China has achieved what seemed impossible: circumventing more than 2,000 ASML patents, the world's only company capable of manufacturing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, essential for producing the most advanced chips. The trick is not a dubious legal loophole, but a genuine engineering solution that opens an alternative path to Western technology, as first reported by xataka.com.

The monopoly ASML maintains (for now)

Extreme ultraviolet lithography is the most critical bottleneck in the entire semiconductor industry. ASML, a Dutch company, is the only one in the world that dominates this technology, manufacturing machines priced between 200 and 400 million dollars each. Since 2019, under pressure from the United States, it has been banned from selling its most advanced models to China, leaving the Asian country without access to essential equipment for producing integrated circuits below 7 nanometres.

This restriction has turned technological independence into a matter of strategic sovereignty for Beijing.

The alternative laser: an engineering solution, not a patent workaround

A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Lin Nan—a former ASML scientist who returned to China in 2021 as part of a state talent recruitment programme—has developed China's first EUV light source platform. The technological difference is radical:

• ASML method: carbon dioxide lasers that fire at moving tin droplets (LPP).
• Chinese method: 1-micron solid-state laser that strikes a solid tin target.

This alternative not only deliberately sidesteps ASML's method, but avoids its 2,000 patents at the same time. According to confirmation from Qiu Yanfang, a columnist specialising in Chinese semiconductors, it is not a legal trick: it is genuine engineering. In an article published in December 2024, Lin's team argued that solid-state lasers offer real advantages: they are more compact and have higher conversion efficiency than carbon dioxide lasers.

Realism about timelines

However, Qiu Yanfang herself tempers the enthusiasm. In the short term, this solid-state light source cannot challenge ASML's absolute dominance. The global industry has built its supply chains, patents and engineering expertise around the carbon dioxide laser. Although laboratory results are promising, there is still a long way to go until mass production.

The Chinese Government aims to produce chips with this technology by 2028, although most analysts consider 2030 a more realistic date.

A parallel and secret race

Lin Nan's route is not the only one. Reuters revealed in December 2025 that China has built an operational EUV machine prototype in a high-security laboratory in Shenzhen. Huawei coordinates this initiative, which involves thousands of engineers distributed across key institutions: the Harbin Institute of Technology handles the light source, the Changchun Institute of Optics the optical systems, SMEE the final integration, and SiCarrier acts as a strategic player backed by the Shenzhen Government.

So far, no Chinese prototype has demonstrated the ability to manufacture commercial integrated circuits using proprietary EUV lithography. Doubts persist about the true pace of progress.

What does this mean for the global technological balance?

What is happening in China reveals an uncomfortable truth for the West: technological blockades force innovation, they do not stop it. If China manages to make either of these two paths work at scale before 2030, ASML's monopoly will begin to crack. This does not solve China's problem outright, but it does open fissures in a wall that seemed insurmountable just years ago.