China's racing to build its AI ecosystem as U.S. tech curbs bite. Here's how its supply chain stacks up

In this article

With the U.S. restricting China from buying advanced semiconductors used in artificial intelligence development, Beijing is placing hopes on domestic alternatives such as Huawei.

The task has been made more challenging by the fact that U.S. curbs not only inhibit China’s access to the world’s most advanced chips, but also restrict availing technology vital for creating an AI chip ecosystem.

Those constraints span the entire semiconductor value chain, ranging from design and manufacturing equipment used to produce AI chips to supporting elements such as memory chips.

Beijing has mobilized tens of billions of dollars to try to fill those gaps, but while it has been able to “brute force” its way into some breakthroughs, it still has a long way to go, according to experts.