Xi’an’s semiconductor industry has reached the scale of the city’s signature aerospace manufacturing sector after a decade of expansion, with Samsung at the center of that rise.
According to the source article, revenue for Xi’an’s electronic device manufacturing sector — the industrial category in the city’s statistics that most closely matches semiconductor manufacturing — climbed from RMB 10.8 billion in 2014 to RMB 91 billion in 2024. A decade ago, that was only one-quarter the size of aerospace manufacturing. It is now in the same range.
Samsung was the anchor project behind that jump. At the same time, the article says Xi’an began to think beyond sheer scale and toward a deeper industrial chain buildout once that base had been established.
How Samsung’s project changed Xi’an’s semiconductor map
In 2012, attracting major foreign-funded projects was a common way for Chinese cities to build emerging industries. The idea was straightforward: use multinational capital, technology and orders to enter the global supply chain first, then spend a longer cycle connecting local companies, manufacturing platforms and end markets.
For Xi’an, the project it secured was Samsung.
The story began in 2012, when smartphone adoption was rising quickly around the world and storage demand was growing with the spread of photos and video. After news emerged that Samsung planned to build a new production base in China, first- and second-tier Chinese cities entered the competition. Compared with more prominent candidates such as Beijing and Chongqing, Xi’an was not an obvious front-runner at the outset.
Samsung’s wafer fab had a demanding site checklist. The production line needed to run continuously year-round, which meant strict requirements for water and electricity supply, industrial land and logistics support. Xi’an was able to meet those conditions at the same time. The Xi’an High-tech Zone already had a relatively complete industrial base, including electronics and information companies such as ZTE and Huawei, and a Micron semiconductor project had already landed there. Talent was another direct advantage. More than 40 universities in Xi’an offered electronics and information-related disciplines, and more than 50 research institutes had long worked in related fields. Samsung eventually chose a site near the Chang’an campus of Xidian University, known for its strength in microelectronics.
Before Samsung arrived, Xi’an’s five leading industries were still high technology, equipment manufacturing, modern services, tourism and culture. Semiconductors sat inside the broad “high technology” bucket, with research teams, packaging and testing plants, and university and institute resources scattered across the city.
In September 2012, the Samsung project officially broke ground. Twenty months later, the 12-inch wafer production line started operating around the clock. As Samsung’s only overseas memory chip plant, the Xi’an facility produces NAND flash chips used widely in smartphones, solid-state drives and storage equipment for data centers. It accounts for about 40% of Samsung’s global NAND output. For Xi’an, this filled the most capital-intensive and technically demanding link in the chain: large-scale wafer manufacturing.
Two industrial geographies, one city’s transition
Samsung’s park sits in the city’s southwest, about 30 kilometers from downtown. On the other side of the city, around 50 kilometers to the northeast, is Yanliang, widely known as “Xi’an Aviation City.”
In the late 1950s, China’s aviation industry was relocated inland, and Yanliang took on the task of developing the country’s large and medium-sized aircraft. Aerospace then became Xi’an’s industrial calling card for more than half a century. Institute 771 of the aerospace system also developed integrated circuit and dedicated chip research capabilities while working on guidance computers for launch vehicles, leaving Xi’an with an early technical thread in semiconductors.
The article uses these two partially connected industries, and two industrial spaces nearly 100 kilometers apart, to show different stages of Xi’an’s industrial development.
Expansion pushed Xi’an into the 100-billion-yuan tier
Samsung’s arrival also changed the way Xi’an organized industry. The city’s original five leading sectors were split into more specialized industry clusters, while major projects and dedicated parks took on a larger role in organizing production capacity. Around Samsung’s manufacturing needs, the Xi’an High-tech Zone brought in semiconductor materials and equipment companies, improved utility and logistics services, and made supply-chain construction a central policy focus.
Four years after phase one came online, Samsung launched its phase-two expansion in Xi’an, which entered production in 2020. Public reports cited in the article say Samsung’s cumulative investment in Xi’an had reached about $29.3 billion as of June 2024.
That continuous expansion pushed Xi’an’s semiconductor sector into the 100-billion-yuan range. Based on the city’s industry and information technology department, Xi’an’s semiconductor industry reached RMB 140.654 billion in 2024. Samsung’s electronic audit report for that year showed the Xi’an plant generated sales of about RMB 56 billion, equal to 40% of the city’s semiconductor industry scale.
The project also changed Shaanxi’s foreign trade structure. In 2024, the province’s integrated circuit exports reached RMB 113.49 billion, accounting for nearly 40% of total provincial exports and 10% of China’s exports in the same category. At that scale, Shaanxi ranked behind only Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shanghai among provincial-level units, and became the only inland province to cross the RMB 100 billion mark.
Scale arrived, but the local loop did not fully connect
Samsung brought world-class wafer manufacturing capacity and a large industrial base. The article says it also exposed a break in Xi’an’s semiconductor chain.
The Xi’an plant follows Samsung’s vertically integrated system. Chips are designed within the group, while materials and equipment procurement follows Samsung’s global supplier network. That structure did not directly open an interface to local companies. Xi’an-based design companies such as Unigroup Guoxin still needed to work with wafer fabs outside the city, while local material and equipment companies had to find customers through their own channels.
In effect, Xi’an assembled the main links of a semiconductor industry chain, but Samsung and local companies have mostly operated in parallel systems rather than in one tightly connected local cycle.
When so much of an industry’s scale and trajectory depends on one foreign-invested factory, changes in outside policy can quickly turn into local industrial risk. The article says that at the end of 2025, the United States canceled the Xi’an plant’s Validated End User authorization, which also removed the previous import exemption for equipment. Controlled equipment and parts then had to go through fresh licensing applications. Samsung remained Xi’an’s most important manufacturing anchor, but future upgrades and capacity expansion faced major uncertainty.
Policy shifted toward local collaboration and usable production lines
Closing that gap has become a policy priority in recent years. After 2020, integrated circuits were listed as one of Xi’an’s key industry chains. The focus shifted from projects and parks to collaboration between companies, including pilot platforms, material verification and efforts to find new application scenarios for local products.
The most critical step, according to the article, was to provide local chip design companies with a manufacturing line they could actually use. In 2025, Xinye Shidai’s 8-inch specialty-process production line in the High-tech Zone was completed. It mainly manufactures power devices and analog chips. Compared with Samsung’s memory chips, that line is closer to demand from new energy vehicles, photovoltaics and industrial control, giving locally designed chips a chance to complete trial production and verification nearby.
Outside manufacturing, Xi’an has also been adding upstream materials capacity and pilot-scale capabilities. Using the Samsung plant as a reference point, the Shaanxi Semiconductor Advanced Technology Center, about 15 kilometers to the north, helps universities and companies turn lab results into small-batch products. In the southern part of the High-tech Zone, Eshine built a 12-inch silicon wafer production base. About 4 kilometers to the east, Xi’an Electronic Valley has actively gathered chip design companies and industrialization platforms. The article describes these sites, spread across more than 10 kilometers from south to north in the High-tech Zone, as nodes that have started to connect a large number of semiconductor players.
A second growth curve is emerging, but market access is still the hard part
In optoelectronic chips, local technological progress has also started turning into products. Yuanjie Technology, based in Xixian New Area, mainly makes laser chips used in optical modules, helping data move between servers through high-speed optical signals. In 2025, the company’s 70mW and 100mW laser chips entered volume delivery, while higher-speed EML products moved into customer verification.
The article says Xi’an’s semiconductor industry has now begun to show a “second growth curve.” Its significance lies in allowing incremental growth to rely less on Samsung over time, while local companies build a steadier network spanning research, manufacturing and market demand.
But the next bottleneck sits on the demand side. In August 2024, Shaanxi organized a supply-demand matching event between five vehicle and equipment makers and seven chip companies, putting demand for heavy truck and new energy passenger vehicle chips in front of local suppliers. Under industry practice, those products still have to pass automotive-standard certification, model introduction and mass production before they can secure ongoing orders. The article notes that this process often takes years and requires strong process stability and sustained service capability.
Samsung is still likely to remain a key support point for Xi’an semiconductors. But the city’s next stage depends on whether locally designed chips can make it onto production lines and then into customer products. That is where Xi’an’s room to shape its own industrial direction will be tested.
The source article was published by Yicai City Research Institute on WeChat, written by Xin Yijiang, under the original headline: “Xi’an Semiconductors: Reliant on Samsung, but Not Only Samsung | Rediscovering Xi’an.”