The precision of the lithography machine used to manufacture chips determines the upper limit of chip performance. At the "Twelfth Five-Year" Science and Technology Achievements Exhibition, the best lithography machine produced in China had a processing precision of 90 nanometers. This is equivalent to the level of the Pentium 4 CPU, which was launched in 2004. However, foreign countries have already achieved a precision of over ten nanometers.

There are two synchronously moving workpiece tables in the lithography machine, one for carrying the negative film and the other for carrying the adhesive film. They need to be synchronized at all times with an error of less than 2 nanometers. When the two tables transition from stationary to moving, their acceleration is similar to that of a missile launch. During operation, it is akin to two large aircraft taking off and landing simultaneously, with one aircraft extending a knife to carve characters on the rice grain of the other aircraft, without causing any damage.

Low-speed optical and electronic chips have been domestically produced, but high-speed ones are still entirely imported. The most advanced chips produced abroad have a mass production accuracy of 10 nanometers, while China's is only 28 nanometers, a gap of two generations. According to reports, in multiple fields such as computer systems, general electronic systems, communication equipment, memory devices, and display and video systems, the domestic chip market share in China is zero.

Ordinary people, seeing the prosperity of China's IT industry, may think that the technological gap is not significant, but this is not the case. Three American companies monopolize the operating systems for mobile phones and personal computers. Data shows that in 2017, the market share of Android was 85.9%, while Apple's iOS accounted for 14%. Other systems only accounted for 0.1%. This 0.1% is basically Microsoft's Windows and BlackBerry in the United States. Without Google paving the way, smartphones would not be so popular, and the cost for Chinese mobile phone manufacturers to use Android for free is that they may be "cut off" at any time.

The compartment on an aircraft where the engine is placed, commonly known as the "house", is one of the most important core components of the aviation propulsion system, and its cost accounts for about 1/4 of the total engine cost. The nacelle needs to encase the engine to reduce flight drag; its air intake must also have anti-icing and de-icing capabilities; during flight, it must protect the engine from interference and ensure normal operation; on the ground, it needs to facilitate engine maintenance and repair. If the nacelle is damaged, it may cause serious engine accidents during flight. The larger the nacelle, the higher the technical difficulty. China is still blank in this important field. According to all public information, China has no specialized institutions for independently developing nacelles, and relevant universities and colleges seem to have not set up related disciplines.

Tactile sensors are core components of industrial robots. The stringent requirements for precision and stability have hindered the majority of domestic enterprises from advancing towards the production of tactile sensors. Currently, most domestic sensor companies are engaged in the production of sensors for gases, temperature, and other types. In an industry with over 100 enterprises, there are almost no sensor manufacturers producing tactile sensors. Japanese array sensors can distribute 100 sensitive elements in a substrate measuring 10 cm x 10 cm, with a price of 100,000 yuan, while domestic products are mostly point-type, generally priced at 100 yuan each.

The "heart" of OLED panel manufacturing process. Canon Tokki of Japan monopolizes the high-end market and holds the throat of this industry. The industry's annual production forecast for it is usually between a few to a dozen units. Even if you have money, you can't buy it. Canon Tokki can control the error of depositing organic light-emitting materials onto the substrate within 5 microns (1 micron is equivalent to 1% of the diameter of a human hair), and no other company's deposition machine can achieve this level of precision. At present, there is no enterprise in China that produces deposition machines, so we have little say in this field.

On the mainboard of a mobile phone, one-third of the space is occupied by radio frequency (RF) circuits. The development trend of mobile phones is towards thinner and lighter designs, lower power consumption, more frequency bands, and greater bandwidth, which poses challenges to RF chips. RF chips convert digital signals into electromagnetic waves. 4G mobile phones need to support more than a dozen frequency bands and information bandwidths of tens of megabytes.

In 2018, the radio frequency (RF) chip market was worth $15 billion; the high-end market was essentially monopolized by Skyworks, Qorvo, and Broadcom, with Qualcomm also holding a significant share. Another key component of RF devices, filters, exhibits an even greater gap between domestic and international capabilities. The high-end filters used in mobile phones, with a market worth billions of dollars, are entirely dominated by foreign RF device giants such as Qorvo. China is the world's largest mobile phone producer, but it cannot manufacture high-end mobile phone RF devices. This requires a solid accumulation of materials, processes, and design experience.

iCLIP is an emerging experimental technology and one of the most critical technologies for the development of innovative drugs. Its invention allows people to determine where RNA (ribonucleic acid) and proteins "meet" without relying on sophisticated observation instruments, and even to read out the "code" of the binding sites. The difficulty of iCLIP technology is akin to searching for a person in a vast sea of people, requiring precision in identifying one or several specific binding points among billions of base pairs. The accuracy is thus quite remarkable. Foreign research teams have embarked on a "technological race" in this field, with research papers being published in a rotating cycle of several months. However, domestic laboratories have little mature experience in this area.

Gas turbines are widely used in ships, trains, and large power stations. China possesses the capability to independently develop light-duty gas turbines; however, heavy-duty gas turbines are still largely dependent on imports. The major heavy-duty gas turbine manufacturers globally are mainly GE from the United States, Mitsubishi from Japan, Siemens from Germany, and Ansaldo from Italy. All of them impose harsh conditions on cooperation with China: they refuse to transfer design technology, nor the core manufacturing technology for hot-end components, and only license the local manufacturing of non-core components through licensing agreements. The lack of independent development capability means that an important aspect of China's energy security remains under the control of others, posing a risk of being "choked".

Lidar is a sensor equipped with its own light source, actively emitting laser light to perceive the surrounding environment, similar to how bats use ultrasound for positioning. It is an essential component of autonomous vehicles, determining the level of advancement in the autonomous driving industry. However, in this field, domestic products have little influence. Currently, among autonomous vehicles that can be driven on the road, whenever lidar is involved, almost all use products from Velodyne, an American company. Its lidar products are the industry standard, accounting for over 80% of the market share.

To obtain a flight permit for an aeroengine, it must undergo a rigorous "airworthiness" standard system verification, encompassing design, manufacturing, validation, and management. However, currently, the airworthiness certification of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) holds the greatest influence and recognition internationally. Although China's regulatory requirements are basically consistent with those of the FAA, the lack of domestic aeroengine models and practical engineering experience has resulted in a lack of corresponding technical support for China's airworthiness regulations. The airworthiness verification work for actual models has become a bottleneck that keeps China blocked from other countries' airspace.

Capacitors and resistors are the golden supporting roles in the electronics industry. China is the largest market for basic electronic components, consuming trillions of resistors and capacitors annually. However, the best consumer-grade capacitors and resistors come from Japan. The capacitor market is worth over $20 billion annually, and resistors also reach the tens of billions of dollars. For so-called high-end capacitors and resistors, the most important thing is that products from the same batch should be as consistent as possible. Japan excels in this regard, while domestic enterprises lag far behind. Most products from domestic enterprises belong to the mid-to-low end, and they are relatively weak in terms of craftsmanship, materials, and quality control.

China's core industrial software sector remains largely "uncharted territory". The absence of industrial software poses challenges for smart manufacturing. When industrial systems become complex to a certain extent, computer-aided industrial software is needed to replace human brain computation. For instance, in the "must-have tool" EDA industrial software for chip design and production, domestic EDA tools share no fundamental differences in design principles compared to mainstream American EDA tools. However, there is a significant gap in software performance, primarily manifested in insufficient support for advanced technologies and processes, resulting in a "generation gap" with foreign advanced EDA tools. The three major foreign EDA companies, Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor, account for 70% of the global industry's annual revenue. The development of an independent industrial operating system coupled with an independent industrial software system is urgent.

ITO targets are not only used in the production of liquid crystal displays, flat panel displays, plasma displays, touch screens, electronic paper, and organic light-emitting diodes, but also in solar cells, anti-static coatings, and transparent conductive coatings for EMI shielding. They have a broad market globally. The thickness of ITO films varies depending on functional requirements, generally ranging from 30 nanometers to 200 nanometers.

In terms of size, domestic ITO target material enterprises have rarely made breakthroughs, and back-end flat panel display manufacturing enterprises are also at the mercy of others. Sintering large-sized ITO targets requires large sintering furnaces. Foreign countries can produce single-piece targets with a width of 1200mm and a length of nearly 3000mm, while domestic ones can only produce targets with a width of no more than 800mm. In terms of production efficiency, Japanese equipment can achieve a monthly output of 30 to 50 tons, while our annual output is only 30 tons - and importing a single piece of equipment costs 10 million yuan, which is undoubtedly an astronomical price for small domestic enterprises.

Every year, China consumes over 1,000 tons of ITO target materials, about half of which are imported for the production of high-end products.

China has been the world's largest robot application market for five consecutive years, yet high-end robots still rely on imports. Without mastering core algorithms, domestic industrial robots lag far behind products from the "Big Four" industrial robot families: Fanuc (Japan), ABB (Switzerland), Yaskawa (Japan), and Kuka (Germany) in key indicators such as stability, failure rate, and usability. The significant gap in core algorithms results in poor stability and persistently high failure rates of domestic robots. This algorithmic disparity is not only evident in the core controller but also slows down the response speed of the servo system.

For every action a robot completes, it requires the core controller, servo driver, and servo motor to work together. For a single servo system, domestic robots exhibit high dynamic and static accuracy. However, high-end robots typically have more than six servo systems simultaneously, making it difficult to achieve good control effects using traditional control methods.

Whether during takeoff or landing, the landing gear is the sole component supporting the aircraft. Especially during the landing phase, the load it bears not only comes from the weight of the fuselage, but also from the huge vertical impact force of the aircraft. Therefore, the material strength of the landing gear must be excellent, and it can only rely on special steel.

Currently, the most widely used material is the 300M steel from the United States. This material employs vacuum heat treatment technology, which prevents hydrogen permeation, resulting in a bright surface of the parts, free from defects such as oxidation decarburization, recarburization, and grain boundary oxidation, thereby enhancing the surface quality. However, domestically produced ultra-high-strength steel used for landing gear sometimes exhibits issues such as spot defects, sulfide inclusions, coarse grains, internal cracks, and hydrogen permeation during heat treatment. These problems are all related to insufficient purity during the smelting process. Therefore, China still has a significant gap to close in terms of high-purity smelting technology compared to the United States, and there is considerable room for improvement.

With the rapid development of high-speed rail in China in recent years, the issue of rail maintenance has become increasingly concerning for industry experts. If maintenance is not carried out properly, it not only shortens the lifespan of the rails but also poses high risks. China's self-developed dual-power electric drive milling and grinding maintenance robot equipment, known as the "emergency ambulance" for rails, can provide protection for rails. However, the core component of the milling and grinding vehicle, the milling cutter, still needs to be imported from abroad. The material of the milling cutter is a superhard alloy material. We already understand its metal components, but we don't know how the proportions and synthesis are achieved, just like understanding the ancestral secret recipe of a certain traditional Chinese medicine and the proportions of various medicinal materials, which are not very clear.

As an indispensable core component in mechanical equipment, bearings support mechanical rotating bodies, reduce their friction coefficient, and ensure their rotational accuracy. Whether it's aircraft, automobiles, high-speed trains, or high-precision machine tools and instruments, bearings are essential. This places high demands on their accuracy, performance, lifespan, and reliability. While China's bearing manufacturing technology has approached the world's top level, the material—that is, high-end bearing steel—is almost entirely imported.

The research, development, manufacturing, and sales of high-end bearing steel are essentially monopolized by global bearing giants such as Timken of the United States and SKF of Sweden. In recent years, they have established bases in Yantai and Jinan, Shandong Province, respectively, purchasing low-end materials from China and using their core technologies to produce high-end bearings, which they then sell to the Chinese market at ten times the price. Adding rare earth elements during the steelmaking process can make the originally high-quality steel even "stronger." However, how to add these elements is a core secret of the world's bearing giants.

The hydraulic system is one of the key components in the equipment manufacturing industry, and it is indispensable in all engineering fields where mechanical equipment is present. The high-pressure piston pump is the core component of high-end hydraulic equipment and is known as the "heart" of the hydraulic system. In 2017, the scale of China's hydraulic industry ranked second globally, but the industry is large but not strong, especially in high-pressure piston pumps with rated pressures above 35 MPa, over 90% of which rely on imports. Compared with foreign brands, domestically produced hydraulic piston pumps lag significantly in terms of technological progressiveness, operational reliability, service life, variable mechanism control functions, and dynamic and static performance indicators, basically equivalent to the level of the early 1990s abroad.

Since the 1980s, the global aviation industry has entered a new stage of digital design, and now it has reached a highly dependent level where design cannot be carried out without software. Designing an aircraft requires at least a dozen specialized software programs, all of which are products from European and American countries. Domestic design units not only have to invest heavily in purchasing software, but also face significant constraints, akin to wearing a tightening "gripper spell" around their heads. Once this "gripper spell" is invoked, the entire aviation industry will be paralyzed.

According to media reports, when designing the J-10 aircraft, the entire metal component of the main load-bearing structure of the main landing gear was outsourced to a foreign manufacturer. However, after its completion, there was a problem with the landing gear's retraction, resulting in a 5mm error, forcing a reorder and remanufacturing. This minor error alone delayed the maiden flight of the J-10 by eight to nine months. Without the support of fully digital software, any slight error can become a nightmare for the manufacturing industry.