China Still Heavily Depends on imports
The National Bureau of Statistics of China announced on Jan. 17 that China’s semiconductor integrated circuit production volume increased 33.3 percent to 359.4 billion units in 2021 after having increased 16.2 percent in 2020.
Although the volume includes those produced by Samsung Electronics, TSMC, Intel and other non-Chinese companies, it can be said that the Chinese government’s efforts for import reduction in the industry are bearing fruit.
At present, a number of Chinese semiconductor companies such as SMIC, YMTC and UNISOC are developing their technologies for higher global market shares. For example, YMTC raised its share to over 2 percent and joined the top seven in the global NAND flash market in the third quarter of last year. SMIC initiated 14 nm process-based mass production last year.
However, their technologies are still far behind those of Intel, Qualcomm, TSMC, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix and China is still heavily dependent on imports in the industry. Last year, China’s semiconductor imports amounted to US$350 billion, up 23.6 percent from a year ago and equivalent to 13 percent of China’s total imports for that year.