According to customs data, integrated circuit products have long been the single largest import commodity in China. In 2018, China's IC imports amounted to 2058.41 billion yuan (about 312.06 billion US dollars), an increase of 19.8% year-on-year, exceeding 300 billion US dollars for the first time; The export value of integrated circuits was only US $84.64 billion, a year-on-year increase of 26.6%. China's import and export deficit of integrated circuit products is still expanding, reaching US $227.42 billion, a year-on-year increase of 17.47%; The inverse difference of import and export volume of integrated circuit products reached 2004.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.20%.

Market research firm Gartner released data on the top 10 chip buyers in the world in 2018 in early 2019. China accounted for four seats, namely Huawei, Lenovo, Bubugao and Xiaomi. The four Chinese companies spent nearly $60 billion a year to purchase chips in 2018, of which Huawei spent the most, about $21.1 billion, an increase of 45% over 2017.

Every year, our manufacturers spend a lot of money to buy foreign chips, and both consumers and manufacturers have to bear high costs. Still, it may not be available. In the context of Sino US trade frictions, ZTE and Huawei, which have suffered sanctions, are a good example.

Therefore, although domestic IC substitution is an old topic, it has recently begun to be widely mentioned. The development of domestic chips has received great attention and support from the government, all sectors of society and domestic manufacturers. China also has excellent domestic chip manufacturers similar to Hisilicon, Ziguang zhanrui, Howell technology, ZTE microelectronics, huiding, Huada semiconductor and Shilan micro. However, it must be admitted that the gap between domestic chips and international semiconductor manufacturers is still very huge.

Professor Wei Shaojun of Tsinghua University, an authority in the research field of China's integrated circuit industry, once said that China still lacks competitive high-end chips. Despite the rapid rise of consumer electronic chips such as communication and multimedia, CPU, DSP, FPGA and memory with important strategic significance are still backward. Although chip design companies and capital are pursuing hot spots to make AI chips, there is an obvious gap between some basic passive components and analog chips. Moreover, local IC design companies always lack the ability to independently define the design process, and most of them need to rely on the design tools provided by EDA companies.

Among the more than 1400 IC design enterprises in China, more than 600 have an annual income of less than 10 million yuan, and can't even earn the cost of several films.

For a long time, foreign semiconductor manufacturers have built a business system of division of labor and cooperation in the world with leading products and technologies. In the whole semiconductor industry chain, the original chip manufacturer controls the pricing power and obtains the richest profits through controlling channels and production capacity. It can be said that the gap between foreign semiconductor giants and domestic chips is not only in products and technology, but also in marketing, brand promotion and the formulation and maintenance of business rules.