The founder, chairman and chief executive of Shanghai-based Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC), Gerald Yin Zheyao, has renounced his United States citizenship and restored his Chinese nationality, according to the company’s annual report published on Friday.
Semiconductor industry veteran Yin – who previously worked in the US at Applied Materials, Lam Research and Intel – identified as a US citizen in AMEC’s annual reports for 2022, 2021 and 2020. AMEC did not state Yin’s nationality in the firm’s 2023 report.
The change of citizenship for Yin, 81, is the latest sign of the increasingly bifurcated semiconductor supply chains of China and the US amid an escalating tech war between the world’s two largest economies.
In October 2022, new restrictions rolled out by the US Department of Commerce banned “US persons” from being involved in “the development or production” of chips at “certain China-located semiconductor fabrication facilities”.
Last year, two AMEC executives with US citizenship, Ni Tuqiang and Yang Wei, stepped down from their positions as “core technical personnel”. At the time, AMEC said their exit would “not have a significant adverse impact” on the firm’s research and development (R&D) progress, operational capabilities or its competitiveness.
AMEC’s Shanghai-listed shares were unchanged on Friday, closing at 190 yuan (US$26).
The Pentagon dropped AMEC from its list of “Chinese military companies operating in the US” on December 13, without providing any reason for the removal. The company was added to that blacklist in January last year.
Founded by Yin in 2004, AMEC is a major domestic supplier of etching and deposition tools and one of China’s semiconductor champions at the forefront of the country’s technology self-sufficiency efforts.
AMEC saw its 2024 revenue surge 44.73 per cent year on year to surpass 9 billion yuan in sales, according to its annual report. AMEC’s annual revenue growth rate for the past four years has averaged more than 40 per cent.
Net profit, however, fell 9.52 per cent to 1.61 billion yuan last year, as the company’s R&D spending rose 94.31 per cent from 2023 to 2.45 billion yuan amid heightened domestic competition.
AMEC said it had significantly sped up its R&D process for new products, compared to its three- to five-year timeline before. The company pointed out that it needed no more than two years to develop “competitive” new equipment and commercialise it “smoothly”.
The company said it aimed to “close the gap” in supplying high-end, domestic chipmaking tools, with the goal to “catch up and overtake” competitors and lay a foundation for long-term growth.
Close competitor Naura Technology Group has also seen strong market demand in recent years. The Beijing-based firm said earlier this month that it expected revenue for the first three months of 2025 to increase as much as 51 per cent year on year and net profit to rise up to 53 per cent.
SiCarrier, a three-year-old semiconductor equipment maker backed by Shenzhen’s municipal government and which has close links to telecommunications equipment giant Huawei Technologies, debuted an array of new products last month at the Semicon China trade show.
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The founder, chairman and chief executive of Shanghai-based Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC), Gerald Yin Zheyao, has renounced his United States citizenship and restored his Chinese nationality, according to the company’s annual report published on Friday.
Semiconductor industry veteran Yin – who previously worked in the US at Applied Materials, Lam Research and Intel – identified as a US citizen in AMEC’s annual reports for 2022, 2021 and 2020. AMEC did not state Yin’s nationality in the firm’s 2023 report.
The change of citizenship for Yin, 81, is the latest sign of the increasingly bifurcated semiconductor supply chains of China and the US amid an escalating tech war between the world’s two largest economies.
In October 2022, new restrictions rolled out by the US Department of Commerce banned “US persons” from being involved in “the development or production” of chips at “certain China-located semiconductor fabrication facilities”.
Last year, two AMEC executives with US citizenship, Ni Tuqiang and Yang Wei, stepped down from their positions as “core technical personnel”. At the time, AMEC said their exit would “not have a significant adverse impact” on the firm’s research and development (R&D) progress, operational capabilities or its competitiveness.
AMEC’s Shanghai-listed shares were unchanged on Friday, closing at 190 yuan (US$26).
The release of AMEC’s latest annual report comes months after the company was removed from a US Department of Defence blacklist of firms with alleged ties to China’s military.
The Pentagon dropped AMEC from its list of “Chinese military companies operating in the US” on December 13, without providing any reason for the removal. The company was added to that blacklist in January last year.
Founded by Yin in 2004, AMEC is a major domestic supplier of etching and deposition tools and one of China’s semiconductor champions at the forefront of the country’s technology self-sufficiency efforts.
AMEC saw its 2024 revenue surge 44.73 per cent year on year to surpass 9 billion yuan in sales, according to its annual report. AMEC’s annual revenue growth rate for the past four years has averaged more than 40 per cent.
Net profit, however, fell 9.52 per cent to 1.61 billion yuan last year, as the company’s R&D spending rose 94.31 per cent from 2023 to 2.45 billion yuan amid heightened domestic competition.
AMEC said it had significantly sped up its R&D process for new products, compared to its three- to five-year timeline before. The company pointed out that it needed no more than two years to develop “competitive” new equipment and commercialise it “smoothly”.
The company said it aimed to “close the gap” in supplying high-end, domestic chipmaking tools, with the goal to “catch up and overtake” competitors and lay a foundation for long-term growth.
Close competitor Naura Technology Group has also seen strong market demand in recent years. The Beijing-based firm said earlier this month that it expected revenue for the first three months of 2025 to increase as much as 51 per cent year on year and net profit to rise up to 53 per cent.
SiCarrier, a three-year-old semiconductor equipment maker backed by Shenzhen’s municipal government and which has close links to telecommunications equipment giant Huawei Technologies, debuted an array of new products last month at the Semicon China trade show.