Feature

Introduction of Integrated Circuit and Electronic Components Industry and the Brief Analysis on its Development in Mainland China

Integrated Circuit (hereinafter referred to as “IC”) is to collectively process the electronic components such as transistors, resistors, capacitors, and conclusively embedded them on the surface of the wafer. The entire manufacturing process can be simply divided in the three partitions, namely “Design”, “Manufacturing”, “Package and Testing”. With the policy support of the Central Government and ascent of demand for applications, the IC industry in Mainland China has experiencing a rapid increase in the past few years. The relevant sales has expended from RMB215.9 billion in 2012 to RMB1,045.8 billion in 2021, with an average annual growth rate of 18.4% over the past 10 years. At the same time, a large number of core enterprises has emerged in the fields of design, manufacturing, package and testing.

Nonetheless, the demand of foreign high-quality IC in Mainland China is still surging. In 2021, the import of IC in Mainland China was value USD432.5 billion, an increase of 23.6% year-on-year, which makes IC the largest imported commodity for 5 consecutive years. Relatively, the export value of IC in Mainland China was barely USD153.8 billion, leading to a massive import substitution for the IC industry.

Currently, the import substitution rate of IC in Mainland China remains at a relative low level, which indicates that the manufacturing process still has yet to be improved. To achieve breakthroughs in the technological processes, the IC industry in Mainland China has strengthened its effort in the sector of Research and Development. However, it faces a lot of containments because the United States Government has successively added a number of technology enterprises such as “SMIC” and “Huawei” on the “Entity List”, preventing them from obtaining U.S. or international equipment and technologies for manufacturing the high-end chips. And thus, the pace of development of IC industry in Mainland China has been slowed down.

As the IC industry is entering the post-Moore era, the disruptive technologies will emerge in the near future, and thus the reliance on the traditional inherent technologies will be reduced correspondingly, which may bring opportunities for the high-quality development of the IC industry in Mainland China.

The content is provided by the Research and Information Division of IPIM. For full text (only in Chinese) please visit the following link:
https://www.ipim.gov.mo/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/IC.pdf