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Gavekal Technologies: Chips
On The Ground At China’s Tech Conferences (Part II)
Laila Khawaja
23 Apr 2026
This report is the second part of the multi-part series summarizing the key findings from the many conversations Gavekal Technologies had with on-the-ground sources in China: Waiting for Nvidia chips; companies find new workarounds; China’s rising SSD star.
Gavekal Technologies: Briefing
China’s Supply-Chain Security Strategy
Arthur Kroeber, Laila Khawaja, Tom Hancock, Huang Shichan, AJ Cortese
21 Apr 2026
China would like the US to roll back its restrictions on semiconductor exports and the US would like China to loosen up rare-earth export licenses, but neither side is likely to oblige. Although its rare-earths card is solid for now, China is taking out some extra insurance with new regulations. In today’s China Tech Brief we assess their impact.
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China Strengthens Its Retaliation Toolkit
China’s new supply chain security regulation; China has a legal response to extraterritorial actions; China turns to Russia for helium.
Can The World’s Biggest Grid Get Smarter?
In the first issue of our new biweekly New Energy Insight, Damien Ma takes a close look at where the world’s biggest electricity system is headed. China’s grid is easily the best and most technically advanced in the world, but it is still plagued with problems: most important, that vast new quantities of wind and solar generation are not reliably connected.
On The Ground At China’s Tech Conferences (Part I)
Gavekal Technologies attended several semiconductor and AI events in China, including Semicon China 2026. This is the first of a two-part series summarizing our key findings. This year’s events reflected a more balanced and pragmatic tone. While the official messaging emphasized global cooperation, Beijing is clear in its intent to build alternative technology paths independent of foreign technologies.
In Pharma, The US And China Need Each Other
China’s effective use of its rare earths leverage has created a cottage industry of figuring out what the next chokepoint might be. Pharmaceuticals are a popular candidate but there is very little chance that Beijing will seek to weaponize pharmaceutical ingredients. China depends at least as much on the US for pharma inputs as the US relies on China.
Alibaba Has A New AI Chip
Alibaba unveils 5nm RISC-V CPU; Google TurboQuant and the memory sell-off; Nikon eyes China market opportunities.
China’s AI Compute Shortage
Chinese cloud service providers and artificial-intelligence-model companies are raising prices sharply amid surging inference demand, increasing hardware costs, and limited access to advanced chips. Tighter US export enforcement is expected to have a big impact on the grey-market flows of Nvidia chips into China, while the availability of export-compliant chips remains uncertain amid supply chain and regulatory uncertainties. While this creates opportunities for domestic chips, scaling is limited by capacity constraints and compliance risks. As a result, the AI compute shortage is unlikely to ease in the near term, benefiting firms that control scarce compute resources.