State Council: National Outline of Integrated Circuit Industry issued

Gross sales revenue of integrated circuit industry in China is expected to exceed 350 billion yuan in 2015, nearly an increase of 100 billion yuan from 250.8 billion yuan in 2013, according to the National Outline of Promoting the Development of Integrated Circuit Industry recently issued by the State Council. It also reads that the gap with international level will be gradually narrowed down and the average growth rate of the sales revenue of this industry will reach 20% in 2020, and the leading technologies of the industry will stand at the world with a batch of enterprises joining the big league in 2030.

The integrated circuit, also known as chips, is considered as the heart of the industrial manufacturing process. Its technical level and development scale have become one of the most important indicators used to evaluate a nation's industrial competitive capability and comprehensive strength. Due to a late start, China lacks leading-edge technologies in this regard, which makes the industry not be able to meet the need of the market. Last year, the integrated circuits imported from abroad were valued at 231.3 billion US dollars, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Those problematic issues are attributed to technical gaps and weak policies.

The Outline also points out that a series of measures ensuring the sound development of the industry will be introduced, for instance, a leading group dedicated to guiding the development of this industry will be formed to improve policies and an investment fund will be created to help out those enterprises facing financing difficulties. The main contributors to the fund should be large-scale enterprises, financial agencies and private sectors instead of the government. [Chinese version is available on sipo.gov.cn]