chip Photo:VCG

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a recent interview that the US government doesn't want Apple to buy memory chips from China, claiming that there have to be "other solutions to the memory issue, but it's not great American companies using Chinese memory," The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The warning came after recent media reports that Apple is lobbying the White House for clearance to buy memory chips from Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and that Apple has been testing memory chips from CXMT across Apple product lines including iPhones and MacBooks, aiming at easing the pressure of rising memory chip prices.

If anything, Apple's effort is itself an important market signal for memory chips. Demand from artificial intelligence data centers is creating a shortage in global memory capacity, with market prices for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) estimated to rise more than 400 percent from the start of 2024 to the end of 2026, according to JP Morgan Global Research. 

Even Apple is feeling the squeeze and turning to cost-effective memory chips from China. This alone demonstrates that China's semiconductor industry has sharpened its competitiveness that cannot be ignored, offering a compelling combination of quality, capacity, and pricing.

Yet, this is not what US politicians want to see. Before Lutnick's stark warning, a bipartisan group of US senators urged Apple to abandon any efforts to buy chips from "US-blacklisted" Chinese semiconductor suppliers CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies Co, warning that the iPhone maker risked becoming reliant on China for crucial components, Bloomberg reported.

But the fundamental question facing the politicians is: how long will their political pressure stand when global memory chips supply remains tight, the prices keep rising, and more international firms are forced to reconsider their supply chains? As memory chips cost climbs, the appeal of Chinese chips will only grow stronger.

History has, repeatedly, proven that external blockades and sanctions can never stifle the growth of China's semiconductor industry, and CXMT's case is for the whole world to see. Despite tough technological blockades, CXMT has achieved leapfrog development against all odds. 

After years of independent research and technological breakthroughs, the company has mastered core DRAM technologies, realizing independent research and development, proprietary design and large-scale commercial production, filling the long-standing void in the Chinese mainland's DRAM offerings on the global stage. Today, CXMT ranks the fourth worldwide in DRAM producing capacity. 

With the steady advancement of its technology, the company is set to upgrade its manufacturing process, reduce production cost, improve market competitiveness and increase profitability, in order to secure a stronger position in the global DRAM industry.

Beyond the memory chip segment, the broader industry data is equally impressive. 

In the first half of this year, China's semiconductor exports surged by nearly 90 percent year‑on‑year. Behind that growth is the underlining reality: more and more domestically produced chips are entering international markets. This expansion sits on a solid base of complete industrial chain support, sustained research and development and investment, and the foundation of a vast domestic market in the country.

From a global perspective, tight memory chips supply and surging prices have become a common problem for global electronics manufacturers, including Apple. For years, the chip market has been dominated by a handful of suppliers, making the entire chain vulnerable to price shocks. 

The rapid progress of China's chip industry brings new competitive vitality to the global market, giving more countries and companies access to semiconductor products at more reasonable costs. From this angle, the rising penetration of Chinese inexpensive chips benefits not only China's own industry, but also a broad spectrum of global market participants.

Naturally, China is an important and also indispensable player in semiconductors, and US government pressure can never change the evolution of the world's semiconductor sector development. US' political restrictions and sanctioning measures will prove to be very short-sighted.