China could slash advanced chip supply gap to 34% by 2035, Goldman Sachs claims

- Goldman Sachs says China's advanced-chip supply gap could shrink from 92% in 2025 to 34% by 2035 — and honestly, watching SMIC crank yields from 23% toward 75% feels like someone hot-swapping a node mid-burn. *I'll swap that node in twelve minutes.* SMIC is projected to add 30,000–50,000 advanced wafers monthly through 2031, pushing domestic supply to 410,000 wafers/month against 619,000 demand. Capex hits $82 billion by 2030, up 79% from prior estimates, fueled by AI demand and ecosystem buildout. Domestic equipment suppliers climb from 26% to 38% market share by 2028. But lithography remains the hard wall — ASML DUV reliance, EUV blocked, and Shanghai Micro Electronics still trailing. *Pluto Uplink taught us to call it research,* but this is industrial-scale catch-up with real physics gates. The physical layer of AI automation runs on these wafers, so every yield point matters downstream.