The US won’t be able to stop Chinese firms including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co. from making progress in chip technology, according to one of the semiconductor industry’s leading figures.

SMIC and Huawei, which stunned Washington by unveiling a made-in-China phone processor, can use existing older machines to make even more sophisticated silicon, said Burn J. Lin, a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. vice president. SMIC should be able to advance to the next generation at 5 nanometers with machines from ASML Holding NV that it already operates, said Lin, who at TSMC championed the lithography technology that transformed chipmaking.