Leading executives call for Chinese tech self-sufficiency plan

Leading figures in China's semiconductor industry are urging the central government to launch a coordinated national initiative to develop homegrown advanced lithography systems, intensifying Beijing's push for technological self-sufficiency amid ongoing export restrictions.

In a signed article published online late Wednesday, top executives from major Chinese chip equipment and design companies, alongside prominent research institutes, called for the pooling of national resources to overcome critical bottlenecks during the country's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30).

The authors of the piece - which was published in Science and Technology Review, a journal affiliated with the China Association for Science and Technology - include Zhao Jinrong, chairman of Naura Technology Group; Chen Nanxiang, chairman of Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp; and Liu Weiping, chairman of Empyrean Technology.

The executives urged the government to integrate resources across relevant institutions to work towards breakthroughs in three key areas: electronic design automation (EDA software), extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, and advanced silicon wafers during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30).

Drawing a parallel with industry leader ASML Holding, the authors highlighted the complex ecosystem required for the development of advanced chip-making tools.

"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," they wrote.

The Dutch firm is the world's sole supplier of EUV lithography machines, which are essential for producing the most advanced semiconductor chips used in smartphones, AI and high-performance computing.

The article posed a critical question for Chinese policymakers: "How to establish China's ASML, so that the 'integrator' can rise above institutional barriers and uniformly allocate funds and human resources is an urgent issue that relevant departments should immediately formulate implementation plans for."

While acknowledging that Chinese institutions have made "breakthrough progress" in individual components such as EUV laser light sources, wafer stages and optical systems, the authors noted that integrating these parts into a functional, stable system remains a formidable challenge for the 2026-2030 period.

Beyond lithography, the article identified bottlenecks in EDA software — crucial for chip design — and advanced materials like silicon wafers and electronic gases as areas requiring national-level coordination to secure China's semiconductor supply chain.