Koreans are really anxious this time. Since forming a quadrilateral alliance with the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands, their losses are increasing day by day. As a semiconductor powerhouse, Korea has never imagined that they would face such a dilemma. After all, they have always had various high-end chips and have never had trouble finding buyers. But now, they are facing the problem of inventory backlog and unsold products. It is said that following the United States can bring benefits, but this time Korea has been miserably tricked by the United States. It should be noted that the United States has issued export licenses to Qualcomm and Intel to enter the Chinese market, ensuring income for domestic semiconductor giants. But what about Korean giant Samsung? Since China stopped buying, Samsung and the entire Korean chip industry have suffered losses, and now they can only indirectly seek help from China.
As we all know, Korea's position in the semiconductor field is second to none, just like the Netherlands in the lithography field. As a semiconductor giant, Samsung holds a large number of chip design technologies, is not inferior to Qualcomm and Intel in any way, and even has chip manufacturing technology that is not inferior to TSMC. It is a world-renowned top semiconductor company. However, because of a ban by the United States, Samsung has fallen to the point where no one buys their chips. From the quadrilateral alliance to the tripartite agreement, from the US-Japan-Netherlands to the US-Japan, we can see that although Korea has not expressed dissatisfaction openly, they are still deeply resentful. Therefore, they did not participate in the tripartite agreement at all.
Data shows that since joining the US-led quadrilateral alliance, Korea's chip export value in February this year was only 5.96 billion US dollars, a decrease of 42.5% from the same period last year. Samsung's profit margin plummeted by 97%, with no profit in the first two months of this year and a loss of 3 trillion won. This data can be called a "avalanche". The reason why Korea's export value has plummeted is because they lost the Chinese market. The Chinese market has always been Korea's largest export market. Now that they have lost China, Korea's inventory rate reached 265.7% in January, nearly tripled, which proves that almost all the chips produced in Korea are sitting unsold. The most serious thing is that Korea's trade deficit with China has reached 47.5 billion US dollars after they were unable to export chips to China. It should be noted that Korea was officially recognized as a developed country by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2021. Now in 2023, their most valuable industry has fallen to the bottom, how can Korea accept this?
Now, the US ban has stimulated China's self-reliance in chip development. China has already made a determination to achieve a 70% self-sufficiency rate in chips by 2025. They have already achieved about 35%, greatly reducing their dependence on Korean and American chips. In addition, domestic lithography machines are gradually breaking through, and SMIC has been able to mass produce 14nm chips, which has taken a large share of the US chip market. Interestingly, although the US is aware of all this, they remain indifferent and even tighten the restrictions on Chinese chips. It shows how much the US fears China, and even if their own companies suffer, they will try to prevent the rise of Chinese chips.
As early as two years ago, Ren Zhengfei stated that when the global chip inventory is severely congested, someone will naturally come to China to buy chips. According to our understanding, Korean officials are already seeking contact with China, hoping to sell chips to China through any channel available. Obviously, Korea cannot sit still in the face of such serious losses. Of course, we cannot be moved by Korea's purchasing behavior. In the words of Ni Guangnan, an academician, we must master core technologies through independent research and development, only then can China truly be unafraid of being strangled.
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