It was a well-rehearsed scene as yet another company made its debut on Shanghai’s STAR market, China’s answer to the tech-heavy Nasdaq. The executives huddled together to strike the gong, confetti erupted over the red carpet and strobe lights danced around the hall.
But this celebration — for SMIC, China’s biggest manufacturer of semiconductors — was different. Semiconductors have emerged as a flashpoint in the increasingly tense U.S.-China relationship, and SMIC’s initial public offering (IPO) was as much an assertion of China’s techno-nationalism as it was a stock offering.
Just one month before, Huawei was sanctioned by the U.S. and cut off from its supply of semiconductor chips.Huawei was SMIC’s biggest customer SMIC’s July IPO provided an unexpected lift. It was China’s biggest listing in a decade, raising $7.6 billion. And many of its shares were sold to state firms and patriotic retail investors, determined to support China’s homegrown chip efforts.
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
Increasingly, Democrats and Republicans believe that climate change and China pose a single interconnected challenge. As a result — and for the first time ever — a window is opening for bipartisan cooperation on climate policy. Historically progressive ideas like a 'carbon border adjustment mechanism' now have conservative champions, for instance. But with Washington's main focus on the Warming War with China, can it still save the planet?
A look at China’s electricity grid: how it works, who foots the bill, and how its structure leads to power crunches and expensive prices despite the relative abundance of energy in China.
The academic talks about the changing understanding of Leninist regimes; common misperceptions of the post-Mao era; and what the collapse of the Soviet Union means for China today.
