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When the epidemic becomes the focus of global debate, some news that should have sounded the alarm may be ignored.

Time back to one month ago, New Coronary Pneumonia has not spread to the whole world, we are still at the center of the storm. When “Mountains and Mountains Exotic, Wind and Moon in the Same Sky” carry the goodwill of the cherry blossom country Japan and touch people’s common emotions How many people haven’t noticed the disturbing meaning in a report by Kyodo News Agency.

It is reported that 42 members of the “Wassenaar Agreement” including the United States and Japan have decided to expand the scope of technology export control. New additions include military-grade semiconductor substrate manufacturing technology and network software.

Some people say that this is to prevent technology from flowing to China, North Korea and other countries.

In fact, In the fateful years of New China, technological blockades, like invisible cobwebs, have always entangled and hindered the development of China’s high-tech technology, and have repeatedly criticized mainland semiconductors. The nerves of the world .

However, the struggle against “blockade” has never stopped. A generation of semiconductor ancestors took knowledge and technology as their quests, and carried forward a heavy exploration of the heavy load, opening the great prelude to China’s semiconductor development.

Looking back at the “core” painstakingly brought to China by the Wassenaar Accords, it is to cope with tribulations more calmly and calmly, and to go more steadily and steadily to the distance.

01 Past and present of the Wassenaar Agreement

In November 1949, the new People’s Republic of China had just reached the full moon, and the smoke of the liberation war had not yet completely dissipated, and China’s history was abolished.

At this time, the Western camp, headed by the United States, was trying to erect a cold technical iron curtain in Paris, thousands of miles away from Beijing.

17 countries including the United States, Britain, Japan, France, and Australia have set up the Paris Coordinating Committee (“Baton”) to restrict the export of tens of thousands of products in three categories: military equipment, cutting-edge technology, and rare materials.

The target of the embargo is the US’s biggest rival, the Soviet Union, and China, which has frequent contacts with the Soviet Union, was also included in the control list in 1952.

“Cold War Strategy and Paris Coordinating Committee of the United States, China Committee” by Cui Wei

When the Iron Curtain fell, China was undergoing a vigorous socialist transformation and construction. It supported North Korea outwards, checked inward reactionary forces, and promoted land reform. The industrial and agricultural economy was in a recovery trend. Western forces, represented by the United States, attempted to use a paper agreement to trip over China, which had just started.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union came to an end. “Baton”, as a product of the Cold War, lost its foundation of existence and was officially declared disbanded on April 1, 1994.

But two years later, the embargo made by Batumi was inherited by a new agreement.

Wassenaar Agreement

The Wassenaar Agreement, which stands for “Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls of Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies,” was signed in July 1996 in Vienna, Austria.

At that time, all 17 member states of the “Batumi” organization joined the new organization. The initial number of members was 33, and it has since grown to 42.

42 member states of the Wassenaar Agreement

Like Batumi, the Wassenaar Agreement aims to control conventional arms and high-tech trade, and has two embargo lists:

A list of military and civilian goods and technologies covers advanced materials, material handling, electronics, computers, telecommunications and information security, sensing and lasers, navigation and avionics, Nine categories of ships and maritime equipment and propulsion systems;

Another is a list of military products , covering 22 types of weapons, ammunition, equipment, and combat platforms.

In December of last year, the Wassenaar Agreement was revised in a new round, adding three pages to the previous edition. In the “Electronics” category, new computational lithography software and large silicon wafers were polished. Regulation of technology.

This is not a compulsory agreement. Member states can decide for themselves whether to issue export licenses for sensitive products and technologies. However, many member states are actually the United States.

For example, in 2004, the Czech Republic planned to export radar equipment worth more than 50 million U.S. dollars to the United States.

The United States has repeatedly hindered the development of Chinese semiconductors.

In 2015, the United States banned companies such as Intel from exporting high-performance computing chips to four Chinese supercomputing centers on the grounds of “suspected use in nuclear explosion testing.”

In 2020, the US media said that the Trump administration is considering restricting the use of US chip manufacturing equipment and seeking to cut off China’s access to key semiconductor technologies.

On the road of New China’s concentration on construction, the “technical blockade” is like a haze enveloping China’s semiconductor industry, always brewing cold storms.

02 Injury to the “core” in the past: the difficult and difficult chip manufacturing

Looking back at global trade and technology competition, the chip, as a “jewel in the crown of high-tech”, was not only active in the legendary rise of Silicon Valley in the United States, but also played a crucial role in the post-war recovery of Japan and South Korea.

When China opened its doors and embraced cutting-edge chip technology, it ate “closed door”.

In the early 1980s, the country reduced its investment in the electronics industry, hoping that the majority of electronics factories would find their way to the market. In order to benefit in the short term, the idea of ​​”make better buy” has begun to take root in the domestic chip industry.

Under the technical constraints of “Batumi”, the Mainland can only introduce obsolete used equipment. From 1984 to 1990, local governments, state-owned enterprises, and universities introduced a total of 33 wafer production lines from abroad, most of which were 3-inch and 4-inch lines. In the same period, Japan has adopted 8-inch lines.

The subsequent appearance of the Wassenaar Agreement further deepened the gap between China and the world’s advanced chip technology.

According to its rules, member states ’approval of China ’s semiconductor technology is generally approved in accordance with the N-2 principle, that is, two generations later than the most advanced technology. Appropriate delays in the approval process will allow China to obtain technical equipment , Than the international advanced level