History of PCB Development in China

PCB is short of Printed Circuit Board in English. The prototype of PCB comes from the telephone exchange system using the concept of "Circuit" in the early 20th century. It was made by cutting metal foil into circuit conductors and adhere them between two pieces of paraffin paper.

The PCB in the true sense was born in the 1930s. It is made by electronic printing. It uses an insulating board as the base material and is cut to a certain size. At least one conductive pattern is attached to it and with holes placed (such as component holes, fixing holes, metalized holes, etc.), used to replace the previous chassis of the electronic components, and realize the interconnection between the electronic components, and play the role of relay transmission. It is the support body of the electronic components. There are "Mother of electronic products".

History of PCB Development in China

In 1956, China started PCB research and development.

In the 1960s, single-sided boards were produced in batches, double-sided boards were produced in small batches, and multilayer boards were developed.

In the 1970s, due to the limitations of historical conditions at that time, the development of printed board technology was slow, making the entire production technology lagging behind the advanced level of foreign countries.

In the 1980s, advanced single-sided, double-sided, and multi-layer printed board production lines were introduced from abroad, which improved the production technology level of printed boards in China.

In the 1990s, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan and other foreign printed board manufacturers have come to China to set up joint ventures and wholly-owned factories, which has enabled Chinese printed board output and technology to advance by leaps and bounds.

In 2002, China became the world's third largest PCB producer.

In 2003, PCB output value and import and export value both exceeded US$6 billion, surpassing the United States for the first time, becoming the world's second largest PCB producer. The proportion of output value has also increased from 8.54% in 2000 to 15.30%, an increase of nearly double.

In 2006, China has replaced Japan as the world's largest PCB production base and the most active country in technological development.

In recent years, Chinese PCB industry has maintained a high-speed growth of about 20%, which is far higher than the growth rate of the global PCB industry. From 2008 to 2016, the output value of Chinese PCB industry increased from US$15.037 billion to US$27.123 billion, with a annual growth rate of 7.65%, which was much higher than the global overall growth rate of 1.47%. Prismark data shows that the global PCB industry output value in 2019 is about 61.34 billion U.S. dollars, of which Chinese PCB output value reached 32.9 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for about 53.7% of the global market.