In every corner of the country, investors, entrepreneurs, and local officials are in a frenzy to build up semiconductor abilities
Testing adhesives at a lab for Tsinghon, a start-up making high-end films adhesives for chip products, in Shenzhen, China, Dec. 17, 2020. Beijing’s drive to free itself from reliance on imported semiconductors has lifted start-ups and big firms alike. Some have flamed out. But there has been progress. (Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times)
Liu Fengfeng had more than a decade under his belt at one of the world’s most prominent technology companies before he realized where the real gold rush in China was taking place.
Computer chips are the brains and souls of all the electronics the country’s factories crank out. Yet they are mostly designed and produced overseas. China’s government is lavishing money on anyone who can help change that.
So last year Liu, 40, left his job at Foxconn, the Taiwanese giant that assembles iPhones in China for Apple. He found a niche — high-end films and adhesives for chip products — and quickly raised $5 million. Today, his startup has 36 employees, most of them in the tech hub of Shenzhen, and is aiming to start mass production next year.
“Before, you might have had to beg Grandpa and call on Grandma for money,” Liu said. “Now, you just have a few conversations, and everyone is hoping projects get started as soon as possible.”
China is in the midst of a mass mobilization for chip mastery, a quest whose aims can seem just as harebrained and impossible — at least until they are achieved — as sending rovers to the moon or dominating Olympic gold medals. In every corner of the country, investors, entrepreneurs and local officials are in a frenzy to build up semiconductor abilities, responding to a call from the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, to rely less on the outside world in key technologies.
©2019 New York Times News Service