Countdown: How Close is China to 40% Chip Self-Sufficiency?

By Luffy Liu, Associate chief analyst of EETimes China
April 11, 2019

China is making progress becoming less reliant on foreign supply of semiconductors, according to Chinese IC industry executives, but the country’s efforts still require setting specific intermediate goals and prioritizing those goals.

The executives discussed these issues during a recent roundtable event called "Countdown: How Far is China from 40% IC Self-Sufficiency?" held during the 2019 China IC Leader Summit, jointly organized by AspenCore's EETimes China, EDN China, and ESM China Electronic Business.

China has been the largest consumer of integrated circuits (ICs) since 2005. In 2015, the State Council of China adopted an ambitious plan for the China electronics industry to become self-reliant. The "Made in China 2025" plan set a strategic goal to grow the country’s IC industry to achieve a self-sufficiency rate of 40% by 2020, increasing to 70% by 2025.

Three years later, China was importing more chips, not fewer. According to the 2018 National Imported Key Commodity Value Index, published by the State General Administration of Customs, China imported 417.57 billion integrated circuits in 2018, with a total amount of RMB 2058.41 billion (US $312 billion), an increase of 19.8% over 2017. This is the first time that China’s IC imports have exceeded US $300 billion.

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