Washington think tank counts 343 immersion DUV machines in Chinese-owned fabs

Divide the spending by the machines and each NXT:1980i cost China more than $72 million ^[1]. That holds if the $13 billion covers both the 90 units of 2024 and the 89 of 2025, which is how the figures are phrased ^[4]. Those 179 purchases are about two-thirds of the roughly 270 NXT:1980i scanners in the CTS count ^[2][3].

The report's headline projection is up to 434 million chips a year by 2035, each equivalent to an Nvidia H100, on the assumption that China keeps importing 90 NXT:1980i machines a year ^[10]. That matches the 2024 pace, or rather the 2024 pace to the unit and the 2025 pace less one ^[4]. At the implied price it is more than $6.5 billion of annual sales for ASML, which holds a near-monopoly in advanced lithography ^[3][5]. The published accounts of the report do not compare the purchases with ASML's total revenue or its China share ^[2].

Washington cares about an older tool because immersion DUV, though behind EUV, can make 7-nanometer logic and high-end memory ^[7]. The co-authors are Nicholas Brown, a former Commerce Department export control officer, and Saif Khan, a former White House technology policy adviser, and they argue that a full DUV blockade is urgently needed ^[12]. Their own model sets limits on what that achieves. Stopping new imports from 2027 cuts the 2035 projection to about 153 million chips, a reduction of about 281 million, or roughly 65% ^[11][4]. The remaining 153 million is what CTS expects China to make even under the policy it is asking for ^[11].

For ASML's China immersion revenue, the base case is that Dutch case-by-case licensing continues and the CTS assumption of 90 machines a year holds ^[6][10]. Congress offers an alternative in the MATCH Act, a bill that would pull the Netherlands and Japan into US rules within 150 days ^[14]. Beijing offers its own: The Information reported in July that a Chinese company had begun producing DUV systems with government support ^[13]. That news came after a December report of a Chinese EUV prototype, and it sent global chipmaker shares down as investors bet on ASML's monopoly cracking ^[15].

I think the second and third paths end in the same place for ASML's China immersion orders, and Beijing's spending suggests it agrees. China is not waiting for a domestic tool. It bought 179 foreign scanners in two years while a Chinese maker started DUV production with state help ^[4][13]. Seoul Economic Daily attributes that push to build locally to the effort in Washington to tighten lithography controls ^[16]. The counter-case rests on the Dutch record. The Netherlands took back licensing control of older models after pushback at home, and the MATCH Act has only been introduced ^[6][14].

The view is wrong if Dutch licences keep clearing at the 2024-25 rate, the bill stalls and the Chinese DUV maker ships nothing in volume through 2027 ^[4][13][14]. In that case ASML keeps collecting more than $6.5 billion a year from one model in one country, at the report's own prices ^[3].