The International Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI) recently said that in the first half of this year, Chinese Mainland spent 25 billion US dollars (currently about 177.94 billion yuan) on chip manufacturing equipment, which is more than South Korea, Taiwan, China and the United States combined.

SEMI data shows that Chinese Mainland maintained strong expenditure in July and is expected to set a new record for the whole year. It is expected that Chinese Mainland will also become the largest investor in the construction of new chip factories, including the purchase of equipment. It is expected that the total annual expenditure on chip equipment will reach 50 billion dollars.

Due to the localization trend in semiconductor production, SEMI expects significant annual spending growth in Southeast Asia, the United States, Europe, and Japan by 2027.

Clark Tseng, senior director of market intelligence of SEMI, said, "At least 10 second tier chip manufacturers are also actively purchasing new tools, which together promote the overall expenditure of Chinese Mainland."

Chinese Mainland is the largest source of revenue for the world's top chip equipment suppliers. The latest quarterly financial reports of American Applied Materials, Fanlin Group and Kelei show that the Chinese Mainland market contributes 44% of the revenue of each company. According to the information disclosed by the company, TEL (Tokyo Electron) in Japan and ASML in the Netherlands have a larger market in Chinese Mainland. In June, 49.9% of TEL's revenue in the quarter came from Chinese Mainland, while 49% of ASML's revenue in the Netherlands came from China.

Against the background of global economic slowdown, Chinese Mainland is the only region where the expenditure on chip manufacturing equipment continued to increase year on year in the first half of this year.

However, Clark Tseng stated that SEMI expects the total expenditure on building new factories in China to "normalize" in the next two years.

Previously, some institutions stated that according to the latest trade data released by the General Administration of Customs of China this week, Chinese companies imported chip manufacturing equipment worth nearly 26 billion US dollars (about 185.5 billion yuan) from January to July this year, surpassing the highest record set in the same period of 2021