A Chinese flag is displayed next to a “Made in China” sign seen on a printed circuit board with semiconductor chips, in this illustration picture taken February 17, 2023
SINGAPORE Dec 17 – In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence, smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned.
Completed in early 2025 and now undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML (ASML.AS), opens new tab who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines or EUVs, according to two people with knowledge of the project.
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.
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.
But those close to the project say a more realistic target is 2030, which is still years earlier than the decade that analysts believed it would take China to match the West on chips.
Chinese authorities did not respond to requests for comment.
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.
Chinese electronics giant 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.
“The aim is for China to eventually be able to make advanced chips on machines that are entirely China-made,” one of the people said. ” China wants the United States 100% kicked out of its supply chains.”
Huawei, the State Council of China, the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to requests for comment.