SHANGHAI : China plans to splurge to help its chip sector overcome U.S. export curbs, but money can only do so much unless Chinese firms can break from a cycle that hinders innovation and traps them at the low end of the value chain, industry players said.
But money alone is not enough to catch Western rivals who are generations ahead. SMEE and local peers mainly sell to domestic chip foundries and the lack of exposure to advanced chipmaking facilities of the likes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has made it difficult for them to independently solve engineering problems and move up the value chain, industry workers and market watchers said.
Top management at SMEE - led by a state power firm executive who launched the company in 2002 - had no lithography experience and staff built their first machines by buying and studying second-hand equipment and by reading public patents and papers, one former SMEE engineer said. "Even if we could have built the machines, we wouldn't have known how to service and maintain them," the engineer said.
Late last month, two senior academics from the Chinese Academy of Science published an article advocating the re-focus of efforts on research and development for new technology and materials, rather than on emulating existing tech from overseas.