Although the Japan government's export restrictions on 23 items of semiconductor manufacturing equipment include equipment for photolithography, etching, thin film deposition, thermal processing, cleaning, inspection and other key semiconductor manufacturing processes, the country is more likely to control the export of photolithography or thin film deposition equipment for advanced processes, which will hinder China's progress in advanced semiconductor manufacturing technologies.
As China, in the past several years, stably imported over 60% of its semiconductor manufacturing equipment from the US, Japan and the Netherlands, these countries agreeing to impose export controls together will effectively set back China's semiconductor industry development.
As such, the US, Japan and the Netherlands came to a deal to curb semiconductor manufacturing equipment exports to China in late January 2023, leading to Japan's recent announcement of its semiconductor equipment export control policies.
Table 1: Key events of US and allies pushing to constrain China in tech development
Chart 1: China semiconductor equipment import share by country, 2018-2022
Table 2: Japan photolithography equipment export control detail
Table 4: Japan metallic interconnect deposition equipment export control detail
Table 5: Japan contact layer/barrier layer deposition equipment export control detail
Table 6: Japan epitaxy deposition and ALD equipment export control detail
Table 7: Japan mask deposition equipment export control detail
Table 8: Japan annealing, cleaning, and inspection equipment export control detail
