Nations need own tech to sidestep US control: Jack Ma

Bloomberg

Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma argues that nations from Japan to China need to develop their own semiconductor technology to get around America’s grip on the global chip market.
The billionaire executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., explaining the e-commerce titan’s growing interest in chips including this month’s acquisition of local design-house Hangzhou C-Sky Microsystems Co., said he’s motivated in part by a desire to make chips “inclusive:” cheap, efficient and available to all. He said his company has bought five semiconductor firms in the past four years.
“America was the early mover and China, we need a lot of things. 100 percent of the market for chips is controlled by Americans,” he told students and entrepreneurs at Tokyo’s Waseda University. “And suddenly if they stop selling — what that means, you understand. That’s why China, Japan, and any country, you need core technologies.”
Ma’s comments dovetail with the views of Chinese business chieftains and politicos alike. Ma joins industry peers such as Tencent Holdings Ltd. founder Pony Ma in espousing a world-class domestic chip industry as tensions simmer with the US, the global leader in cutting-edge semiconductor technology.