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Chip cities芯片之城 · China's chip map

A chip is not made in one town. It is made in a relay of cities, each owning a single layer of the industry: the foundry that prints the wafer, the fabs that make the memory, the plant that packages and tests the die, the makers of next-generation power devices, and the toolmakers behind them all. Here are six — what each one makes, why it is there, and why this particular map has become the most fought-over in global technology.

The map · six layers, six citiesdrag to pan
Chip cityReference city
Shanghai上海
Foundry & design
China's foundry core. SMIC, the country's biggest chipmaker and the world's third-largest foundry, reached “7nm” here without the EUV machines it is banned from buying — and built the processor behind Huawei's comeback phone. Hua Hong, the number-two foundry, is now reaching 7nm too. Why here: China's oldest chip base, the deepest pool of designers, and Shanghai plus state capital — though the one tool the city still cannot make, an advanced lithography machine, is the gap the whole industry turns on.
Wuhan武汉
NAND memory
The flash-memory champion. YMTC is the only Chinese maker of 3D NAND at scale, using a home-grown “Xtacking” design to reach densities close to the global leaders, and now pushing toward DRAM as well. Blacklisted by the US in 2022, it kept going. Why here: Wuhan's “Optics Valley” photonics base and heavy Tsinghua and state backing made it the natural home for China's memory bet.
Hefei合肥
DRAM memory
The DRAM champion. CXMT went from nothing to making the working memory inside phones and PCs in a few years, reaching DDR5-class parts and scaling output at a speed that rattled the global memory giants. Why here: the famous “Hefei model” — a city government that bets its own balance sheet on chip and display makers, the same playbook that brought BOE and a wall of fabs to town.
Wuxi无锡
Packaging & test
Where wafers become chips. JCET, based in Jiangyin, is China's largest packaging-and-test firm and the world's third, behind only Taiwan's ASE and America's Amkor; nearby sits one of the world's big SK Hynix memory fabs. Why here: Jiangsu's deep electronics base and a multi-billion-yuan advanced-packaging campus — the back end of the industry, where the finished die is wrapped, wired and tested.
Xiamen厦门
Compound & power
The next-generation frontier. Around San'an, China's biggest compound-semiconductor maker, Xiamen builds the silicon-carbide and gallium-nitride devices that run electric cars and fast chargers — a tier that leans far less on the EUV machines China cannot buy, so it is where the country can most realistically leapfrog. China is on course to consume around 40% of the world's silicon carbide by 2030. Why here: decades of LED and optoelectronics know-how, and cross-strait industrial links.
Beijing北京
Equipment & design
The toolmakers and the planners. NAURA, headquartered here, is China's largest maker of chip-production equipment — the etchers and deposition tools a fab cannot run without — and has climbed into the global top tier. Around it sit the universities, design houses and the ministries that steer the national chip fund. Why here: talent and the state — Beijing is racing to build domestic substitutes for the very tools the export controls cut off.

Why chips cluster where they do

Unlike almost everything else in this atlas, a chip is not made in one place. It is made in layers, and each layer has its own city. A design becomes a wafer in a foundry; that wafer becomes memory in a different kind of fab; the finished die is packaged and tested somewhere else again, on tools built somewhere else still. So China’s chip map is not a single cluster but a relay: foundry and design in Shanghai, NAND in Wuhan, DRAM in Hefei, packaging in Wuxi, compound power devices in Xiamen, and the equipment in Beijing.

What concentrates them is not terroir, or even the supplier-next-door density that builds an appliance town. It is state capital and talent. Since 2014 the national “Big Fund” has poured well over a hundred billion dollars into the industry across three rounds, and cities like Hefei built their fortunes on aggressive local-government chip bets. China is the world’s largest chip market — more than half of global consumption — yet has long had to import most of its advanced silicon, for years spending more on imported chips than on oil.

A chip is not made in a town. It is made in a relay of cities, each owning one layer.

That gap is now the most contested line in world technology. From 2022 the United States and its allies cut China off from the most advanced tools — above all the EUV lithography machines that only the Dutch firm ASML makes, the single chokepoint of the entire industry. China’s answer has been to build a domestic full stack at speed: SMIC reached “7nm” without EUV and made Huawei’s comeback chip, Hua Hong became a second advanced foundry, YMTC and CXMT pushed into memory, and NAURA and its peers raced to replace the banned machines. The controls were meant to slow China down; by many accounts they instead triggered an investment surge that would not otherwise have happened. The old self-sufficiency target of 70% was missed — the real figure is nearer 30% — but the map keeps filling in.