China's integrated circuit (IC) industry sales reached 653.2 billion yuan (about 97.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, according to an official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The industry's compound annual growth rate from 2012 to 2018 was 20.3 percent, nearly three times the global average, said Ren Aiguang, who heads the IC office in MITT, at a meeting held in the southern city of Shenzhen.

The industry also saw a better structure with the sales share of IC design and manufacturing increasing and that of IC packing and testing shrinking in 2018, Ren said.

Despite the progress, Ren noted mid-range and low-end products still occupy a large share in the IC design market and the industry still lags behind in storage manufacturing compared with global leaders.