We get it: all the stories about semiconductors can be confusing. The technology, the supply chains, the business interests, and the geopolitical jostling for supremacy are near constant news items these days in U.S.-China relations. Just this week, China’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, announced plans for a secondary listing in Shanghai that would raise up to $7.6 billion — the biggest fundraising in China in a decade, according to Caixin.
To help clarify what semiconductors are, who the leading businesses are, and why the industry has become such a flash point for U.S.-China tensions, we put together the below explainer. It’s a useful accompaniment to this week’s op-ed from Doug Fuller about Huawei, but we suspect it will be a handy reference for the foreseeable future.
What are semiconductors? And why have they become such a big deal to U.S.-China relations?
Scientists from SUNY Poly's Colleges of Na
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