China wants to allocate 38 billion euros to stimulate its own chip industry

China plans to set aside more than 38 billion euros to stimulate its own chip industry. The country mainly wants to focus on the technology to make its own chips now that it is being held back by the US and other countries.

Reuters writes that the country sets aside 300 billion yuan for such a fund. That fund will become part of the National Investment Fund for the IC industry, a national incentive fund that maintains the chip sector in the country.

According to Reuters sources, the fund will distribute money to various parts of the industry, but mainly to chip-making equipment. The fund is said to have been approved by Chinese authorities in recent months. The Ministry of Finance would contribute at least sixty billion yuan, but it is not yet clear where the rest of the money will come from. It will probably take several months before the money is received. It is therefore not known when the fund should start, Reuters writes.

China also set up similar funds years ago, but the amounts were not as high as this. In 2014, China invested 138 billion yuan and in 2019 200 billion. China wants to use the fund to make its chip industry more independent of other countries. The country is increasingly affected by the export sanctions imposed by countries such as the United States, but the export ban on ASML’s DuV and EUV machines is certainly hitting the Chinese chip industry hard.