"Mr. Zhou, welcome to the Lion City, when the Lion City chapter of CAAS was established last year, we invited you, and you said at that time that you didn't have time, this should be your first time in the Lion City." Xiao Li said.

After Zhou Xin landed in the Lion City, Lee Hsien Loong was in charge of the whole reception, and at this time he was still the nominal number two person in the Lion City, and there were still two years before he took over the authority of his father.

Lee Hsien Loong met with Zhou Xin when he went to Los Angeles to attend an event before, and the result of that meeting was that Xinxin Technology set up a R&D center in the Lion City, but the size of this R&D center is not large, not to mention that compared with the R&D center in Silicon Valley, even the scale of the R&D center set up in Shenhai is not comparable.

However, Zhou Xin's business in the Lion City is not only integrated circuits, but also the Southeast Asian node of Xinyun is located in the Lion City, providing cloud services for small and medium-sized enterprises in pan-Southeast Asian countries. Tencent's Southeast Asia branch is also located in the Lion City, providing corporate services to enterprises in Southeast Asia.

Over the past two years, Zhou Xin's companies have seen an impressive increase in their share of investment in the Lion City.

Zhou Xin came to the Lion City this time, firstly, for the sake of the future, if he can't get the results he wants, Zhou Xin will put the chip foundry in the Lion City from the perspective of risk control.

This is also a strategy, due to the Wassenaar Agreement, Xinxin Technology in China cannot obtain the most advanced production line, but in the Lion City, Xinxin Technology can not be restricted by the Wassenaar Agreement, and can completely wrestle with TSMC in chip foundry.

Of course, if you want to wrestle with TSMC, it is too risky to rely on Zhou Xin's capital alone, and Zhou Xin also wants to talk about cooperation with the Lion City, the massive amount of funds held by the Lion City government just lack investment projects, and he can provide the Lion City with chip foundry investment projects.

Second, for NewPay, the Lion City is extremely strict on the issuance of electronic payment licenses, NewPay has successfully entered Northeast Asia, and has successfully won electronic payment licenses in China and Neon, and NewPay has gradually become a trendy payment method among young people in Tokyo, the largest city in Neon.

It is a bit difficult to enter the Korean area, many of Zhou Xin's companies are in direct competition with Korean enterprises, and the Korean side is not willing to let NewPay in for the purpose of protecting its own enterprises, even if NewPay agrees to set up a Korean branch, the Korean branch allows Korean enterprises to take shares, NewPay is even willing to sell most of the shares to the Korean chaebols, they only need to adopt a A/B share structure to ensure that the control of NewPay's Korean branch is in their own hands.

The Korean chaebols want to cultivate their own electronic payment software, and we can't enter the global market, and local companies can't let you in.

In such an environment in the Asia-Pacific region, the most important fulcrum left in NewPay's Asia-Pacific strategy is the Lion City, and if the Lion City can be managed, then NewPay's influence can radiate to the entire Southeast Asia, and Alibaba can enter the Southeast Asian market with it.

Now Zhouxin's Internet business territory has shown the momentum of Internet giants such as Tencent and Alibaba sweeping the world in the future.

Therefore, this time I came to the Lion City, pressure is the goal, but it is not the main purpose, or even just the purpose of doing it easily, and the core strategy is to negotiate the next package of cooperation with the Lion City.

After the Hanxin incident, Zhou Xin realized that the Lion City was a good place, another basket to put his eggs in.

Washington's politicians will be wary of China's rapid IC industry, but will let their guard down on the Lion City's IC industry. They can allow the development of TSMC, and they will also allow another TSMC to emerge in the Lion City.

Only put the chip foundry in the Lion City, and the chip foundry industry in the Lion City can further feed back to the chip foundry industry in China.

It's a multi-effective strategy.

In the early stage, the information communicated by the two sides through their subordinates decided that Xiao Li would receive Zhou Xin this time, and Zhou Xin's youth made Xiao Li feel emotional, and even crossed a faint jealousy.

"Mr. Li, I haven't seen each other for about a year and a half, this is indeed my first time in the Lion City, I arrived in the Lion City yesterday afternoon and walked around the Lion City in the evening.

I was impressed by the cleanliness and urban interface design of the Lion City, which is worthy of being a garden city. ”

After a pleasantry, Zhou Xin went straight to the topic, saying: "I hope to reach a more in-depth cooperation with the Lion City.

In the past, the Lion City has been increasing its investment in the field of integrated circuits, hoping to replicate the success of Neon, Goryeo and the Wanwan region, but compared to the above three areas, the Lion City seems to be a little worse. ”

Zhou Xin's past brilliant achievements determined that Lee Hsien Loong listened very carefully, and since Zhou Xin's rise, the Lion City has studied this invincible entrepreneur a lot.

When NewPay was first established, Temasek's sovereign fund wanted to invest very much, but it was rejected by Zhou Xin at that time, and then watched NewPay's valuation soar to the point that they all felt expensive.

Li Xianlong nodded: "Although the Lion City is very small, it has various disadvantages in natural resources, such as fresh water resources, lack of a large amount of electricity, lack of talents, etc., which determine that the Lion City has inherent disadvantages in the field of integrated circuits.

But these disadvantages can't stop the Lion City's determination to develop integrated circuits, and the Lion City did chip foundry earlier than the places you just mentioned.

Because I was the Minister of Trade and Industry in the Lion City in '86, I know the integrated circuit industry very well, and the first place to do chip foundry was Xiangjiang, and Xiangjiang had three small factories in the first place to help IBM do some chip foundry business, and the second to start chip foundry was Lion City.

In 1968, the first thing we did after the establishment of National Semiconductor was to get involved in the chip foundry industry, and we began to take some chip assembly and testing work from Texas Instruments and IBM. ”

In fact, the full name of this company is National Semiconductor Co., Ltd., which was established in January 68, and the earliest office is in the Marina Bay Financial Center building.

The Lion City's national semiconductors are mainly engaged in the investment of enterprises in the field of integrated circuits, and their development in history has been far less than expected.

Lee continued, "Later, when I took over the Ministry of Trade and Industry, I was also aware of the importance of integrated circuits, and in '86 personal computers had begun to emerge, and the global chip trade market was growing at an unimaginable rate.

There are more and more signs that Moore's Law is right, and integrated circuits are the most eye-catching sunrise industry at that time, and the Lion City is no exception, hoping to become the first country in this chip competition.

I took over the Ministry of Trade and Industry in '86, and in '87 I established Chartered Semiconductors, which specializes in chip foundry, and its customers include AMD, Infineon, IBM, Samsung, etc. At one time, we were a chip foundry only after TSMC and UMC.

In 2000, more than half of the Lion City's total manufacturing output came from integrated circuits and integrated circuit-related industries.

However, with the bursting of the Internet bubble, the chip industry in the Lion City has been very difficult in recent years, and to put it bluntly, the Lion City has no advantage in this field.

Neon has technical advantages, Goryeo has supporting industry advantages, and Wanwan has the advantages of labor costs and scale effects.

The Lion City has nothing, and after China joined the WTO last year, the Lion City's advantage in tariffs is gone, and China's advantage in labor costs is too obvious.

Before the bursting of the Internet bubble, even if a series of costs such as labor costs, equipment depreciation, and production line renewal, chip foundry was still a good manufacturing industry.

With the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the Lion City's chip foundry lost its cost performance.

Since the beginning of this year, because of the good results of Xinxin Technology in China, we have also paid attention to the fact that the licensed semiconductor has been doing research internally, and intends to move the new chip production plant to Zhangjiang.

We are already in talks with Belling to build an 8-inch wafer fab with Belling. ”

Shen Haibeiling received technology transfer and equipment support from UMC, and their original plan was to build a 6-inch wafer fab and later change it to an 8-inch wafer fab, which led to an increase in investment, and the original investor was unwilling, and the Lion City's licensed semiconductors intended to take over.

Zhou Xin said: "There are too many upstream and downstream industries involved in chips, and there is packaging and testing after chip manufacturing.

After listening to Mr. Li's introduction, I can hear that you do have a good understanding of this area, at least from the perspective of industrial investment.

In my opinion, the Lion City does not have the advantage of doing chip foundry, just your freshwater is subject to neighboring countries, and the Lion City cannot expand its scale in the field of chip foundry and form a scale effect.

I think the Lion City is only suitable for two aspects, the first is to focus on the most cutting-edge chip foundry, and put the low-end production capacity in China.

Medium and low-end production capacity, China has the ability and willingness to undertake. Compared with the Lion City, Huaguo is subject to too many restrictions and cannot get the most advanced equipment, but the Lion City can, and the Lion City can focus on the most advanced chip foundry.

In this way, the two sides can form cooperation and complement each other. Neither Goryeo nor Wanwan could cooperate with the Lion City, both of them had the ability and willingness to swallow the whole cake.

Only Huaguo can cooperate with the Lion City because of Ameriken's fear.

For example, now that the Lion City is building a state-of-the-art 90nm process fab, when the process progresses to 65nm, 45nm, and 28nm, the previous fab is gradually falling behind, and the equipment can be relocated to China as a whole after the depreciation is completed. ”

Many semiconductor companies in the bend area have relocated backward equipment back to the mainland as a whole, such as UMC, Powerchip, Maode Technology, etc.

When the depreciation of the equipment is completed, the relocation cost is trivial.

Hanxin's counterfeiting not only caused a stir in China, but also attracted attention overseas because it involved Zhou Xin.

Overseas attention is focused on whether the honeymoon period between Zhou Xin and Huaguo is coming to an end, and whether the cooperation between the two sides will continue.

Li Xianlong is also very clear about Hanxin and Zhou Xin's attitude towards Hanxin, he did not expect that Hanxin did not affect Zhou Xin's strategic positioning of Huaguo and his support for Huaguo's chip industry.

This made Lee Hsien Loong pay more attention to Zhou Xin, who was able to switch freely with multiple masks at such a young age, and his anger and dissatisfaction in public seemed to be just a performance.

Lee Hsien Loong said: "I understand what you mean, Mr. Zhou, we have considered that we define the most advanced chip foundry as high-end, and the biggest problem is that we may not be able to get enough orders to run the equipment at full capacity."

The more high-end the chip foundry, the more stringent the control of costs and profits. Because the more high-end equipment is more expensive, the amount of equipment depreciation is exaggerated, and the salary of front-line engineers of high-end equipment is not a small amount, once the production line cannot run at full capacity, then the loss on the books will become more and more serious.

This will form a vicious circle, without full capacity operation, the yield rate can not go up, the profit margin can not be improved, it is impossible to gain an advantage in the competition with other chip foundry companies, and finally the advanced technology is gradually no longer advanced.

Especially in the current recession of the overall chip industry, it is more difficult to ensure the full load operation of advanced processes. ”

Why can TSMC get up? Because of Intel's support. Why can Samsung's chip foundry get up, because Samsung is a behemoth, and his other business segments can provide a steady stream of hematopoietic supply, even if Samsung's chip foundry loses money, it will not affect anything.

Not so with the Lion City, whose strategic definition dictates that they can't afford to lose money like Samsung, at least not yet.

After listening to this, Zhou Xin said: "Mr. Li, do you know about Mphone and smart phones? In my opinion, smartphones will be the most important direction of development in the next two decades.

The chip demand for the smartphone business alone is enough to feed the high-end chip foundry industry in the Lion City. ”

At this year's Mphone developer conference, Zhou Xin made a clear definition of Mphone and the form of mobile phones represented by Mphone, which is called smart phones.

The outside world didn't realize how important this definition is, but the Mphone developer conference itself attracted more attention, with a large number of new games designed for the Mphone platform, as well as the announcement of game CGs designed exclusively for the upcoming Mphone2 by several famous producers in the gaming industry.

These have sparked heated discussions, and smartphones have been mentioned at most.

Zhou Xin continued: "Smartphones will continue to maintain the demand for high-end chips, and the demand for smartphones can be as small as the chip manufacturing process can be.

This is determined by the technical principle, the more advanced the chip manufacturing process, the lower the energy consumption, and the better the battery life of the mobile phone. Smartphone chips will be a trillion-dollar market. ”

After Zhou Xin finished speaking, Lee Hsien Loong asked, "Is the unit US dollar or RMB?" ”

"Haha kidding, I believe your judgment in this regard, the question is how can the Lion City get a piece of the smartphone pie.

In other words, how the Lion City and Neochip Technology can achieve this goal. ”

It was written that Crow remembered that the protagonist of the previous book had stayed in Singapore for a long time, and finally bought Singapore, and Crow realized that time had passed too quickly, and a year had passed.

The last book really wrote about the crow

(End of chapter)