An Architecture, Not A Decree · 2014–2024
Three Phases. Ninety-Seven Billion Dollars.
One & Half Trillion Yuan.
Beijing did not write a single check to build a chip industry. It wrote three of them, each
larger than the last — and around each round, by Ding Wenwu’s own estimate, every yuan of
state equity drew in roughly five more in provincial, municipal, and private capital. The
numbers below are the public column. The hidden one is bigger.
Sources: State Council · CSIS · Rhodium
Conversion at fund-formation FX
Reading time : 4 min
I First Phase
26 September 2014
$21B
¥138.7 BILLION REGISTERED CAPITAL
21% of total state outlay1.0×
Mandate: equity stakes, not grants — “the discipline of a venture fund.”
Catalysed roughly half a trillion yuan of leveraged capital across provinces.
ChairDing Wenwu · ex-MIIT Electronic Information Dept
II Second Phase
22 October 2019
$29B
¥204.15 BILLION REGISTERED CAPITAL
30% of total state outlay1.47×
Approved 18 months after the ZTE denial order. Tilted toward equipment,
materials, and EUV-adjacent toolchains; SMIC and YMTC absorbed the largest tranches.
CadenceLeader-led campaign, not patient industrial policy
III Third Phase
May 2024
$47.5B
¥344 BILLION REGISTERED CAPITAL
49% of total state outlay2.26×
Approved after the U.S. October 2022 export controls. Shareholder list expanded to
the Big Five state banks; rumored focus on HBM, lithography, and AI accelerators.
ContextMade in China 2025 brand retired. Money tripled.
01
Where Phase I went
¥138.7B disbursed across the supply chain · 2014–2019
The first round was front-loaded into manufacturing. Roughly seven of every ten yuan
landed inside fab buildings — the foundry expansions at SMIC’s Beijing site, Hua
Hong in Shanghai, and the new memory house at Yangtze Memory in Wuhan that Xi Jinping
would tour in a white smock four years later. Equipment, the choke point that
Washington would eventually pull, received the smallest tranche.
“The biggest single check went to Yangtze Memory. The second biggest went to SMIC.
Two billion went to equipment.”
The shape of that distribution — heavy on capacity, light on tools — was the shape
of the bet, and it would also be the shape of the choke point.
A · FOUNDRIESWafer Fabrication
¥30B≈ $4.5B
B · DESIGNFabless Houses
HiSilicon · Spreadtrum25%
¥20B≈ $3.0B
C · MEMORYNAND · DRAM
YMTC · ChangXin · Fujian Jinhua24%
¥19B≈ $2.9B
D · ATPAssembly & Test
¥10B≈ $1.5B
E · EQUIPMENTTools & Materials
¥2B≈ $0.3B
The Multiplier
Every yuan of Big Fund equity drew in roughly five
more from provinces, municipalities and private capital.
— Ding Wenwu, founding chair
02
The principal recipients
Companies that received the largest single Phase I tickets
Company / Vehicle
What it built
Funded
Status by 2024
i
Yangtze MemoryYMTC · Wuhan · spun out 2016
3D NAND flash; site of the white-smock photograph (April 2018).
Largest Phase I check
Entity-listed Dec 2022. EMBARGOED
ii
SMICBeijing fab expansion
Logic foundry; pushed from 28nm to 14nm to a working 7nm by 2022.
Second-largest
Entity-listed Dec 2020. EMBARGOED
iii
Hua HongShanghai mature-node foundry
Specialty processes — analog, RF, automotive nodes 90 → 28nm.
Third-largest
Operating; STAR-listed 2023. ACTIVE
iv
Tsinghua UnigroupZhao Weiguo’s vehicle · deal Q1 2017
Holding company; owned YMTC stake. Up to ¥150B over five years.
¥150B framework
Defaulted 2020. Bankruptcy 2021. Zhao convicted 2025. PURGED
v
ChangXin MemoryHefei · DRAM
Domestic DRAM challenger run by ex-Inotera engineer Charles Kau.
Phase I tranche
Operating; capacity scaling. ACTIVE
vi
Fujian JinhuaProvincial DRAM venture
DRAM with UMC technology partnership.
Provincial-led
Indicted by DOJ Nov 2018; entity-listed; effectively shut. PURGED
Enforcement Risk · July 2022 onward
A leader-led campaign also acquires a leader-led purge.
July 2022
Ding Wenwu
Founding Big Fund chair, taken away by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
August 2022
Sino IC Capital
Several senior executives detained; the Big Fund’s management arm decapitated.
July 2022
Zhao Weiguo
Tsinghua Unigroup chair detained. Tried 2023. Suspended death sentence, May 2025.
2022–2024
Provincial fund directors
A handful detained across Hubei, Anhui, Sichuan, and Fujian. Charges: ordinary embezzlement.