An excerpt of an interview from the news website Guancha (in Chinese) by Lu Feng (路风), a political economist and professor at Peking University's School of Government.
Lu’s main arguments:
The scope of the Washington’s tech crackdown has always been constrained by the reliance of US companies on the Chinese market. Lu recommends further weaponising Chinese demand.
Beijing must stop pursuing individual technological targets and should come up with a comprehensive strategy aimed at developing an “independent industrial base” for semiconductors.
Chinese companies are already present in almost every part of the semiconductor supply chain. The key for China today is to help foster strong supply and demand links between these companies.
Beijing should set up a body similar to the Mao era’s Central Special Committee [中央专委] that would directly oversee the development of this industrial base.
China must pursue “fully independent manufacturing” by first de-Americanising its chip supply chain and ultimately replacing almost all foreign made equipment and materials with domestically made ones. Decoupling is bad for everyone, but needs must.
China should focus less on developing advanced chips and more on building up a domestic industrial chain capable of producing mature chips (≥28nm).
China’s goal should be to become the world’s main supplier of mature chips and ultimately use this dominance as a weapon against the US and others (if and when necessary).
Beijing should impose sanctions on any company that complies with the US’s export controls. For example, by banning the sale of NVIDIA’s mature chips and of ASML’s less advanced lithography equipment to China.
Lu is adamant that China should implement strong countermeasures in response to the US’s current crackdown. Backing down will only make matters worse, he says.
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