Chinese state-owned firms set up semiconductor funds amid calls for ‘patient’ capital

Companies backed by the state and provincial governments in China have announced new funds to focus on the semiconductor industry, which requires a large amount of time and resources to grow, at a time when the country is in need of more “patient capital”.

China Life Insurance, the country’s largest life insurer, backed by the State Council, said it would establish a partnership with total capital of 5 billion yuan (US$737 million) that “principally invests in companies operating in the semiconductor industry”, according to Friday filings to both main bourses in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

The fund, jointly formed with a China Life sister company, would finance chip design firms and others that have “accumulated substantial technical know-how and resources in the semiconductor industry, with distinctive core technological advantages and a well-established research and development system”, according to the filings.

The insurer said that “as a significant force of state-owned capital”, its involvement in “strategic emerging industries such as semiconductors” not only fulfilled its responsibility to support national strategies, but also served as a “concrete manifestation of its role as a provider of long-term and patient capital”.

The move comes as the ruling Communist Party’s top theoretical journal ran commentaries for three days straight last week, urging the cultivation of “patient capital”.

In three posts penned by Xu Siwei, chairman of the state-owned investment firm China Reform Holdings, for the Qiushi journal, he argued that long-term investment willing to tolerate greater risk and longer return cycles would be an important source of strength for China amid rising great-power competition on the global stage.