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China’s imports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment from the Netherlands and Japan continued to grow steadily over the past year, while Malaysia and Singapore have emerged as two Southeast Asian markets drawing increased attention, according to Nikkei Asia.
Direct imports of semiconductor equipment from the United States to China fell by more than 34% to about $2 billion, the lowest level since 2017. Even so, American suppliers remain deeply embedded in the Chinese market.
Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA together posted total revenue of nearly $19 billion from the Chinese market in fiscal year 2025. For each company, the share of revenue from China was above 30%.
Charles Shi, a semiconductor analyst at Needham & Co., said the rise in equipment imports into China via Malaysia and Singapore largely reflects US manufacturers expanding capacity in these countries.
Shi noted that Lam Research is accelerating investment in manufacturing in Malaysia to meet growing demand. Singapore, meanwhile, remains a destination for US companies expanding overseas manufacturing; Applied Materials and KLA have established production operations there.
From 2020 to 2025, China imported more than $42 billion of semiconductor manufacturing equipment from Japan and about $35 billion from the Netherlands.
Japan is home to leading semiconductor equipment companies including Tokyo Electron, Screen Semiconductor Solutions and Ebara. The Netherlands hosts ASML, the world’s largest lithography equipment maker, along with other major firms such as ASM (atomic layer deposition) and Besi (advanced packaging equipment).
In 2025, ASML accounted for 29.1% of its revenue from China. Tokyo Electron had more than 40% of its revenue from the Chinese market in the same period.
Foreign suppliers are not the only source of growth. Domestic Chinese chip equipment firms also reported strong results in 2025.
Companies including Naura, AMEC, ACM Research and Piotech all posted record revenue for 2025. Naura, a domestic rival of Applied Materials, saw revenue rise from 6.05 billion yuan in 2020 to 27.14 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2025. AMEC’s revenue increased by more than 400% over the 2020–2025 period. Piotech, a deposition equipment specialist, recorded revenue growth of 13 times over the same period.
Despite strong revenue growth, Charles Shi said profitability showed signs of decline. The main driver was intensifying competition in the domestic market, forcing suppliers to lower prices and triggering a “race to the bottom” to win market share.
In Washington, lawmakers have proposed the MATCH Act, which would have allies coordinate more closely to tighten export controls on core devices and components. However, so far, Europe and Japan have not taken clear steps to apply measures with comparable scope.
Kevin Kurland, a former official at the US Commerce Department, said that while Chinese firms on the “Entity List” face restrictions on US technology, they can still source alternatives. He added that unilateral US controls may be less effective, and without multilateral cooperation, the restrictions could even undermine the competitiveness of US firms.
On the Chinese side, even as imports of equipment and components remain large, the long-term goal is to achieve self-sufficiency. Industry sources say that nearly every type of tool, material and component used to produce semiconductors now has a domestically localized version, though it has not yet matched foreign durability, reliability or performance.
Leading Chinese chipmakers such as SMIC, Hua Hong and Huawei-related enterprises are expanding capacity toward advanced processes including 7 nm and even 5 nm to serve domestic AI chip developers. Memory producers including CXMT and YMTC are also carrying out the largest-scale expansions ever to address a global memory shortfall tied to the AI wave.
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