China’s Zhejiang targets 3- to 7-nanometre AI chip breakthroughs to counter US chokehold

China’s eastern tech powerhouse Zhejiang, home to giants like Alibaba and the humanoid robotics start-up Unitree, has set clear targets to develop cutting-chips and chipmaking equipment over the next five years.

The province will focus on chip design and wafer manufacturing, aiming to achieve rapid progress across 3- to 7-nm processing nodes, according to its draft industrial development document for 2026 to 2030.

Advanced chips have become the main pillar of income for some global tech firms, underscoring the weight of Zhejiang’s ambitions. On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker, announced that combined shipments of its 3-nm, 5-nm and 7-nm chips made up 77 per cent of its total wafer revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Chips are often measured by transistor density, a term for how small and advanced a node is. A 7-nm chip contains about 90 million to 100 million transistors per square millimetre, while a more powerful 3-nm chip boasts about 200 million to 224 million.

Zhejiang also plans to develop low-power, high-end general-purpose and artificial intelligence (AI) chips, as well as fifth-generation RISC-V chip architecture, according to the document first reported by state media on Monday.