A professor from the University of Paris 1, Emmanuel Combe, recently published an article suggesting that China is steadily reducing its technological gap in the lithography machine sector compared to global leaders. He warns that if the United States persists in its sanctions against China, the biggest losers in this competition will be the United States and Europe.

Combe argues that restricting a country's access to cutting-edge technology can produce the opposite effect of what was intended. European companies will gradually lose their market share in China, while U.S. export controls, although slowing down China's technological development in the short term, will also force China to independently develop high-end equipment and improve its industrial chain.

Drawing a historical comparison, Combe notes that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union, due to the Paris Coordinating Committee ban, was unable to purchase advanced Western computers, leading to a long-term lag in its electronics industry. However, China has taken a different path. Chinese companies have been able to produce 7nm chips by purchasing DUV lithography machines and using multi-patterning techniques, albeit with low yields and high costs, but the process is at least operational. As the U.S. imposes stricter restrictions on DUV machines, China's chip industry now has only one path: developing its own lithography machines.

However, this self-development path also faces the challenge of who will buy the equipment. For example, Nikon invested hundreds of billions of yen in developing EUV lithography machines, but ASML had already secured equity ties with Samsung, Intel, and TSMC, delivering mass-production equipment in 2018. Nikon could not even create a suitable prototype. Even if Nikon eventually produces a machine, its major clients would already be locked into ASML's ecosystem. Chinese companies face a similar challenge in developing their own lithography machines, but U.S. sanctions have blocked many imported devices from the Chinese market, giving domestic autonomous equipment a natural market space.

Combe believes that in the short term, domestic equipment has yet to challenge ASML. In 2025 alone, ASML delivered 131 DUV lithography machines, and its equipment ecosystem is already highly mature. In the long term, if the U.S. and Europe continue the blockade, Chinese companies will use autonomous equipment to ensure the stability of their industrial chain, and foreign vendors will lose a significant number of Chinese customers.