Foreign media: Japan's restrictions on exports will help China's chip industry

As the conflict between Japan and South Korea intensifies, Korean companies are looking for alternative raw materials in other regions. Chinese chip makers may become profit-makers. However, foreign media “Financial Times” believes that China still has some problems that must be solve.

Due to the lack of consensus on labor issues during World War II, Japan imposed export restrictions on South Korea, including raw materials such as fluorinated polyimide, semiconductor raw material photoresist, and high-purity hydrogen fluoride, which are OLED display materials. Very big. In addition to the inability to meet production standards, it will also hurt its high-value export industry, making Korean manufacturers have to turn to doing business with China to obtain alternative resources.

This is also a good time to transform the new weather for China, which has always wanted to develop the chip industry and improve its autonomy. According to Sanjeev Rana, an analyst at CLSA, in order to manage risk, large Korean companies need to find other regions to supply raw materials, which gives Chinese suppliers a good opportunity.

According to people familiar with the matter, Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip maker, has also begun testing Chinese alternative materials.

In the long run, this may make South Korea and China closer, and China will be the only beneficiary.

However, China's chip manufacturing also has many problems to face. Although the speed of technology or scale is very fast, the technology of Chinese chip manufacturers still has a gap of several years compared with the United States, South Korea and Taiwan.

Louis, director of the Science and Technology Policy Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies at the US Think Tank, said that despite 40 years of investment, China is still unable to manufacture advanced semiconductors. Only 16% of the semiconductors used in China are produced in the country, and only half of them are Chinese companies. Manufacturing.

Seoul chip experts also mentioned that Chinese companies are still unable to provide the same quality of etching gas as Japan.

Australia's Macquarie Bank analyst Daniel Kim said that for semiconductor companies, yield is the most important, so they will not easily replace the suppliers of chemical raw materials, as long as the raw materials change slightly, it may affect the output.

According to the CLSA survey, in addition to semiconductors, Japanese suppliers have a high market share in components and materials such as mobile phone components, displays, and other consumer electronics.

"Financial Times" pointed out that limiting the export of chip raw materials may be just the beginning. If Japan removes South Korea from the white list, Korean suppliers will face more disasters. The Japanese Ministry of Economic Affairs is collecting public opinions, and people familiar with the matter said that the country may announce its final decision on August 2.

If it is really removed from the white list, Korean companies must apply for the approval of 857 materials. Although Japan does not intend to completely cut off its supply at present, it is very worried that it may take several months for South Korea to import materials, which will affect production and supply.

The Goldman Sachs Group estimates that South Korea may have to temporarily stop importing up to 97% of its raw materials from Japan, with a total value of about $52.2 billion.