While attention focuses on cutting-edge 3nm chips, the real action is in mature nodes — the 28nm to 180nm chips that run cars, washing machines, industrial equipment, and IoT devices. China's capacity at these nodes grew 14% in 2025, hitting 10.1 million wafers per month.
This matters because mature chips are everywhere. A modern car uses 1,000-3,000 chips, mostly at mature nodes. The 2021 chip shortage that shut down auto production globally was a mature-node problem, not a leading-edge one. China is now positioned to prevent that from happening again — or to cause it.
The US Bureau of Industry and Security launched an investigation in December 2024 into whether China's capacity expansion threatens domestic semiconductor producers. The concern: state-subsidized Chinese fabs could undercut global pricing, driving Western fabs out of the market.