China’s Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) announced three days ago that a joint work group will be established with the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), with the plan of meeting twice a year to discuss issues such as intellectual property, trade policy and encryption. Ten companies from each association would participate but the date of the first meeting and the companies involved were not specified, according to Reuters’ report of the announcement. The SIA has not commented on the report yet.
“The work group will help both parties strengthen dialogue, express their wishes and reduce friction,” Wang Xiaolong, director of research at ICWise, a research provider focusing on China’s semiconductor industry, told CGTN on the matter. In Wang’s view, the work group will not fundamentally change the situation facing China’s semiconductor industry, “because China’s national strength is gradually approaching the U.S. and the U.S. will not allow China to surpass it, so it will restrict China’s high-tech industries. But the U.S. still needs to cooperate with China.”
CGTN noted that the chip industry is one of the few U.S. industries that still maintains a trade surplus with China, with China accounting for 36% of its nearly $200 billion in sales in 2019. He pointed also to China’s problem, that it produces domestically only around 16% of the chips it uses. Wang noted that if chip sales are politicized, Beijing will find itself in an even tougher situation.
