China to support 'strategic' IC sector

LONDON – China will provide additional support to the IC industry over the next five years, citing the industry's strategic importance to the state, according to a Xinhua report quoting Yang Xueshan, vice minister of industry and information technology.

The goal is that China-made IC sales will exceed 330 billion yuan (about $50 billion) and will be able to meet 27.5 percent of domestic demand in 2015, Xinhua quoted Yang as saying Friday (April 15).

Xinhua is the official press agency of the government of the People's Republic of China.

According to the report Yang said that China must support the development of the IC sector because it lags behind the U.S., Japan and South Korea and other countries in terms of providing state support. It adds that Yang said that relevant government departments would support and coordinate IC production along with links to research, manufacturing and marketing during the country's 12th Five-Year Program to cover the 2011 to 2015 period.

Over that period the Chinese chip industry is charged with producing a series of ICs based on Chinese intellectual property rights, the report quoted Yang as saying. This is because it is important that equipment companies serving the Chinese market should use Chinese chips. The report said the goal is that about 30 percent of the manufacture of ICs for China's major enterprises should be done domestically.

China's IC sales were 144 billion yuan (about $22 billion) in 2010, about 8.6 percent of the global market, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The MIIT expects China's IC market to top 1.2 trillion yuan (about $180 billion) in 2015.


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