Can China’s Chip Ambitions Reshape the Global Tech Landscape?

China’s most advanced domestically made processor still trails the world’s leading chips, but a new push into lithography could change the terms of the race. The Kirin 9030 Pro, designed by Huawei and manufactured by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, powered Huawei’s flagship Mate 80 Pro smartphones after its launch in late 2025.

SemiAnalysis said the processor performed roughly like a flagship Android phone from three years earlier. Its architecture also remained “several generations” behind chips from Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm. China is still catching up, but immersion deep-ultraviolet, or DUV, technology could help narrow that gap.

The contest intensified after China unveiled its Made in China 2025 plan in 2015. The programme aimed to move the country beyond low-end manufacturing and establish it as a major force in high-tech industries, including semiconductors and electric vehicles. The United States responded with trade policies and export restrictions, first placing Huawei and its affiliates on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2019, then expanding controls across the semiconductor industry three years later.

China has responded by building a more self-reliant supply chain. Huawei concentrates on chip design, SMIC on foundry manufacturing, Yangtze Memory Technologies on NAND flash memory and ChangXin Memory Technologies on DRAM. Chinese companies are also investing in packaging and chipmaking equipment.

That is why immersion DUV machines have attracted attention. China is reportedly beginning mass production of domestically developed systems that could eventually allow its chipmakers to produce processors more advanced than the Kirin 9030 Pro. Lithography prints the patterns that create the tiny transistor networks on silicon wafers, with each chip built from many layers of these microscopic pathways.

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several generations