By Che Pan and Laurie Chen
BEIJING, March 5 (Reuters) – Top Chinese semiconductor executives have called for a coordinated national effort to develop operational lithography systems during the 2026-2030 period, underlining Beijing’s push for greater technological self-reliance.
Zhao Jinrong, chairman of Naura Technology Group, Chen Nanxiang, chairman and president of Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp, and Liu Weiping, chairman of Empyrean Technology, co-authored an article alongside leading semiconductor institutes that was published online late on Wednesday.
They urged the government to pool national resources to integrate technological breakthroughs across institutions.
Semiconductor manufacturing has emerged as a critical battleground in the China-U.S. technology rivalry since 2020, with Washington actively imposing restrictions to stop China from expanding advanced production capacity below 7-nanometer.
“Taking lithography machines as an example, ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) equipment has 100,000 components supplied by 5,000 suppliers, with ASML merely serving as the integrator,” the executives wrote in Science and Technology Review, a journal affiliated with China’s science and technology professionals association.
Dutch firm ASML Holding has become the world’s sole supplier of EUV lithography machines, essential for producing the most advanced semiconductor chips used to power smartphones, AI and advanced computing.
“How to establish China’s ASML, so that the ‘integrated’ can jump out of the barrier of ‘fame and fortune’, and uniformly allocate funds and human resources is an urgent issue that relevant departments should immediately formulate implementation plans,” they wrote.
SEMICONDUCTOR AND NATIONAL STRATEGY
China has made breakthrough progress at different institutions in EUV laser light sources, wafer stage, and optical systems, but integrating these components into a complete system remains a challenge that must be solved during the 15th five-year plan period, they said.
The article also identified bottlenecks in electronic design automation (EDA) software, materials such as silicon wafers and electronic gases as key areas requiring national-level coordination.
China designated semiconductors as a core pillar of its nascent industry alongside aviation, biotechnology and the low-altitude economy in its latest government work report released on Thursday.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang highlighted breakthroughs in domestically driven chip research and development efforts during the report.
The five-year roadmap made no specific mention of lithography machines, calling instead to ‘improve advanced process manufacturing capabilities, accelerate the development of key equipment, materials and components.
China’s chip production capacity at the mature 28nm node and above accounts for 33% of global capacity and remains unrestricted in both manufacturing and design, according to an article published in Science and Technology Review.
In the same article, the executives also called for setting up public platforms with the most advanced process capabilities to research, develop and verify the latest device structures, process equipment, components, materials and EDA software.
(Reporting by Che Pan and Laurie Chen; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
