By CIO Insider Team
 

Senior Chinese semiconductor leaders have urged a unified national initiative to build functional lithography systems between 2026 and 2030, highlighting Beijing’s drive for stronger technological self-sufficiency.

Zhao Jinrong, chairman of Naura Technology Group, Chen Nanxiang, chairman and president of Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp, and Liu Weiping, chairman of Empyrean Technology, co-authored an article alongside leading semiconductor institutes that was published online late on Wednesday.

They urged the government to pool ‌national resources ⁠to integrate ⁠technological breakthroughs across institutions.

Semiconductor manufacturing has emerged as a critical battleground in the China-U.S. technology rivalry since 2020, with Washington actively imposing restrictions to stop China from expanding advanced production capacity below 7-nanometer.

"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," the executives wrote in Science and Technology Review, a journal affiliated with China's science and technology professionals' association.

Dutch firm ASML Holding has become the world's sole supplier of ⁠EUV lithography ‌machines, essential for producing the most advanced semiconductor chips used to power smartphones, AI and advanced computing.

"How to establish China's ASML, so that the 'integrated' can jump out of the ⁠barrier of 'fame and fortune' and uniformly allocate funds and human resources is an urgent issue that relevant departments should immediately formulate implementation plans," they wrote.

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China has made breakthrough progress at different institutions in EUV laser light sources, wafer stage, and optical systems, but integrating these components into a complete system remains a challenge that must be solved during the 15th five-year plan period, they said.

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The article also identified bottlenecks in electronic design automation (EDA) software, materials such as silicon wafers and electronic gases as key areas requiring ‌national-level coordination.

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China designated semiconductors as a core pillar of its nascent industry alongside aviation, biotechnology and the low-altitude economy in its latest government work report released on Thursday.