In a secure Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists built a prototype chip‑making machine Washington long sought to block. Finished in early 2025, the factory‑sized device—reverse‑engineered by ex‑ASML engineers—can produce advanced semiconductors for AI, smartphones, and weapons.
EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold War. They use beams of extreme ultraviolet light to etch circuits thousands of times thinner than a human hair onto silicon wafers, currently a capability monopolized by the West. The smaller the circuits, the more powerful the chips.
China’s machine is operational and successfully generating extreme ultraviolet light, but has not yet produced working chips, the people said.
The Challenges
In April, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said that China would need “many, many years” to develop such technology. But the existence of this prototype, reported by Reuters for the first time, suggests China may be years closer to achieving semiconductor independence than analysts anticipated.
Nevertheless, China still faces major technical challenges, particularly in replicating the precision optical systems that Western suppliers produce.
The availability of parts from older ASML machines on secondary markets has allowed China to build a domestic prototype, with the government setting a goal of producing working chips on the prototype by 2028, according to the two people.
China’s Manhattan Project
The breakthrough marks the culmination of a six-year government initiative to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency, one of President Xi Jinping’s highest priorities. While China’s semiconductor goals have been public, the Shenzhen EUV project has been conducted in secret, according to the people.
The project falls under the country’s semiconductor strategy, which state media has identified as being run by Xi Jinping confidant Ding Xuexiang, who heads the Communist Party’s Central Science and Technology Commission.
Huawei plays a key role coordinating a web of companies and state research institutes across the country involving thousands of engineers, according to the two people and a third source.
The people described it as China’s version of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. wartime effort to develop the atomic bomb.
(With inputs from Reuters)
