China aims for 5-fold increase in advanced chip output to meet AI demand | Nikkei Asia

Backed by Beijing, Huawei and SMIC lead efforts on 7-nm and 5-nm-like production tech.

Nikkei Asia: "Huawei itself plans to roll out several Ascend chipsets in 2026, including the Ascend 950 PR and Ascend 950DT, along with related computing solutions for AI infrastructure, as part of its efforts to further strengthen domestic AI computing capabilities. Its share of China's AI computing chip market was about 23% in 2024, second only to Nvidia's 66%, according to Bernstein Research. AMD held 5%, with Chinese AI chip developers, MetaX and Moore Threads each having around 1%."

"After many years of learning and improvement, China's domestic semiconductor equipment sector has made meaningful progress, except in lithography, particularly cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems. Overall, China's chip equipment industry and logic chip production do have some room to grow and have some upside," he (Mark Li, a veteran semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research) said.

"China's drive to build more chip capacity at home will not only benefit domestic players; the spillover effects are also likely to support foreign equipment vendors whose products comply with export control rules."