China's Integrated Circuit Import Quantity and Value Will Both Decline by Double Digits in 2023

China's integrated circuit (IC) import volume and value in 2023 will both decline by double digits, due to the overall downturn in the global chip market and the impact of U.S. export controls. At the same time, it is worth noting that China is continuously increasing local chip production to cope with future long-term development. 

The latest data from the official website of the General Administration of Customs of China shows that China will import a total of 479.5 billion integrated circuits in 2023, a decrease of 10.8% from 2022; the import value is US$349.4 billion (S$466.1 billion), a decrease of 15.4% year-on-year. Bloomberg reported that this was the largest decline since Chinese customs data were available in 2004. 

Data from the General Administration of Customs also shows that China’s imports of diodes and similar semiconductor components (representatives of ordinary commodity chips) also fell by 23.8% in 2023. 

Industry insiders as saying that China's weak imports of integrated circuits and semiconductor equipment reflect global economic headwinds in 2023, especially the impact of factors such as weak sales of smartphones and laptops in China. At the same time, Chinese companies are working hard to increase local chip production to reduce dependence on imported chips. 

Data from the General Administration of Customs show that chip production in mainland China increased in 2023. From January to October, the cumulative domestic production of integrated circuits was 276.53 billion units, a year-on-year increase of 0.9%. Among them, integrated circuit output in October was 31.28 billion units, a year-on-year increase of 34.5%, setting a new high in recent years. 

A Chinese chip company manager said: "On the one hand, the weak demand for low-end consumer electronics chips, and on the other hand, the ban on the sale of high-end artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have greater demand. These two main factors have led to a decline in China's chip imports last year.”