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About

A public map of China's semiconductor stack, built for comparison.

China Chip Stack is a source-linked research map of China's chip industry, organized by where each layer of the stack sits versus the global frontier. It exists to answer one question: where is China strong, where is domestic substitution plausible, and where does the frontier still run through foreign chokepoints?

What this is

A research map, not an encyclopedia

The tracker is organized by stack segment first, then by company — so the focus stays on capability and bottlenecks, not on cataloguing every firm. It is not investment advice.

Where a strategically important business is a subsidiary, it still gets its own profile, even when the public-company economics roll up to a parent. The point is comparison: China's position against the global frontier, segment by segment.

What it covers

Segments, companies, and source-backed signals

  • 17 stack segments — from compute and memory to equipment, materials, and sensing, each rated against the global frontier.
  • 106 company profiles — Chinese anchors and strategically important subsidiaries, with global reference companies for comparison.
  • Six capability ratings— from “leading” to “bottleneck,” applied per segment rather than per company.
  • Live signals — revenue, market cap, capacity, customers, competitors, export-control exposure, and product qualification, with the source trail kept for audit.

How to read it

Alpha research on uneven evidence

This is early-stage research built on public sources of uneven quality. Listed companies disclose more than private subsidiaries; filings are more conservative than media reports; customer relationships are often indirect. A few things worth keeping in mind:

  • Ratings are directional. They are segment-level judgments, not company rankings, and they should move when credible evidence changes the picture.
  • Numbers need periods. A revenue, share, or capacity figure is only useful with its year, basis, currency, and source. Where those are missing, treat it as a signal, not a fact.
  • Follow the source. The public page may compress caveats the backend keeps. When in doubt, open the source link on the profile.

Methodology

How the ratings work

A rating summarizes China's position in one segment against the global frontier. A stronger rating means credible domestic capability close to the frontier; a weaker one usually means the bottleneck sits in tools, materials, software ecosystem, qualification, yield, or export-controlled inputs. The same segment can rate differently by use case — good enough for EV or industrial substitution while still behind for frontier AI.

See the sector-by-sector ratings in Reports →

Who maintains it

A Tech Buzz China research product

China Chip Stack is a Tech Buzz China research product, produced by Rui Ma with our research partners. It is part of a family of TBC trackers that map China's technology landscape with source-linked, comparison-first research:

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Corrections

Found something wrong?

A stale number, a missing source, a miscategorized company — corrections make this better. Email [email protected] and point to the page.

Project status: Alpha — useful, source-linked, and still improving. Last updated October 4, 2026.