U.S. Isolates China With Its Chip 4 Alliance

Washington has apparently succeeded in enlisting Seoul in its Chip 4 Alliance, which limits China's role in the chip supply chain, and Beijing is now desperately wooing South Korea not to side with the US, the South China Morning Post reported.

Photo Insert: In November, ASML started building new facilities in the Seoul suburb of Hwaseong, a sign that chip companies are looking to form closer business ties with South Korea.

On Thursday, an article in the People's Daily-affiliated tabloid Global Times quoted Lu Chao, a professor with Liaoning University in northern China, as saying that Korea's semiconductor industry should not decouple from China.

There are already signs that chip companies are looking to form closer business ties with South Korea.

Peter Wennink, CEO of Dutch semiconductor equipment giant ASML, met South Korean foreign minister Park Jin on February 17 during his visit to the Netherlands to discuss potential collaborations.

In November, ASML, which holds a monopoly on the high-end extreme ultraviolet lithography machines required to make chips at the 5-nanometer node, started building new facilities in the Seoul suburb of Hwaseong, a 240 billion won ($180 million) project that is expected to be completed by 2024.

Japan's Tokyo Electron has said it will spend 110 billion won this year to expand its research and development center and clean room facilities in Hwaseong.

California-based Applied Materials recently announced plans to build a memory chip equipment research center in South Korea to better serve Samsung and SK Hynix, the country's two leading chip makers.

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