The Korea Times. (2026, 11 November). US lawmakers push for tougher China export controls in defense bill amid Nvidia scrutiny. News report; supports the status of the Chip Security Act in the Senate defence bill and the lack of White House endorsement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. koreatimes.co.kr

[563] House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. (2026, 12 January). House Passes Bipartisan Legislation to Limit Adversaries’ Remote Access to Critical Technology. Congressional press release; supports House passage of the Remote Access Security Act and what the bill does. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. chinaselectcommittee.house.gov

[564] Bureau of Industry and Security, Federal Register. (2026, 15 January). Revision to License Review Policy for Advanced Computing Commodities. Final rule text; supports the remote-access certification, Know Your Customer, cloud service and third-party lab conditions. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. govinfo.gov

[565] Reuters, via The Standard. (2026, 13 March). China’s ByteDance gets access to top Nvidia AI chips, WSJ reports. News agency report relaying the Wall Street Journal; supports the ByteDance and Aolani Cloud plan in Malaysia and its figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thestandard.com.hk

[566] Kim, M., SBS News. (2026, 12 November). US Department of Commerce Moves to Block China’s AI Chip ‘Southeast Asia Detour’. Broadcaster report relaying The Information; supports the reported seven-country remote-access rule and the existing treatment of Saudi Arabia. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. news.sbs.co.kr

[567] Combs, C., & Fitzgerald, K., The National. (2025, 20 November). US approves export of Nvidia AI chips to UAE and Saudi Arabia. News report; supports the approvals for G42 and Humain, the chip quantities and the security and reporting conditions. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thenationalnews.com

[568] Bureau of Industry and Security, Federal Register. (2026, 14 July). Enhanced Favorable Treatment for the United Arab Emirates Under the Export Administration Regulations. Final rule text; supports the Emirates’ move to Country Group A:5, the approved entities and the April 2027 expiry. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. govinfo.gov

[569] investingLive. (2025, 3 October). Nvidia’s U.A.E. chip deal stalls over U.S. investment demands and China concerns. Market news summary of a Wall Street Journal report; supports the delay, the investment demand and the China concerns. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. investinglive.com

[570] 王玉樹 [Wang, Y.], 中時即時 [China Times], via 工商時報 [Commercial Times]. (2026, 9 June). 防武器擴散陸俄伊墨等256家公司列黑名單經部禁出口 [Against proliferation: firms from China, Russia, Iran and Mexico blacklisted]. Supports how the list works, the June 2026 update, the kinds of entity added and the customs consequence. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ctee.com.tw

[571] Atkinson, 科技新報 [TechNews]. (2026, 10 June). 台灣強化高科技貨品出口管制，經濟部積極回應並更新實體清單 [Taiwan strengthens export controls on high-technology goods]. Supports the count of 265 additions and 13 removals, the basis of the list, the licence requirement and the foreign report of wider limits under study. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. technews.tw

[572] 鉅亨網 [Anue], via 優分析 [UAnalyze]. (2025, 16 September). 戰略性高科技貨品出口新增279個涉武擴實體名單累計納管逾萬個實體與個人 [279 entities added to the strategic high-technology export list; total passes ten thousand]. Supports the September 2025 update and the running total; the June 2025 update of 601 entities including Huawei and SMIC is from a search summary of the original coverage. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. uanalyze.com.tw

[573] 鉅亨網 [Anue], via 優分析 [UAnalyze]. (2025, 19 December). 戰略高科技貨品防「轉運風險」新增中、墨等213個涉武擴實體納管 [213 entities added against transit risk]. Supports the December 2025 update, its breakdown by country, the kinds of firm and the total of over 11,200. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. uanalyze.com.tw

[574] 王彥婷、謝政霖 [Wang, Y., & Hsieh, C.], 公視新聞 [PTS News]. (2025, 25 September). 南非政府請求協商我今暫緩晶片管制出口 [South Africa asks for talks; chip export control suspended]. Supports the notice of 23 September 2025, the 47 categories, the reason and the suspension two days later. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. pts.org.tw

[575] 今周刊 [Business Today]. (2025, 26 September). 對南非晶片出口管制，經濟部外交部喊暫緩 [Chip export control on South Africa suspended]. Supports the text and timing of the notice, the foreign press description, the ministry’s later clarification and the value of the trade. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. businesstoday.com.tw

[576] 賀培晏 [Ho, P.], 中時即時 [China Times], via 工商時報 [Commercial Times]. (2025, 24 November). 防技術外流！國科會擴增核心關鍵技術至42項軍工太空入列 [Core key technologies expanded to 42 items]. Supports the draft of 42 items, the previous 32, the fields covered and the procedure. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ctee.com.tw

[577] Atkinson, 科技新報 [TechNews]. (2026, 27 April). 台積電 2 奈米洩密案宣判，被告工程師遭最重判處 10 年徒刑 [Verdict in the TSMC 2-nanometre secrets case]. Supports the court, the date, the conduct found, the sentences, the court’s reasoning and the fine and its conditions. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. technews.tw

[578] 王定傳 [Wang, T.], 自由時報 [Liberty Times]. (2026, 21 May). 台積內鬼洩密案高檢署、東京威力不上訴陳力銘等人上訴最高法院 [Prosecutors and the toolmaker do not appeal; three defendants appeal to the Supreme Court]. Supports the processes involved, the manager’s role, the appeals, the prosecutors’ view and the date the company’s judgment became final. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ltn.com.tw

[579] 洪友芳 [Hung, Y.], 自由時報 [Liberty Times]. (2026, 28 April). 台積電洩密案宣判 TEL強調已與客戶達成強化保護共識、營運無虞 [After the verdict, the toolmaker says it has agreed stronger protection with its customer]. Supports the company’s statement. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ltn.com.tw

[580] 公視新聞 [PTS News]. (2026, 30 March). 隱匿中資挖角台灣科技人才調查局掃蕩華勤等11家中企 [Investigation Bureau raids eleven Chinese companies for hidden recruitment]. Supports the March 2026 operation, its scale and the start of the inquiry. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. pts.org.tw

[581] ETtoday新聞雲 [ETtoday]. (2026, 30 March). 在台違法挖角竊密！非法陸資企業滲透高科技產業鏈竹檢偵辦查緝 [Hsinchu prosecutors act against illegal mainland firms recruiting in Taiwan]. Supports the Hsinchu prosecutors’ part of the operation and their description of the methods. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ettoday.net

[582] 三立新聞網 [SET News], via 鏡週刊 [Mirror Media]. (2026, 5 August). 調查局偵辦17家中企非法挖角高科技人才 [Investigation Bureau acts against 17 Chinese companies recruiting high-technology staff]. Supports the July and August 2026 operation, its scale and the description of the companies; also the commentary on earlier waves. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. mirrormedia.mg

[583] 民報 [Taiwan People News]. (2026, January). 台美關稅剩最後一哩路鄭麗君以2大目標為談判核心、強調供應鏈未外移 [Taiwan and US tariffs: the last mile]. Supports the tariff outcome, the two $250 billion arrangements, the guarantee scheme’s design and cost, the cabinet’s argument and the procedure. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. peoplenews.tw

[584] TVBS新聞網 [TVBS News]. (2026, January). 分析／台美關稅最後階段 [Analysis: the final stage of Taiwan and US tariffs]. Supports the dispute over a $500 billion description, the premier’s and vice-premier’s remarks, and the contrast with Japan and South Korea. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. tvbs.com.tw

[585] 林菁樺 [Lin, C.], 自由時報 [Liberty Times]. (2025, 28 September). AI需求帶動台積電今年用電占比挑戰10% [TSMC’s share of electricity use to test 10% this year]. Supports TSMC’s 2024 electricity use, national consumption, the 2020 share and the ministry’s expectation for 2025. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. ltn.com.tw

[586] 數位時代 [Business Next]. (2026). 半導體用電9年內將翻倍！TSIA理事長侯永清力挺「核電重啟」 [Chip electricity use to double in nine years; industry association backs study of a nuclear restart]. Supports the state utility chairman’s forecast, its share of national use, the reserve margin findings and the industry association’s position. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. bnext.com.tw

[587] 徐白櫻 [Hsu, P.], 聯合報 [United Daily News]. (2026, 20 April). 台積電五座2奈米廠將用光高雄的電？環團促提更多在地綠電承諾 [Will five 2-nanometre plants use up Kaohsiung’s electricity?]. Supports the environmental group’s estimate for the Kaohsiung plants and the company’s renewable electricity targets. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. udn.com

[588] 經濟日報 [Economic Daily News], via 科技新報 [TechNews]. (2025, 17 July). 台版晶片法五業者申請適用，台積電等七大科技廠符合條件 [Five firms apply under Taiwan’s chip act; seven large technology firms qualify]. Supports the article’s date of effect, the credit rates, the thresholds, the number of applicants and the firms meeting the conditions. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. technews.tw

[589] 104職場力 [104 Corporation]. (2026). 產創投資抵減金額創新高顯示台版晶片法減稅效果逐漸顯現 [Investment credits under the statute at a record: the chip act’s effect appears]. Report of the finance ministry’s 2025 statistical yearbook; supports approved credits for 2023 to 2025, the number of approvals, research spending and the electronic components figures. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. 104.com.tw

[590] 行政院 [Executive Yuan]. (2025). 修正《產業創新條例》：因應雙軸轉型，提升產業競爭力 [Amending the Statute for Industrial Innovation]. Cabinet policy summary; supports the change to Article 22 and Article 67-3, its stated purpose and the date the legislature passed it. Relevant passages read on the cabinet’s site. Accessed 14 November 2026. ey.gov.tw

[591] 中央社 [Central News Agency]. (2025, 27 April). 產創三讀強化對外審查經部：台積電先進技術必留台灣 [Statute amended to strengthen review of outbound investment; ministry says TSMC’s advanced technology will stay in Taiwan]. Supports the earlier threshold, the grounds for refusal, the fines, the ministry’s statement and the arrangement for the effective date. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cna.com.tw

[592] 中央社 [Central News Agency]. (2025, 18 December). 國科會：國家核心關鍵技術採 N-2 原則 [Science council: national core key technologies follow an N-2 principle]. Supports the science council’s statement of the two-generation rule. Title paraphrased. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cna.com.tw

[593] 呂晏慈 [Lu, Y.], 中央社 [Central News Agency], via 華視新聞 [CTS News]. (2026, 9 November). 10月出口創紀錄寫5大亮點連36紅為史上最長成長週期 [October exports set a record: five highlights and the longest run of growth]. Supports October exports, imports and surplus, the two leading categories and their causes, the year-to-date total and the ministry’s remarks. Read in full as carried by a broadcaster. Accessed 14 November 2026. cts.com.tw

[594] 邱琮皓 [Chiu, T.], 經濟日報 [Economic Daily News]. (2026, 10 November). 10月出口967億美元「驚喜又驚奇」今年全球外銷排名將坐八望七 [October exports of $96.7 billion: Taiwan to rank eighth or seventh in the world]. Supports the full-year expectation, the world ranking and the earlier best rank. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. udn.com

[595] 中時新聞網 [China Times]. (2026, 9 November). 台灣10月出口上演「驚奇秀」破900億美元財政部曝5大亮點 [Taiwan’s October exports pass $90 billion]. Supports the integrated circuit figure, the combined share of the two leading categories and the American share of exports. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. chinatimes.com

[596] 盧永山 [Lu, Y.], 自由時報 [Liberty Times]. (2026, 27 May). 法新社︰台無人機產業「非紅鏈」生力軍 [News agency: Taiwan’s drone industry, a new force in the non-red chain]. Translation of a foreign news agency report; supports unit exports, destinations, the absence of Chinese material, the price comparison and the 2030 production target. Read in full. Accessed 14 November 2026. ltn.com.tw

[597] 鉅亨網 [Anue], via 優分析 [UAnalyze]. (2026, 25 January). 無人機外銷狂飆21倍！這3國吃下9成鄭麗君喊出「全非紅」供應鏈目標 [Drone exports up 21 times; vice-premier sets an all non-red target]. Supports export value and output for 2024 and 2025, the leading destinations and the 2027 target. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. uanalyze.com.tw

[598] 鉅亨網 [Anue], via 優分析 [UAnalyze]. (2026, 30 October). 蕭美琴提出無人機三大發展方向打造100%非紅、信賴台灣供應鏈 [Vice-president sets three directions for drones]. Supports the three pillars and the phrase “drone diplomacy”. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. uanalyze.com.tw

[599] 財訊 [Wealth Magazine], via 科技新報 [TechNews]. (2026, 21 March). 工業廢水煉成先進製程用水，台積電南科造水重鎮獨步全球 [Industrial wastewater refined into process water at TSMC’s southern plant]. Supports the executive’s account of the 2021 and 2023 droughts, the reclaimed water plant, the desalinated water contract and her remarks on plants abroad. Relevant passages read. Accessed 14 November 2026. technews.tw

[600] 中央社 [Central News Agency] and other Taiwanese press. (2026). 台南永康再生水廠二期開工每天產水量將增至2萬噸 [Second phase of the Yongkang reclaimed water plant begins]. Supports the municipal plant’s volumes and expansion; the company’s water-use figures and the 2026 drought conditions are from other reports seen in the same search. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cna.com.tw

[601] Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. (2023, 25 October). In Three New Rules, BIS Continues Efforts to Reshape Global Semiconductor Supply Chains and Future of Artificial Intelligence Training and Supercomputing. Law-firm client alert; supports the content of the 7 October 2022 rule and the 17 October 2023 amendments, including the US-persons rule and presumption of denial. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gibsondunn.com

[602] Bureau of Industry and Security. (2024, 2 December). Commerce Strengthens Export Controls to Restrict China’s Capability to Produce Advanced Semiconductors for Military Applications. Official press release; supports the 140 entities, 24 equipment types, 3 software types, memory controls and two new foreign direct product rules. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bis.gov

[603] Morrison Foerster. (2025, 17 June). AI Diffusion Rule Out but BIS Increases Compliance Obligations for Companies. Law-firm client alert; supports the diffusion rule’s issue date, three tiers, compliance date, rescission and the unissued replacement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. mofo.com

[604] DLA Piper. (2025, November). BIS to suspend 50-percent ownership rule. Law-firm client alert; supports the affiliates rule’s effective date, what it covers, the one-year suspension and China’s commitments in return. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dlapiper.com

[605] Baker McKenzie. (2026, 5 November). BIS Extends Suspension of the Affiliates Rule Through January 10, 2027. Law-firm blog post; supports the extension of the suspension, its link to the extended trade truce and the possible return of the rule. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. sanctionsnews.bakermckenzie.com

[606] Covington & Burling. (2026, January). US Commerce Department Revises License Review Policy for Exports of Certain Advanced Computing Commodities to China and Macau. Law-firm client alert; supports the dates, thresholds, 50% cap, testing conditions and 25% duty of the January 2026 rule, and what stays under presumption of denial. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cov.com

[607] Transport Topics, from Bloomberg News. (2026, 10 April). AI Chip Export Drive Stalls Inside Commerce Department. News report; supports the BIS staff losses, the fall in licences processed and the processing times. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ttnews.com

[608] Sheppard Mullin, via The Legal 500. (2026, 19 June). More Guards, No Guides: What BIS’s Historic Budget Request Means for You. Law-firm commentary; supports the fiscal 2027 budget request figures and the absence of licensing funds. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. legal500.com

[609] Khawam, J., Lawfare. (2026, 2 March). Congress Enters the Chip Wars. Legal analysis; supports the AI OVERWATCH Act’s terms and committee vote, the fate of the GAIN AI Act and the White House position. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. lawfaremedia.org

[610] Egan, J., & Nie, M., Center for a New American Security. (2026, 21 April). CNAS Insights | MATCHing Policy to Strategy: The Bill to Control Chipmaking Equipment. Think-tank commentary; supports the MATCH Act’s terms, named firms, 150-day clock and introduction date. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cnas.org

[611] Export Compliance Daily. (2026, 16 July). Senate Eyes Adding 3 Chip-Related Bills to NDAA. Trade press report; supports the inclusion of three chip bills in the proposed Senate amendment and the blocked floor debate. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. exportcompliancedaily.com

[612] Seoul Economic Daily. (2026, 13 November). U.S. Chip Bills Gain Momentum as House Speaker Backs Export Curbs. News report, machine-translated and relaying Semafor; supports the state of the defence bill talks on 13 November 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. en.sedaily.com

[613] House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats. (2025, 22 December). Meeks and Warren Invoke Power Under Statute to Require Trump Administration Turn Over Information on Its Decision to Greenlight the Sale of H200 Chips to China. Congressional press release; supports the records demand, the statute invoked and the 12 January 2026 deadline. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. democrats-foreignaffairs.house.gov

[614] House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. (2026, 12 January). House Passes Bipartisan Legislation to Limit Adversaries’ Remote Access to Critical Technology. Congressional press release; supports House passage of the Remote Access Security Act and what it changes. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. chinaselectcommittee.house.gov

[615] The Telegraph (Oliver, M.), via Yahoo News. (2025, 15 May). China dominates the drone industry. The West needs to change that fast. Newspaper report: supports China’s roughly 90% market share, the parts made almost only in China, Tekever’s drone without Chinese parts and the £169 DJI price. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. yahoo.com

[616] Atlantic Council (Kroenig, M., & Bayoumi, I.). (2024, 25 June). A global strategy to secure UAS supply chains. Think-tank issue brief: supports the 80% world share, DJI’s 2015 price cut, the 3% shares of Skydio and Parrot, and the effect of China’s 2023 controls on Ukraine. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. atlanticcouncil.org

[617] DroneXL (Kesteloo, H.). (2025, 11 June). Chinese drone parts prices soar amid trade tensions. Trade news report summarising the Financial Times: supports the doubling of parts prices, export licences, thermal camera controls and the French buyer’s remarks. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dronexl.co

[618] Skydio (Bry, A.). (2024, 30 October). China’s Sanctions on Skydio. Company statement by the chief executive: supports the sanctions over Taiwan sales, battery rationing to one per drone and the spring 2025 timeline. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. skydio.com

[619] DRONELIFE (McNabb, M.). (2024, 10 December). China’s Export Restrictions on Drone Parts Could Reshape Global Supply Chains. Trade news report: supports reduced or halted sales of batteries, motors and flight controllers to America, Europe and Ukraine, and the 5 December 2024 sanctions. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dronelife.com

[620] Defense Mirror. (2025, 21 April). U.S. Dependent on China for Key Drone Components. News summary of a Forbes investigation: supports the 23 companies chosen from over 300 submissions, the Orqa radio module case and the magnet export halt. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensemirror.com

[621] TV Technology. (2026, 9 January). FCC Exempts Some Drones, Accessories From Import Ban on Foreign-Made UAVs. Trade news report: supports the 7 January 2026 exemptions, their end date of 1 January 2027 and the named exempt makers and parts. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tvtechnology.com

[622] DRONELIFE (McNabb, M.). (2026, 24 February). DJI lawsuit challenges FCC Covered List ruling. Trade news report: supports the 22 December 2025 FCC action, its effect on new and existing models, and DJI’s court petition of 20 February 2026; the title is paraphrased from the page address. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dronelife.com

[623] BlackSeaNews & Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies. (2026, 8 April). Database of Ukrainian Attacks on Russian Ships in the Black and Azov Seas In March 2022-April 2026. Ukrainian research database: supports the count of at least 62 attacks and the dated strikes of August and December 2025. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. blackseanews.net

[624] Wikipedia contributors. (2026). Starlink in the Russian-Ukrainian War. Encyclopedia article summarising press reports: supports the Starlink-guided sea drones of 2022, the coverage limit near Crimea and the 2023 restriction. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. en.wikipedia.org

[625] The War Zone (Trevithick, J.). (2024, 15 July). 770 Weapons Expended By Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group On Historic Red Sea Deployment. Defence news report based on a Navy release: supports the weapon counts, target types, missile cost estimates and the $1 billion figure. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. twz.com

[626] Congressional Research Service. (2026, 16 January). Navy Large Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs): Background and Issues for Congress (R45757). Report to the American Congress: supports the MASC merger, design requirements, software demands and the absence of announced numbers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. everycrsreport.com

[627] Recorded Future, Insikt Group. (2025). Submarine Cables Face Increasing Threats Amid Geopolitical Tensions and Limited Repair Capacity. Threat-intelligence report: supports the incident counts for 2024 and 2025, the 99% traffic share, repair times and the Matsu outage. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. recordedfuture.com

[628] National Maritime Foundation (Agarwal, S.). (2026, 29 March). Elements of a ‘Legal Finish’ for the Protection of Critical Underwater Infrastructure. Indian think-tank legal paper: supports the Eagle S ruling, the Baltic outages of winter 2025 to 2026, Taiwan’s cases and law changes, and NATO’s measures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. maritimeindia.org

[629] Bilal, A., Modern War Institute at West Point. (2025, 19 June). Drones, Missiles, and a Battle of Chinese and European Fighter Jets: Lessons on the Future of War from the Indian Subcontinent’s Skies. Military academy analysis; supports the timeline, the aircraft, missiles and drones each side used, and which claims remain unconfirmed. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. mwi.westpoint.edu

[630] Arthur, G., Defense News. (2025, 15 May). Pakistan wields Chinese weapons against India, and analysts take notes. Trade press report; supports Pakistan’s share of Chinese arms exports, its Chinese fighters and air defence layers, and India’s mixed equipment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensenews.com

[631] Reuters, published by Dawn. (2025, 4 July). India plans $230m drone incentive after Pakistan conflict, sources say. News agency report; supports the 20 billion rupee scheme, the 40% target, reliance on Chinese parts and the drone sources of both countries. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dawn.com

[632] Bharat Shakti. (2025, 7 July). Indian Army Cracks Down on Chinese Components in Drones and Weapons. Indian defence news site; supports the Army’s announced ban, audits, certificates and the figure of about 400 drones. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bharatshakti.in

[633] Tribune News Service, The Tribune. (2025, 14 July). Framework in place to weed out Chinese parts from drones. Indian newspaper report; supports the disclosure, audit and procurement-review framework for drone hardware and software. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tribuneindia.com

[634] Defense Mirror. (2025, 7 February). Indian Army Scraps Drone Contracts with Domestic Firms over Chinese Components. Defence news site citing the Times of India; supports the cancelled contracts for 400 logistics drones before the conflict. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensemirror.com

[635] Outlook Business. (2025, 22 December). Budget 2026 May Bring ₹10,000-Cr Boost for Drone Manufacturing. Business magazine report of a planned scheme; supports the five-year outlay and the 50% to 60% local value rule as reported, not as enacted. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. outlookbusiness.com

[636] Szymański, P., OSW Centre for Eastern Studies. (2025, 26 June). NATO summit in The Hague: Trump’s return and a two-component 5% of GDP on defence. Think tank commentary; supports the 5% target, the 3.5% and 1.5% split, the 2035 date and Spain’s exception. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. osw.waw.pl

[637] Anadolu Agency. (2025, 10 September). EU allocates €150B defense fund among member states. News agency report; supports the SAFE total, the 19 member states and the country allocations. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aa.com.tr

[638] European Commission, Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space. (2026). SAFE | Security Action for Europe. Official programme page; supports the 65% component rule and the dates and amounts of the first payments in 2026. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu

[639] European Commission, Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space. (2026). EDIP | Forging Europe’s Defence. Official programme page; supports the €1.5 billion budget, €325 million for joint projects, the key electronic components topic and the security of supply regime. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu

[640] European Commission. (2026, October). EDIP Industrial Reinforcement Actions: 2026 call results. Official factsheet; supports the eight projects, €168.2 million, expected output and the topics funded. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu

[641] European Commission. (2026, September). European Defence Project of Common Interest (EDPCI) on Drone and Counter-drone Defence (DECODER). Official factsheet; supports the indicative investment of €3.5 to 5 billion by 2033 for the joint drone project. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu

[642] Fried, T., Hudson Institute. (2026, 19 June). European Rearmament at a Crossroads: Strategic Autonomy vs. Operational Readiness. Think tank study; supports Europe’s reliance on American components, the ITAR point, the 35% cap, the chip production target and the share of orders placed abroad. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. hudson.org

[643] United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases. (2025, 1 December). General Assembly plenary, eightieth session, 52nd meeting (GA/12736). Official UN record of the vote on the lethal autonomous weapons systems resolution (164 to 6, 7 abstentions), the states voting against and abstaining, and what the text asks for. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. press.un.org

[644] Human Rights Watch. (2024, 5 December). Killer Robots: UN Vote Should Spur Treaty Negotiations. Advocacy group news release giving the 2024 and 2023 General Assembly vote tallies, the states against and abstaining in 2024, and its account of which powers have blocked treaty proposals. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. hrw.org

[645] Dorsey, J., Liivoja, R., Goussac, N., Longworth, S., & Andersson, A. (2026, 5 October). Symposium on the CCW GGE LAWS: The End of the Beginning – An Introduction. Legal blog symposium introduction; supports the 5 September 2026 consensus, the structure of the elements, the 128 CCW parties, the 70 states ready to negotiate and the conference dates. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. opiniojuris.org

[646] van den Boogaard, J. (2026, 9 October). Symposium on the CCW GGE LAWS: Obstacles Avoided? Rolling Towards Consensus for the 2026 GGE LAWS Report. Commentary by a Dutch foreign ministry lawyer writing in a personal capacity; supports the wording on control, what was deleted, the mandate and the conference dates. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. opiniojuris.org

[647] International Committee of the Red Cross. (2026, 25 August). Renewed call from UN Secretary-General and ICRC President to adopt rules on autonomous weapon systems. Primary statement; supports the quotations and the request for a binding instrument and its reference to the November Review Conference. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. icrc.org

[648] Varella, L., Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. (2026, 11 March). CCW Report, Vol. 14, No. 2: The Final Stretch Before the Finishing Line. Civil society report on the March 2026 expert session; supports the United States wording, the rise from over 40 to over 70 states backing negotiations, and the decision facing the Review Conference. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wilpf.org

[649] Khoder, H. (2026, 27 August). The Western Consensus That Was Not. Opinion article on a legal blog; supports the United States change of vote, the “context-appropriate” wording in the draft, the lack of a verification mechanism and the author’s own inspection proposals. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. opiniojuris.org

[650] Wikipedia. (n.d.). Iron Beam. Encyclopedia entry citing the Jerusalem Post, Defense News and The National Interest; supports the deployment date, the 40 drones downed by laser, the cost-per-shot estimate, the power class and the weather limits. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. en.wikipedia.org

[651] Automated Decision Research. (n.d.). China | Automated Decision Research. State position tracker run by a campaign-linked research group; supports China’s 2021 statements on a binding instrument and its abstentions. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. automatedresearch.org

[652] Livingstone, K., Defense News. (2026, 5 March). Novel interceptor drones bend air defense economics in Ukraine’s favor. Trade press report; supports the Shahed, Patriot and interceptor costs, the 85 to 1 ratio, Ukrainian production and delivery figures, kill shares and the radar and acoustic cueing. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensenews.com

[653] Kesteloo, H., DroneXL. (2026, 5 March). Pentagon in talks to buy Ukrainian interceptor drones. Drone trade site drawing on the Financial Times; supports Patriot output, the 57,000 attacks, Sting cost, speed and thermal cameras, Merops guidance, Project Octopus and the speed of jet-powered drones. Title is paraphrased from the page address. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dronexl.co

[654] Terrill, D., Army Times. (2026, 19 May). Pentagon inks $500 million deal with Perennial Autonomy for counter-drone tech. Military press report; supports the contract ceiling and term, the awarding task force, the Merops and Shahed unit costs and reported use against Iranian drones. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. armytimes.com

[655] Withington, T., European Security & Defence. (2026, 13 March). Europe’s Drone Wall – Ready, EDDI, Go!. Trade magazine analysis citing a European Parliament briefing; supports the European Drone Defence Initiative timeline, its sensor network and candidate weapons, and the jet and missile cost figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euro-sd.com

[656] Tollast, R., The National. (2025, 23 January). Drones get cheaper and deadlier as armies race for low-cost defences. Newspaper report; supports the Red Sea spending and missile count, Houthi drone cost, laser, gun and microwave options, the limits of jamming and the use of Jetson and Raspberry Pi computers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thenationalnews.com

[657] The War Zone. (2026, 28 May). Severity Of America’s Depleted Advanced Weapons Stockpiles Detailed In New Report. Defence news report on a CSIS study by Mark Cancian and Chris Park (27 May 2026); supports stock, use, production and delivery figures for THAAD, Patriot, SM-3 and SM-6 in the 2026 Iran war. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. twz.com

[658] Halbfinger, D., The New York Times, republished by JINSA. (2026, 27 February). Israel Facing Prospect of War With a Depleted Missile Defense. Newspaper report citing CSIS and JINSA figures; supports interceptor use in the June 2025 war, THAAD and SM-3 production rates and Iran’s 574 missiles. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. jinsa.org

[659] The War Zone. (2025, 14 January). Navy Just Disclosed How Many Of Each Of Its Surface-To-Air Missiles It Fired During Red Sea Fight. Defence news report of a statement by Vice Admiral Brendan McLane; supports the Red Sea missile counts over 15 months. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. twz.com

[660] Easley, M., DefenseScoop. (2026, 17 March). Golden Dome budget plan increases for space capabilities, Guetlein says (descriptive title). Trade press report of remarks by the Golden Dome director; supports the $175 billion and $185 billion figures, the 2028 and 2035 dates, the added space sensors and the scale problem. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensescoop.com

[661] Semiconductor Today. (2026, 4 June). Raytheon wins $515m US Navy contract for SPY-6 radars (descriptive title). Trade press item based on a company announcement; supports the Andover gallium nitride foundry, the contract value, the doubling of output by 2028 and the $800 million investment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. semiconductor-today.com

[662] Powers-Riggs, A., Hart, B., Funaiole, M. P., et al., CSIS. (2025, 17 July). Beyond Rare Earths: China’s Growing Threat to Gallium Supply Chains. Think-tank brief; supports China’s gallium shares, the radars that use gallium nitride, prices, the resin control, projects outside China and the stockpile recommendation. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[663] Al Jazeera. (2026, 15 April). Can Japan’s arms industry gain from Trump trust loss?. News analysis; supports Japan’s fiscal 2026 defence budget, the missile allocation, Toshiba’s hiring, the 95% American share of defence imports and the aim of Asian supply chains. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. aljazeera.com

[664] Reuters, published by Dawn. (2026, 21 April). Japan opens door to global arms market with overhaul of defence export rules. News agency report; supports the removal of the five export categories, the case-by-case test, the remaining principles and the possible warship sale to the Philippines. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. dawn.com

[665] Asia Pacific Defence Reporter. (2026, 5 February). South Korea’s defence technology export boom explained. Trade magazine interview with the chairman of the Korean Defense Industry Association; supports export values, backlog, localisation of electronics and the KF-21’s American engines. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. asiapacificdefencereporter.com

[666] Abbott, K., & Luckock, T., United States Studies Centre. (2026, 31 July). The Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience: Activities and challenges, two years on. University research centre explainer; supports PIPIR’s membership, March 2026 meeting, projects in Japan, Korea and Australia, drone battery work and barriers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ussc.edu.au

[667] Ahlstrom, J., & Edel, C., CSIS. (2026, 14 September). AUKUS Turns Five: Real Progress, Hard Challenges Ahead. Think-tank analysis; supports the scope of the second AUKUS pillar, the first signature project, the export-licence reform and the assessment of slow delivery. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[668] Taipei Times. (2026, 23 March). Taiwan aiming to be major UAV player. Newspaper report of statements by Taiwan’s premier and vice premier; supports drone budget, output, exports, destinations, the 2027 non-red goal and the defence bill. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taipeitimes.com

[669] Janes. (2026, 3 November). Taiwan eyes to emerge as Asia’s drone supply chain hub. Defence publisher’s news report of a speech by Vice-President Hsiao Bi-khim; supports the trusted-parts list, remaining Chinese suppliers and China’s 18 November export controls. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. janes.com

[670] Cabinet Office, Government of Japan. (n.d.). Act on the Protection and Utilization of Critical Economic Security Information (overview page, in Japanese). Official government page; supports the law’s name, its enactment on 10 May 2024 and its security clearance system covering private companies. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cao.go.jp

[671] Congressional Research Service. (2026, 5 October). Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute over Autonomous Weapon Systems: Potential Issues for Congress (IN12669). Research note for the US Congress; supports the July 2025 contracts, the February 2026 supply-chain designation, the court rulings and the content of the autonomy directive. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. everycrsreport.com

[672] DefenseScoop. (2025, 26 June). Billions for new uncrewed systems and drone-killing tech included in Pentagon’s 2026 budget plan. Trade press report of an official budget briefing; supports the $13.4 billion autonomy request, its breakdown and the $3.1 billion for counter-drone systems. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensescoop.com

[673] U.S. Army. (2026, 26 March). Army reaches conditional agreement with private industry for hyperscaled data centers. Official press release; supports the companies, sites, acreage, projected operating dates and lease programme for data centres on Army land. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. army.mil

[674] Washington Technology. (2025, 4 December). Pentagon launches $1B program to build industrial base for U.S. attack drones. Trade press report on the programme’s request for information; supports the budget, four phases, quantities and unit prices of the Drone Dominance Program. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. washingtontechnology.com

[675] Bondar, K., & Mande, M., Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2026, 10 June). Defining Autonomy: Why Software, Not Drones, Will Decide the Next War. Think-tank brief; supports the June 2026 presidential memorandum, the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group and its budget, and Maven’s status as a programme of record. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[676] DefenseScoop. (2025, 14 April). NATO inks deal with Palantir for Maven AI system. Trade press report of a NATO announcement; supports the date, speed, purpose and undisclosed price of NATO’s purchase. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensescoop.com

[677] Defence Industry Europe. (2026, 18 August). Ukraine says more than 70 AI-enabled systems are striking battlefield targets as it seeks computer vision across all frontline drones. Trade press report of a Ukrainian Ministry of Defence statement; supports the counts of systems, companies and tools and the human role in targeting. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defence-industry.eu

[678] Congressional Research Service. (2026, 26 March). Defense Primer: U.S. Policy on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (IF11150). Research primer for the US Congress; supports the directive’s history and requirements, the senior review, the 58 endorsing states and the calls for a ban. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. everycrsreport.com

[679] Shivakumar, S., & Wessner, C., Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2022, 8 June). Semiconductors and National Defense: What Are the Stakes?. Think-tank analysis; supports the statement that US defence chip needs are a tiny fraction of commercial demand. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[680] Zoria, Y., Euromaidan Press. (2025, 26 June). ‘Jamming no longer works’: The Ukrainian commander who saw tomorrow’s drone war arrive early. News interview with a Ukrainian electronic warfare company commander; supports the timeline of jamming and adaptation from 2022 to 2025 and the arrival of fibre-optic drones. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euromaidanpress.com

[681] Axe, D., Euromaidan Press. (2026, 6 August). How Russia built a jam-proof drone force, and the Chinese supply chain that could still break it. News analysis reporting an open-source analyst’s findings; supports the fibre-optic share, Chinese fibre shipments, mesh modems, the Starlink cut-off and the proposed controls. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euromaidanpress.com

[682] Albright, D., & Faragasso, S., Institute for Science and International Security. (2024, 11 July). Russian Company Elmak Procures ‘High Priority’ Items for Russia’s War Efforts via China. Research report based on trade records; supports the role of FPGAs in Russian and Iranian anti-jamming units, the brands and values shipped, and the routes through China. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. isis-online.org

[683] Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce. (2024, 23 February). Common High Priority Items List (CHPL). Official export-control guidance; supports the 50 product codes, the tiers, the partners and the statement that listed items were found in Russian missiles and drones. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bis.gov

[684] DefenseScoop. (2026, 11 September). Army awards $196M for sensors in first production contracts under EW-focused call for solutions. Trade press report; supports the US Army’s commercial electronic warfare contracts, the April 2026 call for solutions and the lessons officials cite from Ukraine. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensescoop.com

[685] U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2025, 24 July). Defense Industrial Base: Actions Needed to Address Risks Posed by Dependence on Foreign Suppliers (GAO-25-107283). Audit report; supports the 88 and 98 percent overseas estimates, the 200,000 suppliers, the $1.3 billion of microcircuits and the three open recommendations. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gao.gov

[686] U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2026, 7 October). Precision Navigation Systems: Challenges Remain with Fielding New Capabilities (GAO-27-107676). Audit report; supports the closed M-code chip line, the munitions that depend on it, the 2049 and 2050 fielding dates and the Ukraine jamming figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gao.gov

[687] U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2024, September). GPS Modernization: Delays Continue in Delivering More Secure Capability for the Warfighter (GAO-24-106841). Audit report; supports the bulk buy of nearly 1 million chips from GlobalFoundries, the 2028 and 2030 estimates and the reasons the chip left production. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gao.gov

[688] Amoah, M., Bazilian, M. D., & Matisek, J., Foreign Policy Research Institute. (2026, 18 May). Scaling Patriot Production: The Industrial Base Crisis Explained. Think-tank analysis; supports Patriot output, targets, lead times and the single seeker plant. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fpri.org

[689] Il Sole 24 Ore. (n.d.). Air defence is no longer just a theoretical concept: EU investment needs to be increased fivefold. Newspaper analysis; supports the GAO finding of 30 April 2024 that an electronic component’s lead time rose from 19 to 34 months in a missile programme. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. ilsole24ore.com

[690] DefenseScoop. (2023, 20 September). Pentagon announces initial awards for $2B Microelectronics Commons program. Trade press report; supports the $2 billion plan, the eight hubs, the CHIPS and Science Act backing and the focus areas. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensescoop.com

[691] U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2026, 6 August). Semiconductors: Commerce Needs Plan to Meet CHIPS for America R&D Requirements (GAO-26-109121). Audit report; supports the $3.5 billion directed to the Secure Enclave and the three $100 million packaging awards of January 2025. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gao.gov

[692] Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce. (2014, 13 May). Revisions to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR): Control of Spacecraft Systems and Related Items the President Determines No Longer Warrant Control Under the United States Munitions List (USML), 79 FR 27418. Federal rule; supports the move of radiation-hardened circuits to Commerce control on 27 June 2014, the thresholds and the policy of denial for China. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. govinfo.gov

[693] BAE Systems. (2021, 23 August). BAE Systems collaborates with GlobalFoundries to produce radiation-hardened single board computers for space. Company announcement; supports the RAD510’s 45 nanometre process, its makers and sites, trusted source status and the comparison with the RAD750. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. baesystems.com

[694] New Space Economy. (2026, 14 May). NASA’s Next-Gen Space Processor for More Autonomous Spacecraft. Trade press report on a NASA announcement; supports the 500 times test result, the Microchip selection, the test dates and the hardened and tolerant versions. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. newspaceeconomy.ca

[695] Euromaidan Press. (2026, 16 February). SpaceX’s Starlink block is already disrupting Russia’s elite drone unit as predicted, ISW says. News report citing the Institute for the Study of War; supports the Starlink block, Russian use of terminals on drones and the six-month estimate. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euromaidanpress.com

[696] Defense News. (2025, 7 March). Space Development Agency delays next launch amid supply chain woes. Trade press report; supports the Tranche 1 satellite count, the launch delays and the late encryption devices and optical terminals. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensenews.com

[697] Wikipedia. (2026, read 13 November). Guowang. Encyclopedia entry citing SpaceNews and Reuters; supports the planned size, operator, first operational launch and satellite count of China’s constellation. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wikipedia.org

[698] Wikipedia. (2026, read 13 November). GLONASS-K2. Encyclopedia entry citing Izvestia and GPS World; supports Russia’s dependence on foreign satellite electronics, the sanctions effect and the launch delay. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wikipedia.org

[699] KSE Institute (Risinger, L., & Hilgenstock, B.). (2026, July). Russian CHP Imports Tracker | Q2 2026. Research tracker using exporters’ trade data; supports the CHP list definition, China’s share, the fall in imports and the price premium. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. sanctions.kse.ua

[700] KSE Institute (Risinger, L., Talalaievskyi, M., & Hilgenstock, B.). (2026, 2 April). Russian CHP Imports Tracker | Q1 2026. Research tracker; supports the roles of Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Kazakhstan and the data gaps. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. sanctions.kse.ua

[701] B4Ukraine. (2024, January). Western tech and China in Russia’s military supplies. Campaign coalition’s summary of the KSE Institute and Yermak-McFaul study; supports the 2023 dollar values of battlefield goods and critical components. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. b4ukraine.org

[702] The Standard (Reuters). (2024, 22 July). Illicit chip flows to Russia seen slowing but China, Hong Kong remain transshipment hubs. News report citing US Commerce officials and customs data; supports the Hong Kong figures for 2023 and 2024. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thestandard.com.hk

[703] US Department of the Treasury. (2024, 30 October). Treasury Takes Aim at Third-Country Sanctions Evaders and Russian Producers Supporting Russia’s Military Industrial Base. Official press release; supports the sanctions on 275 people and firms in 17 jurisdictions and the Hong Kong distributors named. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. home.treasury.gov

[704] International Institute for Strategic Studies, with Conflict Armament Research and Hayes, D. (2025, September). Tracking the Components of Missiles and UAVs Used by Russia in Ukraine: What Lessons for Control Regimes?. Research report based on field documentation of weapon debris; supports the component shares in Russian, Iranian and North Korean weapons and the tracing cases. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. iiss.org

[705] The Kyiv Independent (Yurchenko, A.). (2026, 18 February). Investigation: How Russian drones exploit European technologies to strike Ukraine and beyond. Cross-border press investigation; supports drone output, the foreign parts counted, the routes traced and the chipmakers’ replies. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. kyivindependent.com

[706] Euromaidan Press (Helme, P.). (2026, 31 July). Russia lowered its 2030 electronics-independence target from 80% to 59%. News report citing Ukrainian and Estonian intelligence services; supports Russia’s revised target, funding cuts and the 28 nanometre limit. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euromaidanpress.com

[707] UNITED24 Media (Moiseienko, O.). (2026, 5 March). Sanctions Ignored? Western Tech Found in Iranian Shahed Drones that Reached Cyprus, Dubai, and Beyond. Ukrainian state media report drawing on Ukraine’s intelligence database; supports the makers named, component counts and the re-export route described. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. united24media.com

[708] Euromaidan Press. (2024, 20 February). North Korean missile fired by Russia in Ukraine contained US, European components. News report on a Conflict Armament Research dispatch; supports the component count and country shares in the Kharkiv missile. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. euromaidanpress.com

[709] The National. (2026, 11 May). Houthis expand arsenal with drones and missiles from Iran. News report on a Conflict Armament Research study of Red Sea seizures; supports the Houthi component figures. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thenationalnews.com

[710] US Department of the Treasury. (2025, 12 November). Treasury Disrupts Iran’s Transnational Missile and UAV Procurement Networks. Official press release; supports the 32 designations, the countries involved and the link to the June 2025 war. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. home.treasury.gov

[711] US Department of the Treasury. (2026, 8 May). Economic Fury Disrupts Networks Supplying Weapons and UAV Components to Iran. Official press release; supports the ten designations and the servomotor supply to Iran’s drone programme. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. home.treasury.gov

[712] Center for Strategic and International Studies (Koren, K., Panjeti, P., Surnow, E., Kurland, K., & Al-Ghusbi, O.). (2026, 23 June). Preventing Iran’s Military Reconstitution: What Tehran Lost, What It Will Need, and Opportunities to Disrupt Procurement. Think tank analysis; supports Iran’s losses in 2026, its reliance on imported electronics and re-exports, and China’s role. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[713] Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Department of Commerce. (2022, 7 October). Commerce Implements New Export Controls on Advanced Computing and Semiconductor Manufacturing Items to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Official press release; supports the stated military reasons for the 2022 rule and its supercomputer licence requirement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. bis.gov

[714] The Record. (2021, 8 April). US adds seven Chinese supercomputing entities to economic blacklist. News report; supports the seven entities listed in April 2021, the Raimondo quotation on nuclear and hypersonic weapons, and the 2015 precedent. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. therecord.media

[715] Verdict. (2021, 12 April). US adds China’s most powerful computer to its blacklist. News report; supports the June 2019 listings, the Wuxi centre as home of Sunway TaihuLight and the three centres left unlisted. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. verdict.co.uk

[716] Allen, G. C., Center for Strategic and International Studies. (2022, 11 October). Choking off China’s Access to the Future of AI. Think-tank analysis; supports the chip thresholds, the focus on networked chips for training large models and the military-civil fusion argument. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. csis.org

[717] The Next Platform. (2026, 25 June). A Deep Dive On China’s “LineShine” All-CPU, Exaflops-Class Supercomputer. Trade publication analysis; supports the LineShine figures and chips, the Tianhe-3 and OceanLight details and the comment on American policy. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. nextplatform.com

[718] Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. (2024, 18 November). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s El Capitan verified as world’s fastest supercomputer. Laboratory press release; supports El Capitan’s performance, chips and nuclear stockpile role. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. llnl.gov

[719] U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2012, 21 February). DOD Supply Chain: Suspect Counterfeit Electronic Parts Can Be Found on Internet Purchasing Platforms (GAO-12-375). Government audit; supports the fictitious-company purchases, the 16 parts and the vendor counts. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gao.gov

[720] U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2016, 16 February). Counterfeit Parts: DOD Needs to Improve Reporting and Oversight to Reduce Supply Chain Risk (GAO-16-236). Government audit; supports the 526 reports, the reporting gaps and the status of the recommendations. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. gao.gov

[721] Asia IP. (2012, 23 August). US Senate Finds Fake Chinese Parts in US Military Systems. Trade press account of the Senate Armed Services Committee report of May 2012; supports the case and part counts, the China share and the affected systems. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. asiaiplaw.com

[722] Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. (2023, January). 252.246-7008 Sources of Electronic Parts. Contract clause text; supports the order of trusted sources, the testing duty and the mention of accredited suppliers. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. acquisition.gov

[723] Wikipedia contributors. (2026). 2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks. Encyclopedia article compiling news reports; supports the dates, the Lebanese government toll, the supply path and the responses of Lebanon, Iran and Taiwan. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. en.wikipedia.org

[724] Utility Dive. (2025, 15 May). Rogue communication devices found on Chinese-made solar power inverters. Trade press report relaying Reuters; supports the inverter and battery findings, the lack of an inverter rule and China’s reply. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. utilitydive.com

[725] House Committee on Homeland Security. (2024, 12 March). WTAS: Joint Investigation into CCP-Backed Company Supplying Cranes to U.S. Ports Reveals Shocking Findings. Congressional committee page; supports the modem findings, the number of cranes examined and the maker’s share. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. homeland.house.gov

[726] Federal Acquisition Regulation. (2020). Subpart 4.21 Prohibition on Contracting for Certain Telecommunications and Video Surveillance Services or Equipment. Regulation text; supports the named Chinese firms, the 2019 and 2020 dates and the basis in section 889 of the 2019 defence act. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. acquisition.gov

[727] Welch, J., & Cousin, M., Bloomberg Economics, in Insurance Journal. (2026, 12 February). The $10 Trillion Fight: Modeling a US-China War Over Taiwan. Reprint of Bloomberg Economics’ model of five Taiwan scenarios; supports the GDP losses, chip shares and industry effects. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. insurancejournal.com

[728] Peck, M., Defense News. (2025, 1 August). A Chinese blockade could cripple Taiwan’s electricity, war game warns. News report on the CSIS games; supports the 20 percent electricity figure, the halt to manufacturing and the ship losses. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. defensenews.com

[729] Taiwan News. (2025, 1 August). Report on the CSIS blockade war games. News report on the CSIS games; supports the 10 days of gas, 7 to 20 weeks of oil and coal, and the airlift requirement. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taiwannews.com.tw

[730] Bloomberg, in Taipei Times. (2024, 22 May). ASML and TSMC can disable chip machines if China invades Taiwan. Reprint of a Bloomberg report based on unnamed sources; supports the remote-disable claim, the spare-parts dependence and the Mark Liu quotation. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. taipeitimes.com

[731] Pham, P., & Scholten, M., War on the Rocks. (2026, 11 June). The Chain of Peace: Do Supply Chain Chokepoints Deter War?. Academic commentary; supports the critique of the silicon shield and the chokepoint argument. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. warontherocks.com

[732] I-Connect007 Editorial Team. (2025, 3 October). Taiwan Rejects U.S. Proposal for 50-50 Semiconductor Production Split. Trade press report; supports the Lutnick proposal and Vice Premier Cheng’s rejection of 1 October 2025. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. iconnect007.com

[733] Tom’s Hardware. (2025, October). TSMC to build 30% of its 2nm and more advanced chips in the U.S., to speed up Fab 21 build out. Trade press report of TSMC’s earnings call, seen in search summary and headline only; supports the 30 percent Arizona share. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. tomshardware.com

[734] Tang, K. T., Jamestown Foundation, China Brief. (2026, 9 January). PLA Justice Mission 2025 Further Rehearses Taiwan Invasion Operations. Research institute analysis; supports the dates, zones, sortie, vessel and rocket counts for the December and April 2025 exercises. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. jamestown.org

[735] South China Morning Post, in The Star. (2026, 5 September). Mainland China stepping up preparations for Taiwan blockade, report says. News report on the Taiwan defence ministry’s 2026 report on the PLA; supports the blockade focus of recent drills and the assault assessment. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. thestar.com.my

[736] McFaul, C., & Bresnick, S., Emerging Technology Observatory. (2026, 20 April). The National Security Case for Limiting China’s Access to Advanced U.S. Compute: Evidence from PLA Procurement Documents. Research article by CSET analysts based on PLA procurement documents; supports the named chip requests, the DeepSeek uses, the domestic requirement and the stated limits. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. eto.tech

[737] Costello, J., WireScreen. (2026, 1 June). How the PLA Continued Procuring Nvidia AI Chips After U.S. Export Controls. Data firm’s report summary; supports the 3,800 records, the 374 companies, the chip models and the use of intermediaries. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wirescreen.ai

[738] WilmerHale. (2026, 12 June). Pentagon Adds 65 New Entities to the 1260H List of Chinese Military Companies. Law firm client alert; supports the June 2026 additions, the legal definition including military-civil fusion, and the contracting bans. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. wilmerhale.com

[739] Burnham, J., Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (2026, 16 July). Even Limited Sales of High-End Chips to Chinese Buyers Pose a Serious Risk. Think-tank policy brief; supports the July 2026 testimony on H200 sales, the December 2025 licence terms and the critics’ view. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. fdd.org

[740] Probasco, E., Bresnick, S., & McFaul, C., CSET. (2026, February). China’s Military AI Wish List. Research report on PLA requests for proposals from 2023 and 2024; supports what the army seeks from SI and the small budgets. Read through a search summary. Accessed 13 November 2026. cset.georgetown.edu

	Year to Dec 2022	Year to Dec 2023	Year to Dec 2024	Year to Dec 2025

Revenue	$116.6 billion	$134.9 billion	$164.5 billion	$201.0 billion
Net income	$23.2 billion	$39.1 billion	$62.4 billion	$60.5 billion
Research and development	$35.3 billion	$38.5 billion	$43.9 billion	$57.4 billion

Where one place can deny a stage to everyone else

A contest over time, fought at the narrow points of a supply chain

New research and trade reporting

Research papers

Trade press and think tanks

Where to go

The strategic logic: leverage that is spent when it is used

Fast levers and lasting levers are held by different sides

Where each side stands, and what it has kept in reserve

The dates on which positions change

Four postures, three futures

What each should do, and what each should avoid

What matters most, and what to expect to 2032

Simulation: two thousand possible paths, 2027 to 2032

How the six years end

China’s capacity for advanced chips thousand wafers a month; the band covers eight runs in ten

When the truce breaks, in the runs where it does

Today’s reading of the news rewritten every morning · earlier days are in the archive

Archive: every day’s analysis and strategy

Signals that would change this

Nine stops, four continents, about three years

Seven stages, and who holds each

Three kinds of economics, all pushing the same way

Scale

Learning

Specialisation

What happens, who holds it, and how long an alternative would take

The chain is slow to build and quick to stop

Where the chain is tightest now

Advanced packaging

Stacked memory

Power

Fifteen years of interruptions

Can the chain be moved?

The chip chain on the map

The chip chain as a heatmap: ten places, eleven stages

Read it by column

Read it by row

Southeast Asia

Eight positions in the chain

United States

Taiwan

South Korea

Japan

The Netherlands

China

European Union

India

Four conclusions about the chain

Archive: every day’s country updates

Who is running China’s chip effort

What China can make now, stage by stage

What the Chinese-language record adds up to

Rebuilding the chain at home, stage by stage

Metals: how China learned to answer in kind

China’s chip companies on this site

Taiwan: holding the chokepoint, depending on everything around it

Archive: every day’s country updates

Xi’s “complete reunification” speech: old words, new timing, and what it means for chips

Taiwan is now on the same table as chips and metals

Absorbing Taiwan would not hand Beijing the chokepoint

The pressure that matters is short of war

Who runs Taiwan’s chip industry

What Taiwan can make now

Law, not ownership

The two-generation rule, now stated openly

A trade-secret case against an ally’s company

The agreement with Washington

What the Taiwanese record adds up to

What Taiwan holds

Three pressures

Washington: move the fabs

Beijing: wait, squeeze, recruit

Physics: power, water, people

The N-2 rule, and why it matters

What a realistic policy looks like

How it could go wrong

Taiwan’s chip companies on this site

Japan: the supplier nobody can do without, trying to make chips again

Archive: every day’s country updates