From consumer gadgets to cars, China has time and again shown a knack for emulating cutting-edge foreign technology. Yet the semiconductors that power the digital economy have proven trickier to master. That has been the source of much anxiety among its political and business elites in recent years. America’s decision in 2022 to halt exports to the country of its whizziest chips and chipmaking tools brought into stark relief the chokehold of China’s geopolitical rivals over the industry. In December last year China’s imports of the lithography machines used to imprint circuits onto silicon wafers surged by 450%, compared with the previous year, as local
→ Continue reading at The Economist
