The final chip challenge: Can China build its own ASML?

In southeastern Beijing, engineers at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s top chipmaker, are working around the clock to expand the output of 14-nanometer and even 7-nm chips, just a few generations behind the world’s leading chipmakers. Being able to make such advanced chips at all is a major breakthrough for a company that has been laboring under a U.S. blacklisting for five years.

But SMIC’s mission goes beyond just making the chips. It wants to produce them entirely with Chinese equipment.