Guangdong 15th Five-Year Plan: Accelerating Development of Optical Chips and AI Chips

Guangdong's 15th Five-Year Plan Lands with Major Semiconductor Industry Upgrade

The Guangdong Provincial People's Government has officially issued the "Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of Guangdong Province," which includes key strategic deployments for the integrated circuit and semiconductor industries. The plan explicitly calls for accelerated development in frontier areas such as optical chips, artificial intelligence chips, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and advanced packaging and testing, as well as vigorous development of core equipment, components, and critical materials — sending a strong signal that Guangdong is going all-in on the semiconductor industry chain.

Shenzhen Takes the Lead in Four-City Coordinated Development

The plan clearly states that Shenzhen will be strengthened as an industrial innovation hub, working in coordination with Guangzhou, Zhuhai, and Dongguan to achieve differentiated development. This layout positions Shenzhen as the core engine, leveraging its leading advantages in chip design while linking surrounding cities to form diversified industrial clusters.

Specifically, Shenzhen has already assembled a roster of leading enterprises in IC design, including HiSilicon, ZTE Microelectronics, and Goodix Technology, with its design industry output consistently ranking among the top nationwide. Zhuhai is home to specialty chip companies such as Allwinner Technology and Actions Technology. Dongguan has a strong foundation in packaging, testing, and electronics manufacturing, while Guangzhou has been actively attracting wafer fabrication projects in recent years. The four-city coordination model is expected to create a complete industry chain spanning design, manufacturing, and packaging and testing.

Six Key Areas Anchoring Future Growth

The priority areas outlined in the plan are highly forward-looking, covering the core tracks of global semiconductor competition:

• Optical Chips: As AI large models drive explosive growth in computing power and data transmission demands, optical interconnect technology is becoming a critical pathway to breaking through electrical interconnect bottlenecks, giving optical chips vast market prospects.
• AI Chips: AI chips are the core hardware supporting large model training and inference. With urgent demand for domestic alternatives, Guangdong's push into AI chips is expected to accelerate progress toward self-sufficiency.
• High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM): HBM is an indispensable component of AI servers, currently dominated by South Korean manufacturers such as SK Hynix and Samsung. The potential for domestic production is enormous.
• Advanced Packaging and Testing: The rise of chiplet architecture has made advanced packaging a key technological breakthrough in the "post-Moore's Law era," with 2.5D/3D packaging technologies gaining increasing importance.
• Core Equipment and Components: Semiconductor equipment represents a critical chokepoint in the industry chain, encompassing key process tools for lithography, etching, and thin-film deposition.
• Critical Materials: Domestic substitution of semiconductor materials such as photoresist, electronic specialty gases, silicon wafers, and sputtering targets is equally fundamental to industrial security.

Application-Driven Strategy for Differentiated Development

Notably, the plan proposes a strategy of "using applications to drive the differentiated development of mature process nodes and compound semiconductors." This approach reflects a pragmatic industrial development logic — given the constraints on advanced process nodes due to equipment limitations, Guangdong is choosing to leverage the enormous advantages of its end-use application market, using demand to continuously optimize mature process technologies while carving out a differentiated path in third-generation semiconductors such as gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC).

As China's largest electronic information industry base, Guangdong is home to major terminal brands including Huawei, OPPO, vivo, DJI, and BYD, with rich application scenarios spanning consumer electronics, new energy vehicles, and industrial controls. This provides uniquely favorable conditions for a "use-driven R&D" approach to chip development.

Outlook: Policy Dividends Accelerating Industrial Clustering

Guangdong's systematic semiconductor industry deployment in the 15th Five-Year Plan marks a further deepening of chip self-reliance strategy at the local government level. Against the backdrop of continued investment from the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund and intensive rollout of local policies, Guangdong is well-positioned to seize first-mover advantages in emerging tracks such as optical chips, AI chips, and advanced packaging, thanks to its robust industrial foundation, active market demand, and well-established innovation ecosystem.

Industry analysts believe the next five years will be a critical window for reshaping China's semiconductor industry landscape. Guangdong's plan not only provides clear direction for companies within the province but is also expected to attract more upstream and downstream resources to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, driving the formation of an internationally competitive semiconductor industry hub.