NOVEMBER 2024
The True Impact of Allied
Export Controls on the U.S.
and Chinese Semiconductor
Manufacturing
Equipment Industries
By Gregory C. Allen
T
here is a erce debate in the United States and among its allies about the impacts of export
controls, and nowhere is that debate more heated than in the semiconductor equipment
manufacturing industry. Too often, however, this debate occurs without any grounding in
real-world data or relevant historical Chinese policy context. This paper seeks to provide some of that
grounding through a combination of Chinese policy document analysis and new nancial and market
share data for leading semiconductor equipment rms in China, the United States, Japan, and the
Netherlands. What follows are a set of 10 key judgments based on the author’s analysis.
1. China’s ambitions for eliminating dependence on foreign semiconductor manufacturing
equipment started long before America’s expanded usage of technoloy export controls.
The rst and most important argument among critics of U.S. export controls is that they weaken U.S.
technoloy leadership by incentivizing China to eliminate U.S. technoloy from its semiconductor
supply chain. However, reducing dependence on foreign semiconductor and semiconductor
manufacturing equipment suppliers was ocial Chinese policy before the Trump administration’s April
2018 export controls restricting sales of U.S.-designed chips to ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications
rm, launched the new era of semiconductor export controls. “The Roadmap of Major Technical
Domains for Made in China 2025,” which was published in September 2015 and covered
semiconductors and other sectors, included goals such as “replacement of imports with Chinese-made
