The technological gap between China and the United States in advanced chip manufacturing is narrowing (Getty Images)

Alpine Macro warned in a report cited on the Investing website that, "China is rapidly closing the gap with the United States in the advanced chip industry," but its manufacturing infrastructure still faces significant obstacles, most notably a weak lithography printing capability.

The report described China's progress as "impressive in design, limited in manufacturing, but accelerating at the system level," which is gradually posing a threat to America's long-standing hegemony.

Design Advantages and Manufacturing Limitations

Strategic analyst Noah Ramos asserted, "Trying to predict breakthroughs in advanced manufacturing technology is a reckless gamble," but he pointed out that "this gap is actually narrowing in the field of artificial intelligence."

He also added that Huawei has "almost reached the same level as China in chip design," but is still unable to mass-produce advanced silicon chips due to "bottlenecks in lithography technology."

Ramos noted that "even if Huawei develops 3-nanometer chips, it does not have the capability to produce them," and he believes this deficiency has slowed China's progress, but also "has led Washington to develop excessive complacency about the development of China's artificial intelligence infrastructure."

Huawei overcomes manufacturing limitations to achieve design advantages (Reuters)

Policy Changes and Shrinking Advantages

The report noted that although NVIDIA processors in the United States still lead in energy efficiency, China has made significant progress in system integration. To achieve the same performance, Huawei deploys five times as many Ascend chips, even though this means a 50% increase in power consumption. Experts believe that lower electricity prices and the expansion of China's power grid have compensated for this gap.

In political terms, Ramos warned that "the policies of the Trump administration may change the pace of reconciliation" and pointed out that allowing exports of H2O chips to China or a "rare earth for silicon" agreement between the two sides could be a "decisive turning point" in the global technology competition.

Ramos concluded that American hegemony "will not completely disappear by the end of this decade," but its hegemony is rapidly shrinking in the face of "China's strategy of quantity rather than quality." He emphasized, "The gap is indeed narrowing, and the next decade will determine the direction of development."

Sources: U.S. media

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