China Discovered a Breach in US Tech Sanctions

At the recent RISC-V Summit held in China two weeks ago, a surprising fact came to light: China has rapidly emerged as a global RISC-V powerhouse, playing a decisive role in the future of this open computing architecture. Over 4,000 participants from around the world attended the summit, most of them living in mainland China.

A review of the professional committees within the RISC-V International Foundation revealed that Chinese representatives now hold key positions. They are chairing major technical groups such as the AI/ML SIG, Android SIG, Datacenter SIG, and Platform Management Interface, and serving as vice-chairs in numerous others.

This is no coincidence: The Chinese government has been quietly orchestrating a broad strategic initiative aimed to steer its domestic semiconductor industry toward global leadership in open RISC-V architectures, and positioning it as a viable alternative to proprietary CPU platforms such as Intel’s x86 and Arm’s architecture.

Technology Cold War

For nearly two decades, China has been engaged in what can be called a Technology Cold War with the U.S. and its allies over the dominance of the Global semiconductor’s market. That conflict has hampered China’s national goal first drafted in 2010 –  to become a fully self-reliant chip superpower by 2025.

Now, a new opportunity is emerging. According to a Reuters, China plans to issue guidance to encourage the use of open-source RISC-V chips nationwide, to curb the country’s dependence on Western-owned technology. Beijing’s new directive will accelerate domestic adoption of the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) and make in a corner stone in its policy of technology independence.

These new ideas, including substantial financial incentives, were crafted by a cross-ministerial task force comprising eight government bodies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the China National Intellectual Property Administration.

The Rise of Open Source Silicon

RISC-V was born 15 years ago at the University of California, Berkeley, as an open-source ISA capable of supporting high-performance computing with word lengths of up to 128 bits. It was intended to be an efficient and cost-effective alternative to proprietary, commercial ISAs. Since then, RISC-V has matured into a fast-growing global ecosystem.

The SHD Group: Total RISC-V SoC Regional Revenues 2021-2030

According to The SHD Group, global revenues from RISC-V-based chips reached $123 million in 2023. By 2030, that number is projected to grow at a CAGR of 39%, reaching $92 billion with over 16.5 billion SoC units that will be shipped. By that year, the largest application segment for RISC-V is expected to be AI acceleration, with consumer electronics as the biggest end market, and automotive—a key strategic sector for China—as the leading industrial growth engine.

Will China Flip the sanctions narrative on its head

If current projections hold, China is poised to become the world’s leading supplier of RISC-V solutions by 2030. But the figures from SHD Group predate the new policy initiative and likely underestimate its long-term significance.

China’s strategy isn’t just about dominating RISC-V chips; it’s about building an elite semiconductor ecosystem based on RISC-V, complete with native support for NPU, CPU, and GPU designs, and a vertically integrated software development stack. This echoes a past attempt to revive PowerPC, which ultimately failed, but the momentum behind RISC-V appears far more formidable.

The outcome could reshape Global supply dynamics. While Western nations have poured massive investments into cutting-edge sub-10nm process nodes, no electronic system is complete without supporting chips fabricated on mature process nodes like 28nm, 65nm, or even 130nm, and this is an area where China remains a manufacturing powerhouse.

In other words, if China’s RISC-V push brings advanced design capabilities in-house, it may gain leverage not just as a consumer of technology—but as a strategic supplier. Ironically, China could eventually restrict exports of legacy-node components critical to Western tech ecosystems, flipping the sanctions narrative on its head.

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