US-China tech war: mainland universities rush to expand semiconductor programmes in drive for self-sufficiency

China’s Ministry of Education has made semiconductor science and engineering a priority academic programme

That has encouraged more universities across the country to establish new schools dedicated to the field related to integrated circuits

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A worker holds a rack of silicon wafers at a semiconductor plant. There were nearly 512,000 people working in China’s chip industry at the end of 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 7:00pm, 28 Jun 2021Updated: 7:00pm, 28 Jun 2021

Universities across mainland China are rushing to set up new schools and departments focused on semiconductors, in a push to develop more skilled talent to support Beijing’s strategic goal of chips self-sufficiency amid the country’s intense hi-tech rivalry with the United States.

Shenzhen Technology University, an institution of higher education established in 2018 by southern Guangdong province and the coastal city known as China’s Silicon Valley, announced last week that it has set up a school focused on integrated circuits (ICs) in cooperation with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, the mainland’s largest and most advanced chip foundry.

The new school will enrol 60 students this fall, training them to become highly skilled talent for IC design and manufacturing, according to the university.

That followed the announcement in April by Tsinghua University to open a specialised IC college at its Beijing campus “amid the country’s significant strategic needs”. This new school was based on the university’s original department of microelectronics and nanoelectronics as well as its department of electrical engineering.

Universities in the eastern cities of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and Nanjing in Jiangsu province as well as in landlocked Anhui province in eastern China have also announced new colleges focused on semiconductor education to train a skilled workforce for the industry.

Shenzhen Technology University, located in the southern coastal city’s Pingshan District, has set up its own school focused on the field of integrated circuits. Photo: Handout.

Those initiatives have come amid the Ministry of Education’s move upgrading IC science and engineering as a priority academic programme, which has encouraged the country’s universities to establish new schools dedicated to that field.

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