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Article: Top chip leaders urge national drive to ‘build China’s ASML’ amid US curbs

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6 / 10

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China's leading semiconductor executives have issued a joint call for a concentrated national effort to build a domestic competitor to Dutch lithography giant ASML, citing urgent need due to U.S. sanctions. They argue the current domestic industry is too fragmented and weak, dispersing critical resources.

The article specifically identifies U.S. containment in electronic design automation (EDA) software, silicon wafers, and advanced manufacturing equipment like EUV lithography as key challenges. It notes the extreme complexity of such systems, with an ASML machine integrating over 100,000 components from thousands of suppliers.

The executives urge the industry to abandon illusions and prepare for a struggle, advocating for immediate state planning to pool financial and human resources toward building an independent and controllable chip industry.

Main Topics: U.S. sanctions on China's chip industry; the call for a national project to create a Chinese alternative to ASML; criticism of China's fragmented semiconductor sector; specific technology areas being restricted (EDA, wafers, EUV lithography).

Original URL

https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3345557/top-chip-leaders-urge-national-drive-build-chinas-asml-amid-us-curbs?utm_source=rss_feed

Source Feed

Tech - South China Morning Post

Published Date

2026-03-05 09:32

Fetched Date

2026-03-05 07:30

Processed Date

2026-03-05 07:31

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Present

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Raw Extracted Content

Top chip leaders urge national drive to ‘build China’s ASML’ amid US curbs
Financial and human resources must be pooled and authorities should start drawing up plans immediately, top executives say in an article
China’s top semiconductor executives have called for a nationwide push to build a domestic alternative to Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML, urging the industry to “abandon illusions and prepare for struggle” amid US sanctions.
The current industry was too “small, fragmented and weak”, which was “dispersing numerous public resources”, according to an article co-authored by the co-founder of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) and leaders of Empyrean, Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), Naura Technology, and academics.
SMIC is the country’s top chip foundry, Empyrean is a leading integrated circuit design software developer, YMTC is a memory giant and Naura is China’s top semiconductor-equipment maker.
The article said that the US had contained China’s rise in three main areas: electronic design automation (EDA) used for chip design; silicon wafers, a key chip material; and manufacturing equipment, especially extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, which is dominated by ASML.
“An ASML EUV machine contains over 100,000 components sourced from 5,000 suppliers [while] ASML serves merely as the integrator,” according to the article by SMIC co-founder Wang Yangyuan, Empyrean chairman Liu Weiping, YMTC chairman Chen Nanxiang and Naura chairman Zhao Jinrong and professors from Tsinghua University and Peking University.
The article, “Building an independent and controllable integrated circuit industry system”, appeared in the February issue of the Chinese journal Science and Technology Review. The online version was published on Wednesday.