China has quietly built a fleet of immersion DUV lithography tools large enough to make 7nm-class chips without a single EUV machine from ASML.
According to a report from the Centre for Technology & Statecraft (CTS), Chinese chipmakers imported 343 immersion DUV scanners from ASML between 2012 and early 2026. Of those, 270 are NXT:1980i-class tools with the resolution and overlay precision needed for the multipatterning that 7nm-class production requires. Dutch export licensing cut off the newer NXT:2000i and above in 2023, so Chinese buyers leaned hard into the 1980i line, picking up roughly 90 units in 2024 and 89 in 2025 for more than $13 billion combined. CTS puts that at 68-70% of everything ASML shipped worldwide those two years.
The report's real argument is about a loophole: tools bought for older, less restricted nodes can be reassigned to more advanced ones at a cost, and no single sale trips a wire under current rules. That's the gap the bipartisan MATCH Act is meant to close, by banning DUV exports outright and cutting off spare parts and servicing for machines already installed in Chinese fabs.
Worth flagging that CTS's year-by-year purchase figures can't be independently verified against ASML's own filings, which break out sales by region and not by machine model - so treat the stockpile's exact size as an informed estimate, not a hard count.