The Chinese government is dramatically pumping up its investment in the development of semiconductors. The state-run Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund has expanded one of its three funds more than 11-fold to RMB 6 billion in a move aimed at injecting more capital into more than 20 semiconductor firms.
Semiconductors are clearly the link to the future and both China and US are racing for the lead. There is a sense of confusion in the market over the Trumpist position regarding semiconductors and China: if semiconductors are so crucial to staying ahead in the tech war, then why was Nvidia was given the go ahead to sell the H200 chips (Nvidia’s second-most powerful) to Chinese companies, including—according to Reuters—DeepSeek, ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba.
Meanwhile, on this side of the Pacific, there is a clear sense of mission. Shanghai and the surrounds appear to be where much of the work on semiconductors is taking place, and this injection of capital from the state looks to accelerate that. But Private enterprise is playing its part too. Alibaba has developed a new “brain” for robots and also new a AI image-creation tool, while ByeDance revealed its own tool in competition to Google’s Nano Banana on the same day.