Why have chips become a "pain for the Chinese people"? Experts explain the reasons behind it

From the ZTE incident to Huawei and Sugon being blacklisted by the United States, chips have become a pain for the Chinese people. At the "High-quality Development Strategy Seminar" held by the China Development Strategy Research Association on June 30, two experts mentioned this pain point at the same time.

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"The chip industry is a highly integrated, highly precise, highly internationalized, and highly R&D-oriented industry. The raw materials and components of its core equipment come from dozens of countries and hundreds of suppliers around the world, forming a rapidly changing and complex innovation system. Any shortcoming in the chip industry system may become a constraint, which requires efforts to strengthen the system's innovation capabilities." At the seminar, Pan Jiaofeng, chairman of the China Development Strategy Research Association and director of the Institute of Science and Technology Strategy Consulting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said.

Coincidentally, Li Zhengfeng, vice dean of the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, also talked about the chip issue at the seminar. He said that chips involve a series of technologies in many fields such as electronics, chemical engineering, optics, and mechanics, and such "bottleneck" technologies are often complex technical systems.

Taking this as an example, Li Zhengfeng believes that the lack of proper interaction and connection between the various elements in the innovation system, as well as the various mismatches between the elements, is actually a kind of system failure. "my country's innovation system has 'system failure' problems in top-level design, major scientific and technological plans and major project organization and management models, industry-university-research cooperation mechanisms, basic research to support technological innovation, intellectual property protection policies to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, talent training and reserve, and the use of global talents, which seriously restricts the overall efficiency of the innovation system. We must make up our minds to carry out systematic reforms of the innovation system for the future, solve the problem of 'system failure', and comprehensively improve the overall efficiency of the innovation system."

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In the competition among countries around the world, the United States has a leading advantage. So what are the advantages of the United States? Li Zhengfeng believes that it is the comprehensive advantages of the innovation system. This advantage includes: entrepreneurial spirit and social soil that encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, a relatively mature market economic system and a good business environment, a strong scientific foundation and a mechanism that closely integrates industry, academia and research, a multicultural immigration environment and a global talent siphoning effect, a competitive environment that fully respects intellectual property rights and highly protects the innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises, a military-civilian integration system that continuously promotes the development of cutting-edge technologies, and extensive international cooperation and global influence.

At the seminar, Pan Jiaofeng focused on introducing some changing characteristics of scientific and technological innovation models. He summarized the changing trends of innovation organization models in the industrial economy era and the knowledge economy era through a specific analysis of innovation elements.

First, the participation of innovation subjects has become more popular. In the industrial economy era, innovation was the patent of a few "elites", mainly "single-handed" by some well-trained scientists and engineers; in the knowledge economy era, innovation has broken the identity restrictions, and non-enterprise subjects such as makers and users have joined in, and can quickly gather through the Internet to form group collaborative innovation.

Secondly, the openness of innovation organizations. In the industrial economy era, the organizational structure is vertical, and the innovation cost, efficiency and benefit are mainly integrated through integration, which is "looking inward". In the knowledge economy era, innovation is a horizontal aggregation organizational structure, which can connect with all knowledge, technology and human resources outside the organization, which is "looking outward".

The second is the cross-border innovation of the industry. In the industrial economy era, innovation was basically a "non-interference" activity between the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and between science, engineering, agriculture, medicine and other disciplines. In the knowledge economy era, the organizational, regional, technological and industrial boundaries of innovation are becoming increasingly blurred, and cross-border integration releases a multiplier effect, unexpectedly subverting incumbent companies, showing the characteristics of "you have me, I have you".

Fourth, the platformization of the innovation linkage mechanism. In the industrial economy era, innovation is a linear process of basic research-applied research-industrial development. The chains are disconnected from each other, and innovation is like an island, which belongs to the "pipeline" thinking; while in the knowledge economy era, the platform has become an element linking innovation resources and a key hub for connecting producers and consumers. It reorganizes the connection between people, machines and things, stimulates network effects, and belongs to the "platform" thinking.

*** is the diversification of sources of innovation funds. In the industrial economy era, the government funded the establishment of national laboratories and large enterprises funded the establishment of corporate laboratories, which had a very high entry threshold; in the knowledge economy era, the development of "private science" supported by private foundations can be done through Internet scientific research crowdfunding, which does not require a high entry threshold.

In short, innovation in the industrial economy era showed centralized and organized characteristics, while in the knowledge economy era, innovation showed semi-centralized and self-organized characteristics.

As Li Zhengfeng said, the great achievements of modern economies are not because they have genius, but because "their institutional structures are well able to promote and realize mass-participatory innovation. Mass-participatory innovation permeates the entire country from the bottom up."