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China Plans $47 Billion Fund To Boost Its Semiconductor Industry (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: In a move that could further heighten tensions with the U.S., China is poised to announce a new fund of about $47.4 billion (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) to spur development of its semiconductor industry as it seeks to close the technology gap with the U.S. and other rivals, according to people familiar with the matter. The new war chest by the government-backed China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Co. follows a similar fund launched in 2014 that raised $21.8 billion, largely funded by central and local government-backed enterprises and industry players. Among other efforts, the fund would be used to improve China's ability to design and manufacture advanced microprocessors and graphic-processing units, one of the people said. Specific details including the amount could change, another person said.
They come here, learn all the skillz, and then run home and undercut us. It's disgraceful and should be considered a national crime against America. It's too bad we do this to ourselves, and allow this to occur. Hoisted by our own petards.
one bubble to the next in china, all with public funds.
Seriously, this is what America USED to do by investing into America. Now, we send our money out to whomever is buying off (bribing) our politicians. These days, it is whoever putin says.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They will fund the US semi conductor industry with 40 billion dollars and fund 7 billion dollars in the 701st Cyber Warrior Division, The Red Weasels, to steal the secrets from those companies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The US still invests plenty in technology. This is in response to the US crack down on Chinese engineers working on high tech projects and sending the technology home. Now China will have to try and develop it themselves.
China has been stealing Western technology for decades. I don't believe they could advance as fast as they plan to without using stolen technology. Now, we'll need to wait and see if their "new" chips have the same security holes as recently unveiled Intel processors do.
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A large nation such as China should not be mostly dependent on foreign semiconductors. Neither should America be dependent on Chinese phones.
Millions of manufacturing jobs in America and Europe have been lost, with effects like "50% unemployed youth in Spain" or "millions of young men unemployed and game-addicted in the US".
"Free Trade" is a means to an end, not a virtue in itself. If it destroys your nation, then put some serious brakes onto it. The only beneficiaries of this free trade thing are the globocorporations+bankers such as Apple, Google, Daimler, VW, G-S etc. And even those will not be required any more as soon as the Chinese have all their IP. Check Nortel Corp to see how this can play out. Or check SEL Alcatel, once a powerful German telecom equipment company. Both dead due to Chinese state capital ("Huwawei", "ZTE").
Trump is not the smartest cookie, but at least he fights for American workers, instead of fighting for the internationalist of moneychangers.
Good in that any investment has the potential to improve existing semiconductor technologies. Good that China has enough local talent to start advancing the technology. Bad in that countries like China are better at securing their technology innovations and research than the West. Bad in that the West's policies have been investing in industries than in pure research.
I am living in a major NATO economic power. The Chinese students were invited to STUDY FOR FREE at our best universities. Our super stupid government probably even paid them housing during their studies.
Now the cream of them have moved back to China, full with top notch engineering knowledge. Why would they need to "spy". It was all 100% legit and due to the stupidness of our government.
Of course there was some spying on-going, but most communication of technology was probably via legit education and commerce.
Just studying data sheets of US semiconductors can tell you a boatload of things, if you have a proper EE education. Then build your own version, fix all the issues and build a v2. When you are at v10, chances are your product is competitive and costs 10 percent of the US original.
China is announcing all sorts of investments in science and engineering. Following through is uneven. They have huge numbers of scientists and engineers. As someone who got a Ph.D. in Chemistry at a top university back in the 1990s, I can tell you that the Chinese students that came here were top-notch, and many wanted to return to China.
We have been kept afloat by many of these Chinese students staying. I don't think the U.S. could have done what it has on Americans alone. How do we make sure our top people go into science? Even Justice Scalia noticed that too many top minds were going into law.
https://abovethelaw.com/2009/1...
The established parties in Germany also act as a cartel. They perceive themselves as an elite who must do all the thinking and decisionmaking. No populace required for this !
Software controls the world.
Hardware controls the software.
China controls the hardware.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Those sandal wearing paddy field waders are no threat to us
The US invests in 19th century priorities- weapons. Vast quantities of weapons which they not only use to excess, but they sell to others freely. Weapons have not won the US many friends around the world or even within its own population. This massive misspending of resources will continue to isolate the US and eventually destroy its economy.
China's investment in technology is another sign of progressive thinking. The world will become more dependent on digital technology and supremacy in that area will bring more power than primitive weapons.
Everyone has investment choices- individuals, companies, non-profits and governments. Poor choices lead to undesirable results.
...omphaloskepsis often...
But this is even sooner than I thought.
With the moore bubble coming to an end there is more incentive to build bilion dollar fabs since now they won't be obsolete in one or two years.
Instead a fab you build now will be relevant for 5 years, maybe more.
So now is a good time for china to invest and build up its own production capabilities in that area massively.
The result will be that in a couple of years creating custom ASIC will become way more affordable than it is now.
Sure. Enough for one or two decent modern fabs and a few institutes.
Freedom of thought is something the West should be happy to share. While some students will return to their repressive governments and be exploited to Western economic detriment they are hope for change from within else we have more North Korea totalitarian regimes. Further, if we can move past this zero sum game economics, tech advances can benefit the broader global socioeconomics. Many advanced educated foreigners would like to stay, if they are good perhaps should accommodate.
China is showing one of the positives that having tight control over the economy can have. If something needs to be done, it's done and there is zero debate. There's also no begging educational institutions and private companies to please comply...it's a top-down order.
Unless there was another world war at hand, something like this or any of the other investments China has made in the recent past could never happen in the US. There's too much infighting and zero initiative to get something massive done.
Like it or not, the Chinese system does have the ability to make massive changes with very little friction. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, the Chinese plowed money into infrastructure to basically offset the recession. At an even more macro level, they're using their control to effectively manufacture a middle class by moving people from the countryside to cities. These are things that we'd never get done in the US even if there were an imminent need.
Given that the cost of state-of-the-art fab is about $20 billion and that China is behind, a $47 billion investment is not a threat. EE times reports that by 2020 a state-of-the-art fab will cost about $20 billion and wikipedia says that TSMC predicts the same.
There is a reason why semiconductor giants such as ARM, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm and even super-rich Apple are fabless; State-of-the-art fabs are insanely hard. The successes here, such as Intel, have generations of accumulated in-house expertise and have spent decades attracting, training and retaining the best experts in the world. Not to mention the elusive engineering management culture necessary for that. Maybe it is impossible to enter at that level and you have to evolve your way there over decades.
So China needs to build a modern fab, but also fund the R&D to get to that point and fund development of modern CPU architectures so they have something to make. By the time China succeeds with all of that, if they can, they might be at least a generation behind.
Finally, it's not like the world would be made worse-off by increased state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing capacity. More better chips are a good thing.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... It's not always as easy as the central government would like, to force all the far flung cities to do their bidding. They were quite slow in shutting down coal and reducing spending as Beijing commanded.