China's Chip Industry Will Be 'Reborn' Under US Sanctions, Says Huawei (cnbc.com) 58
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: China's chip industry will be "reborn" as a result of U.S. sanctions, a top boss at Huawei said Friday, as the Chinese telecommunications giant confirmed a breakthrough in semiconductor design technology. Eric Xu, rotating chairman at Huawei, issued fighting words against Washington's tech export restrictions on China. "I believe China's semiconductor industry will not sit idly by, but take efforts around ... self-strengthening and self reliance," according to an official translation of Xu's comments during a press conference. "For Huawei, we will render our support to all such self-saving, self-strengthening and self reliance efforts of the Chinese semiconductor industry."
The U.S. is concerned that China could use advanced semiconductors for military purposes. Huawei's Xu said these developments could boost, rather than hamper China's domestic semiconductor industry. "I believe China's semiconductor industry will get reborn under such sanctions and realize a very strong and self-reliant industry," Xu said. Last week, Huawei claimed to have completed work on electronic design automation tools for laying out and making chips down to 14nm process nodes.
"But Huawei ideally needs chips of a much smaller nanometer size for more advanced applications, which they are currently finding it difficult to obtain," adds Reuters. "The company is still reeling from the effects of U.S. sanctions -- on Friday, it said net profit dropped 69% year-on-year in 2022, marking the biggest decline on record."
The U.S. is concerned that China could use advanced semiconductors for military purposes. Huawei's Xu said these developments could boost, rather than hamper China's domestic semiconductor industry. "I believe China's semiconductor industry will get reborn under such sanctions and realize a very strong and self-reliant industry," Xu said. Last week, Huawei claimed to have completed work on electronic design automation tools for laying out and making chips down to 14nm process nodes.
"But Huawei ideally needs chips of a much smaller nanometer size for more advanced applications, which they are currently finding it difficult to obtain," adds Reuters. "The company is still reeling from the effects of U.S. sanctions -- on Friday, it said net profit dropped 69% year-on-year in 2022, marking the biggest decline on record."
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Who Kicked Putrump's ass, and U still butthurt over it
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The rise of Chinese manufacturing has been a significant trend in recent years, and the U.S. government's export restrictions on China's chip industry have only fueled its determination to become more self-reliant. Huawei's Eric Xu believes that these sanctions could actually benefit China's semiconductor industry by pushing it towards greater self-strengthening and self-reliance. While Huawei's recent breakthrough in semiconductor design technology is a step forward, the company still faces challenges in obtaining chips of a much smaller nanometer size for more advanced applications. As the world watches China's chip industry undergo a transmogrification, it remains to be seen how it will ultimately fare under these sanctions.
Wow - is ChatGPT now a Slashdotter? Or is there a Chinese shill behind the brand new this-is-the-first-entry user account under which this 'summary of the summary' was posted?
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Should we take any notice of the CEO of Huawei? Naturally they're keen to push a cold war narrative after being caught allegedly partnering with the bad spooks.
Not to say we shouldn't be paranoid about Xi interference but this is *one* sanctioned company spruiking victimhood while the rest of their industry powers on.
Perhaps I am naive but well known other Chinese brands happily export product with Qualcomm and Mediatek chips inside. Meanwhile mainland chipmakers such as Rockchip and Allwinner continue to f
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Economics requires a buyer and a seller. China exports way more than it consumes to the US and Europe. Now the US is shutting that down. Who cares if China can mass produce things, if no one wants to buy it?
Meanwhile Southeast Asia, with it's awesome demographics and emerging economies and enormous populations and few political problems is smelling opportunity. India now is the most populous country in the world since apparently the Chinese can't count their own people [brownstoneresearch.com] correct
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While the Mexico-US trade relationship has been beneficial for both countries, there are still some risks involved. One potential risk is the political instability in Mexico, which has the potential to affect the economy and thus the trade relationship with the US.
You may not have noticed this, but Mexican upheaval really doesn't have any more potential to disrupt the economy than American upheaval. They go out of their way to keep the parts of their economy we depend on operating, because they depend on them too. Even the drug cartels are typically careful not to anger America, fearing direct armed response which would surely be sanctioned by nearly any Mexican government. Surely no Mexican is unaware of the extent to which their economy depends on commerce with the
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That's just stupid
That's particularly rich coming from you. [slashdot.org]
Yes and No ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because they have to; an embargo is a one-shot weapon which can never be undone. It also makes all countries, not just the embargoed one, more distrustful of trade relations.
No, because China is a dictatorship, and an ideological one at that, the least open to the free thought and innovation and cooperation that brings innovation. It's not that the USSR and Nazi Germany were incapable of innovation, but their engineers and scientists would have innovated more without having to look over their shoulders and wondering who was today's snitch.
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Dictatorship is as good or bad as the person dictating. Of course we're talking about Humans here, so they've all been bad. A.I. to to the rescue! lol.
Re:Yes and No ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideological dictators are immune to reason, logic, facts, and everything else which one can argue with. Greedy dictators are at least open to alternatives.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." -- C.S. Lewis
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You're out of date. Used to be freer than most communist states, but Xi went for that third term, the real estate binge is crashing, Hong Kong is no longer free, and he's making noises about Taiwan and the Nine Dash Line to distract the public from domestic problems. It's not nearly as free as it used to be, and the real estate bust and navy buildup are soaking up a lot of money.
Someone published a book a few years back about the difference between territorial nations and naval nations, although I forget
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Attacking Taiwan, for instance, takes a navy to do the invasion,
It looks like the PLA/PLAN want's to "improvise" by impressing commercial cargo container ships to "ferry" the PLA troops/weapons to occupy Taiwan. Of course, they don't seem to consider how they're going to get those cargo container ships into Taiwan ports uncontested.
In any case, the PLAN has a navy with as many "combat" ships as the USN. "Of course" PLAN ships will "overwhelm" the USN. Its not like PLAN has to worry about the 4th largest navy, Japan. (Or Japan's roughly 8th air force world ranking .
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Yes, I do believe those are all Human qualities, the rest of it sounds like it borders on Stockholm syndrome. Seems like a narcissist take in that the only way good can exist is by being oppressive to horrific levels. I guess it's tough to imagine something you've never experienced.
Re:Yes and No ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing the tech available now with the 1940s-70s is silly.
And saying that political oppression can be separated from doing scientific research shows you know little of history or research or innovation. Look up Lysenkoism. Look up Winnie the Pooh in China. Look up the Stasi. Look up the history of electronics research in East Germany and the USSR.
Oppressive regimes breed snitches, who are incredibly eager to make up lies about colleagues and neighbors to reduce the competition. You have led a sheltered life if you have never experienced that kind of atmosphere.
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"they just could not do much with the tools and components they had"
Yes, because they depended on a planned economy to provide the tools. China is little different. Why do you think their real estate market is falling apart? Because the central government told them to build ghost cities and high speed rail to them. Why are they pushing the Nine Dash Line and upsetting every single country in the area? Because Xi's ego demands it for his legacy.
Eugenics and McCarthyism were just as bad as wokism is now.
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Eugenics and McCarthyism were just as bad as wokism is now.
Wokism, to the extent that it exists, is the insistence that you let other people behave as they want to. (As opposed to "wokeness", the awareness of systemic injustice and that some are still profiting from keeping us all down, some more than others.) Eugenics and McCarthyism were about doing things to other people. Conflating them is dumb.
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And this is why we keep losing. Some people just can't seem to accept that China might actually be good at something, because they are so wedded to the idea that the US model is the best and only way.
In a few years Chinese chips will be cutting edge, and we will be banning then on "national security" grounds.
Re:Yes and No ... (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is why we keep losing. Some people just can't seem to accept that China might actually be good at something, because they are so wedded to the idea that the US model is the best and only way.
It's not "the US model", it's the western model, it's how literally everyone in the west behaves when they have the power, and America didn't just coalesce out of the mists of time. It has an origin and an origin story, and it was born from the hyper-nationalistic and ultra-colonialist United Kingdom.
We do not remotely keep losing, if you're comparing nations anyway. GDP per capita is staggeringly higher in the west than the east. The People of both the west and the east are continually losing, though. The wealthy have unlimited greed everywhere.
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I think it's different in Europe. Most Europeans aren't convinced that their country is the best in the world and their way of doing this is the only good/successful option.
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In no country does the majority think their country is the best in the world [worldpopul...review.com], though Americans are the most enthusiastic [businessinsider.com].
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China isn't a dictatorship. It's a one-party system. The leaders are elected by the party members. Xi Jinping was just re-elected to another term because he's been doing a good job. If he weren't he would have been out on his ass. Or worse.
It's also not terribly ideological. Americans like the "communism" boogeyman, but China hasn't been very communist since Mao died. The industrial centres where you'd be making chips especially are special economic zones designed to be enthusiastically capitalist.
Re:Yes and No ... (Score:4, Informative)
Let me get this straight: you claim Xi is not a dictator because he won an election by legal means?
Hitler was also elected, and the 1933 Enabling Decree was legal too. Are you claiming Hitler was not a dictator simply because he won an election?
Stalin and all Soviet dictators came to power by legal elections. Are you claiming they were not dictators?
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I don't think you understand what a dictator is. Originally, the term was used by the Romans to refer to a special office created in emergencies. The senate would appoint one man to wield absolute power for a set period of time. Today we typically use the term to refer to any person who wields absolute power over a country.
Xi isn't a dictator because he can be recalled at any time by China's National Party Congress.
Hitler was not a dictator until he was given dictatorial powers by the enabling decree. Stali
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When you control the press and flow of political information, you are essentially a dictator even if you have elections. You can keep winning by slandering your opponents and they can't counter because their voice is shut down or overwhelmed.
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I'm not sure why you're obsessed with elections. They have very little to do with whether someone is a dictator or not.
I guess maybe you've got this dichotomy in your head, where there's democracy and there's dictatorship and nothing else?
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Let me put it this way. There's lot of people criticizing Joe Biden who don't disappear in the middle of the night. Fox spends half their day doing that, even. If you criticized Xi or praise Taiwan's independence to a large audience, you disappear into the night.
Re:Yes and No ... (Score:4, Insightful)
China on the other hand provides a lot of monetary incentives to innovate. You can make it big just like you can make in the US. China is in the second place with numbers of billionaires, after the US. So incentives are there. School education in China appears to be much better than in the US. Plus China can direct people to various professions from the top down, which US can't do. China can mandate universities to expand whatever program they need and can setup financial incentives for people to study the subjects. So if they decide that the chip manufacturing is strategically important they will direct resources to it and will be successful.
If you look at US chip designers, very large percentage of them are Chinese. I suspect that the same goes for people working for ASML and other similar companies. China can say, come back to China and we will pay you better than what you are making now. Lots of current engineers will think hard about coming back.
Instead of looking for the next enemy, the US should look at how to cooperate with other countries. The US nearly bankrupted itself trying to win the cold war. Lucky USSR folded first. This time the US may not be so lucky.
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"The main reason USSR engineers were not innovating was lack of incentives"
ie, the same kind of central economy as China has. Both countries have incentives, but they are only as "markety" as the central planners want.
"The US nearly bankrupted itself trying to win the cold war. Lucky USSR folded first. This time the US may not be so lucky."
The US never came close to bankruptcy before the USSR dissolved. US governments have and continue making lots of stupid decisions, but bankruptcy during the Cold War wa
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I don't know about Germany, but USSR produced many innovations. USSR beat USA to space if you remember.
germany is a large reason the USA was successful in space
von braun was a nazi engineer credited with developing the first ballistic missile.
after the war, he worked at nasa.
China can say, come back to China and we will pay you better than what you are making now. Lots of current engineers will think hard about coming back.
the problem with that is you have to live in china.
the chinese abroad know this well.
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It is not that black & white. Dictatorships can do really good R&D by identifying all talented researchers early on and making them a really good offer and let the ones that do not want to take it leave the country with no hard feelings. Now theocracies (like the US is slowly becoming) and quasi-theocracies cannot do that, because they have specific "values" they must enforce at all cost. It remains to be seen how much Xi's ideology will sabotage his country.
Two words. (Score:3)
Espionage.
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Huawei isn't a real company (Score:4, Interesting)
Huawei is a foreign intelligence agency masquerading as a business, and they are under no pressure to EVER make money.
Their only job is to get a footprint in other countries that they can use as leverage and for intelligence.
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As an American, I wish them luck (Score:4, Funny)
1. Many top-tier educated engineers and scientists. Fake-degrees won’t cut it. Real, honest-to-god top notch thinkers. Universities with the freedom to teach what’s needed and NOT what the emperor demands.
2. Massive companies that have the freedom to fully optimize their processes without the emperor or the local party bosses trying to steer the ship.
3. A massive number of high-tech supporting industries.
4. A flexible supply chain, driven by business and technical needs and NOT the emperor or the local party bosses.
5. All of this will require robust business processes and a healthy venture capitalist construct
6. Number 5 requires strong property rights and a strong rule of law.
7. Number 6 means that the economy can’t be driven by the whims of the emperor or the local party bosses.
8. Once number 7 happens, people will start to wonder if maybe an emperor isn’t the most efficient form of government, and maybe they’d be better off with some form of government with checks and balances. Something that’s a bit more responsive to the needs of both individuals and the companies that are the true drivers of quality-of-life.
9. If the rule of law supersedes the emperor and the party bosses, nobody will be able to lock people up when they talk about alternatives.
10. You see where I’m going?
Yup. I wish China all the best in this endeavor. The should be doing WHATEVER is necessary to make a world-class local Chinese semiconductor industry.
Re-re-re-born? (Score:1)
China has been trying gov't funded chip boom projects to "leapfrog the west" (democracies) many times over the years. Why would this time be different?
Gov't management is just plain lousy at keeping up with technology.
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Grow in size, yes, but not necessarily grow in world competitiveness.
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They already tried. Increasing capacity is not the same thing as increasing competitiveness.
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China is the world's largest consumer of semiconductors (more than half of the entire market), leads the world in new fabs under construction (almost half of the world total), and has grown their semiconductor supply industry by about 30% a year for the last several years. They're the third or fourth biggest manufacturer behind the US, South Korea and maybe Japan. Are you insinuating they've failed at building a semiconductor industry?
This story is about growing their own high end vertically integrated indu
Profit (Score:3)
"net profit dropped 69% year-on-year" - so Huawei still had a profit. They are not bound to the stock market and shareholders to have an impossible continuous growth in profits. If there is profit, the business can grow.
No, it won't (Score:1)