China needs to strengthen self innovation and research on integrated circuit to reduce reliance on imports and also because overseas regulators have tightened and blocked several Chinese mergers and acquisitions, industry officials told an industry forum yesterday in Shanghai.
In 2015, China imported integrated circuits worth $229 billion, surpassing imports of oil at $134 billion and agriculture at $116 billion. The revenue of the Chinese IC market was $59.3 billion last year, industry officials told the IC China 2016 summit.
China has in recent years managed to narrow the technological gap of the homegrown IC industry and their global counterparts by investing heavily in chip design and wafer plants. But the country still lacks core technologies in the integrated circuit industry, said Diao Shijing, a senior executive of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Regulators in Germany withdrew approval for a Chinese takeover of chip equipment maker Aixtron.
