Seldom have such small chips carried such a heavy load. China’s fledgling semiconductor industry, after a messy birth, now finds itself in the crosshairs of conflicting political goals in Beijing and Washington.
Chips are a key plank of China’s industrial plans, attracting a massive $150bn government subsidy. This reflects national angst over reliance on overseas markets — it spends more on importing semiconductors than oil — and a fear, as one banker puts it, of being left in the dark “in case the US flips the switch”.
Washington harbours its own fears: that these subsidies will distort the market, dent its own domestic industry, jeopardise the edge it has held in the technology and threaten security.
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