Europe’s dependence on Chinese semiconductor manufacturing - Digital Power China Report

 Jan-Peter Kleinhans and John Lee (Director East West Futures) contributed a chapter to the Digital Power China Report, edited by Tim Rühlig, Research Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations:

Europe’s Dependence on Chinese Semiconductor Manufacturing

In their chapter, Jan-Peter Kleinhans and John Lee argue that Europe is increasingly dependent on Chinese semiconductor manufacturing capacity. This is especially true for the final production steps in semiconductor manufacturing: assembly, testing, and packaging. While Europe has tried to incentivize the construction of new wafer fabrication capacity in Europe, this final production step has so far received very little attention from policy-makers. This paper argues that an overreliance on Chinese packaging capacity is detrimental to member states’ security and Europe’s long-term technological competitiveness. The authors suggest several concrete policy actions to strengthen Europe’s advanced packaging ecosystem and close collaboration with allies to ensure long-term technological competitiveness vis-à-vis China.