It took only four years after Donald Trump imposed IT sanctions on China for Huawei to announce the launch of its top-of-the-range 5G mobile phone using 7nm (nanometre) technology, and for Apple and its flagship iPhone 15 to be shut out of the Chinese market. Four years for the US administration to capitulate and leave the field open to a booming Chinese IT industry that could catch up with the US industry as early as 2025.
Facts and issues
On September 8, 2023, Huawei took the US by surprise by announcing the launch of the Mate 60 Pro mobile phone with 7nm chips supporting 5G. Manufactured by a Chinese company, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), the chips that equip these phones are little more than five years behind the most advanced on the market.[1]
This calls into question the credibility of US sanctions against China and indicates the price to be paid for the failure of sanctions on semi-conductors: an irresistible breakthrough in supply from China’s computing power.
Without getting too technical, it is worth recalling China’s strategy. The line is taken by Huawei Chairman Xu Zhijun,[2] who believes that in order to stimulate industrial development and close the gap with foreign competitors, China must relentlessly build a sustainable industrial ecosystem, based on the large-scale use of domestic products and technologies, which applies to both chip design and IT architecture — to be developed at arm’s length from US legislation.
And the results are already being seen: the Kirin 9000s processor, designed by HiSilicon, features an advanced 12-core architecture (compared with 8 in current architectures) that delivers a substantial increase in processing power. The distant origins of its operating system, HarmonyOS 4.0, lie in a modified open source version of Android. The new smartphone will be the first phone in the world to feature direct dialling from the state-of-the-art Tiantong-1 satellite system — essential for communicating in remote or semi-desert areas of the country.
American disappointments
This performance effectively negates the raison d’être of the sanctions enacted in 2019 by the US government under President Donald...
