China’s top semiconductor executives have called for a nationwide push to build a domestic alternative to Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML, urging the industry to “abandon illusions and prepare for struggle” amid US sanctions.

The current industry was too “small, fragmented and weak”, which was “dispersing numerous public resources”, according to an article co-authored by the co-founder of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) and leaders of Empyrean, Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), Naura Technology, and academics.

SMIC is the country’s top chip foundry, Empyrean is a leading integrated circuit design software developer, YMTC is a memory giant and Naura is China’s top semiconductor-equipment maker.

The article said that the US had contained China’s rise in three main areas: electronic design automation (EDA) used for chip design; silicon wafers, a key chip material; and manufacturing equipment, especially extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, which is dominated by ASML.

“An ASML EUV machine contains over 100,000 components sourced from 5,000 suppliers [while] ASML serves merely as the integrator,” according to the article by SMIC co-founder Wang Yangyuan, Empyrean chairman Liu Weiping, YMTC chairman Chen Nanxiang and Naura chairman Zhao Jinrong and professors from Tsinghua University and Peking University.

The article, “Building an independent and controllable integrated circuit industry system”, appeared in the February issue of the Chinese journal Science and Technology Review. The online version was published on Wednesday.