If China takes over Taiwan, what happens to silicon chips? If China came to own Taiwan, what would it mean for our tech industry? Is this China's master stroke? That it can be sure that the whole world will fall into line because we are reliant too heavily on Taiwan for silicon chips? Or will Taiwan seek to destroy those factories before China can own them? Which would send the world into a crazy period, but will ensure China largely loses a significant advantage, and any victory is tainted. |
But ultimately TSMC is expendable. TSMC is a media side show that obfuscates the actual amount of strategic semi assets PRC can physically threaten that will take decades to diversify out of trivial PRC striking range. Most of which are in Korea/Japan with US security guarantee, hence TW getting more reporting - it's under more theoretic "threat", combined with TMSC making all the leading edge chips for newsworthy products.
East Asian supply chain supports ~80% of global semiconductor production. Destroying TW fabs sets back a few generations of leading edge nodes which are already deniable to PRC due to US origin tech% and effects some high tech industries. PRC undermining/destroying east Asian fabs will set back global semiconductor capex for decades an every node which is essential to every western industry that requires a chip. It will constrain majority of global manufacturing to 90-00s technology. That's the real semi MAD, and why everyone is trying to build capex off TW island.
- TSMC's foundries stop operating soon because they're not getting new equipment, replacement parts, or supplies to operate the foundry from ASML or anyone else in the West, thanks to the inevitable embargo/sanctions that would follow. Even if the fabs were supplied and operating, nobody would dare send their designs to them to be fabbed anyway.
- TSMC's senior research and engineering staff are either evacuated or, if captured, are less productive than before.
- TSMC's shareholders (you know, the people who actually own the company) work out intellectual property licenses to Samsung and Intel, who are not that far behind TSMC in fab prowess, to raise capital to complete their own fabs in the West.
- Availability of consumer electronics gets extremely tight for several years then life goes on.
Strange way of saying "$2 Trillion Apple goes bankrupt because no chips means no product to sell".
Remember, it is not just Apple that would be hit. All their competition would also. And out of all companies that produce phones Apple has probably most cash on hand. They have something like 200B USD in cash.
Also Apple is in best position to be first in line to by chips at a premium outside Taiwan as their products are already expensive and high margin. And even if that doesn't work, they are in best position to just set up their own production. This would take couple of years but would set them to kill all their competition for foreseeable future so I am pretty sure they would look it as fabulous investment.
Look at latest iPhone teardowns. There is just couple of chips in it, and already designed by Apple.
The only other company I can think of is Samsung, that sits on a pile of cash half the size of Apple's. But while Samsung is well diversified, basically all their lines of business rely on chips, too. While Apple does not need a lot of different types of chips, Samsung probably relies on so many that they would not be able to replicate all of them.
Word on the street is that TSMC buildings in Taiwan are already set up to be scuttled. Explosives located in locked rooms within the facilities.
A lot of countries are building up reasons to not like China, that would be the tipping point.
Manufacturing would flood out of the country, there'd be massive sanctions, other fabs would ramp up and more would be set up over time.
'Belt And Road' would be kaput, and a bunch of nations that supposedly owe China money would probably cancel their debt.
It would cause a recession and everything would slow down for a bit, but that would be the tipping point for the 'Next Phase' of China's development and it would be bad news.
Not sure what you mean by "internal needs", but China is currently suffering mass blackout because China banned Australian coal. Seems to me that China puts its domestic politics in front of people's need.
* Well, at least not burning coal is a massive win for the Earth, so there's that. :/
They also took it a step further and asked Chinese in other countries to get medical supplies back to China potentially leaving other countries in difficulty. E.g. https://www.smh.com.au/national/second-developer-flies-82-to...
It should be a wake up call for politicians, though no doubt will be forgotten. International trade is great and but this clearly showed nations should keep some base activity domestically for key/essential industries.
Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu literally said yesterday his country is preparing for war. I think he'd know.
Taiwan being an autonomous province of PRC would not significantly change the current economic relationship between USA and China. In fact, it would probably improve it by resolving unnecessary tension.
China and USA are diverging with or without war. The question is will Taiwan's capacity be claimed by China, or will it be massively downgraded.
I agree the WMD situation was a low point in morality and humanity. But this situation has a massively different dynamic.
China would be at a massive disadvantage if it won Taiwan and lost the chip factories. That really would be a massive cold war, then.
2. If China loses, they will bomb the fabs on the way out.
3.
I don't think there will be war over Taiwan, because if it was an effective Chinese invasion - there is nothing anyone could do about it. If China takes the Island, then they will keep it, not even the US could displace them without incredible force of power.
If the US was involved in the fight and US took casualties i.e. downed fighters/bombers, or worse, a ship sunk, then the US will extract blood for that in other ways, notably, I can see the US and allies pushing China out out of the S. China Sea as a form of retaliation because it's militarily plausible.
But it would take nuclear war for anyone to push China off of Taiwan if they secured it and were well dug in and nobody's going to do that.
The personnel seem a bit more possible, though I'm sure China would not be interested in its most economically productive "citizens" fleeing, so it probably wouldn't allow them through a naval blockade either.
[1] https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-d...
If China takes over Taiwan, how soon can USA build a united force with Japan, Australia, South Korea, probably British, India etc to take it back, like what occurred in Kuwart?
This might set all of us back 2 decades but other options will be worse?
None of the leaders of the listed nations want to die in a nuclear holocaust.
So no, your "united force" will never happen.
The new thing might be lots of drones with bombs though.
Samsung owns cutting edge fabs and is pretty self reliant. China has SMIC.