TSMC looks to double down on U.S. chip factories as talks in Europe falter

As a first pass, wouldn't this be good for China? TSMC was strategic for Taiwan, as a military takeover of Taiwan (where the plants will likely be damaged or scuttled) would be economically damaging for the US. That might be a bit different if the US has enough high-the fabs internally.

I'd love to hear better analysis; I'm not confident of my understanding here.

Politically it would be ideal to keep everything in Taiwan as this greatly increases the stakes for a potential war.

However there is a pressing shortage of electricity in Taiwan. Just yesterday there had been a major blackout as one of the coal fired power stations suddenly went off the grid. I'm sure TSMC has been given priority supply but they are cutting it extremely close. Taiwan is just not a good place to have more fabs right now.

The shortage is unlikely to get better in the long term, with existing nuclear power stations nearing the end of their service life and the replacement stuck in political limbo. And there are already plans to move all 28nm+ process to China so they could better utilize the resources in Taiwan for the more profitable products.

https://amp.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3131823/why-has-t...

China will do everything it can to keep the factories in a war, it’s likely the US would offer a lot of Taiwanese US visas especially those in tech, it’s likely the Taiwanese people will have a general strike and the whole place will be very unpleasant to live in after probably many hundreds of thousands of Chinese dead due to choke points getting onto the island. It’s likely after an invasion most production for the West will have to move to other cheaper countries. I can’t see how we can do business with a country that invaded a democratic country.

I really don’t get why China care so much or the CCP see their hold over China as so weak they don’t want to be a part of the world system. But it’s their loss and America will have a clear competitor to focus minds and have a Cold War with again.

>I can’t see how we can do business with a country that invaded a democratic country.

Where do we draw the line? Because there is one country in the western world that would be banned from trade if destroying democracies are not allowed. It is also the only country in the world that has toppled governments so many times it has its own Wikipedia article. So unless you define it as only "full-scale invasion" the US would have to be put outside.

As someone from Africa with knowledge of USA involvement in toppling some governments here, I sometimes wonder who's worst? A country I know for certain it has invaded unilaterally others (USA) or a country with potential of one day in the future for invading countries (China).

OK, in theory you are right. But I doubt the average citizen lost from that. Did those guys win elections or just stole them /took power by gun to loot the country?

> after probably many hundreds of thousands of Chinese dead due to choke points getting onto the island

I wouldn't put it past China to simply flatten the entire island or at least everything surrounding these chokepoints with conventional bombs until submission and genocide whoever remains alive afterwards.

They want the island as much for the people and technology as they do the land. They have plenty of land. The choke points can be bombed from anywhere on the island and even from cruise missiles.

That...is a very racist view of African governments.

I can't say which outcome will be better but I do personally like China's way of buying their way in with money, roads, etc. better than the "old way" with selling guns to rebels, using CIA agents etc. I wish both would stop meddling in Africa though. Such a horrific history of greed. I'm curious how you see the difference though?

Patrice Lumumba [1] won an election and was removed and assassinated by the US and Belgian governments.

They replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko a kleptocratic and murderous dictator, whom they supported for most of his reign.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko

Maybe read your sources before posting:

"The report concluded that Belgium had not ordered Lumumba's assassination"

And

"In 2013, the U.S. State Department admitted that President Eisenhower authorized the murder of Lumumba.

However, documents released in 2017 revealed that an American role in Lumumba's murder was only under consideration by the CIA.

CIA Chief Allan Dulles had allocated $100,000 to accomplish the act, but the plan was not carried out."

China does not want to take over Taiwan other than not having a non-US-ally close at door. Previous government of Taiwan had good relationship with China, although China didn't allow them to join WHO as an independent country, it did permit it to join WHA and WHO as a non-member state. China's trade deficit with Taiwan is tens of billions dollars every year.

It is just that US's strategy of containing China works really well with the pro-independence party in Taiwan. Anyone allowing Taiwan to be fully independent will lose power in China. It is mainly a proxy power fight between US and China. Taiwan is the most important spot in the first pearl chain containing China. China will have to make a decision either to break the chain or be contained forever. It is a interesting year, since we already have three or four wars broke out this year so far.

[Retracted]

Business as usual you could say...

i think you may have misunderstood him, you both are talking about the same thing

I read the main problem at the moment for fabs in Taiwan is water shortages.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-ta...

Small correction... China’s belt & road initiative is more about lending than buying.

It’s more nuanced than that. They lend, sure, but the terms often involve them flying in their own labor force from the mainland to do the building - with Chinese materials of course - meaning they have basically no skin in the game. Then, when the host country defaults on its obligations the PRC owns the infrastructure they built, and leverage their largesse to hold onto the infrastructure until it makes sense, or incorporate it into new plans. The southern port in Sri Lanka, Hambatonta. [1]

> “John Adams said infamously that a way to subjugate a country is through either the sword or debt. China has chosen the latter,” said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst who often advises the Indian government and is affiliated with the Center for Policy Research, a think tank in New Delhi.

Careful not to underestimate the PRC.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...

I work with some UN and Bretton Woods institutions lending money to Africa and I can tell you that IMF/WB are also lending us money. They take "your hard earned savings" and come in here and invest her so that they can make future profits and grow the saving funds. If USA give you his money, as head of state you need to understand that it is not for the joy of it but that money need to yield interest or you will be toppled. This is not your money, it's American Savings! China is doing the same, just blatantly and with the bashing for the west.

[We] see you two .

I was raised and taught to think in a liberal way. The American way. That America guarantee the free trade of goods and "American peace" (with toppling governments it doesn't want!) and no other country needs to build huge armies as long as they follow the "American rule of law". This has led to a long period of "worldwide peace" ( No peace thaugh! since American's president didn't bother to lift his finger to stop my ancestors being slaughtered because... we are not strategic!).

Then Trump passed by and showed "us" that really, American needs to think about itself beforehand. like build its crumbling highways before coming to build Africa highways in order to counter China.

Now I see China has lifted more than 700M peoples out of poverty without firing a single shot and not interfering blatantly in our politics ( Well... lol. They provided arms to all the warring factions in my country... they let us fight, because we were stupid.).

And more importantly China tells me it has a new order where countries [Westerners that have been colonizing us... Seen French colonies?] respect sovereignty of each other and has money to build me highways in exchange of raw materials and stuff [it is recycling the surplus of USD gained trading with USA!!!].

And I might have a say in the new order.

So what do you think I might chose ? As an African citizen ?

Economic hitmen make regular hitman numbers look pathetic, both in lives and money.

“Better move to Arizona.”

Please share the examples of the US “unilaterally invading” countries in Africa. I’m not aware of an example, but I’d love to learn something new.

If you are using fuzzy rhetoric to refer to various forms of political interference (clandestine or otherwise, legal or otherwise)... I would agree. But then the comparison vs. China and other world powers gets a lot muddier. Even the comparison between world powers and local powers gets muddy in that case. Politics, local or global, is historically ugly business.

The key global questions should be what frameworks of behavior do we want to condone? What justifications do we allow as legitimate nation-state motivations? How is it acceptable for states to treat their own people? (The last is particularly relevant when a state contains approximately 1/5th of humanity itself.)

Does China really offer a better vision to you?

TSMC reportedly uses over 50 million tonnes of water per year, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the annual 12 billion tonnes consumed by agriculture.

https://highscope.ch.ntu.edu.tw/wordpress/?p=42837

In any case, the current drought is likely to ease at some point but the electricity problem is only going to get worse.

We’ve lost the plot here. Lumumba assassination was in 1960... 60 years ago. Since then, China had a Cultural Revolution, murdered their own people in Tiananmen, taken over by force and oppression in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

If we are comparing the character and proposed world order of China vs. US (or whoever else), we should be focused on the present: that which is actually on the table to choose between.

Sorry. Saying that region is a mess full with strongmans, dictators and other unsavory people on top is not racist.

North of Africa is a mess. A lot of Sub-Saharan is ruled by strongmen. And even the places where there is actually democracy the state apparatus usually tries to rig elections in favor of current rulers.

Both by territory and population I am willing to bet that the people that live in countries with free and fair elections with peaceful transitions between administrations are a minority.

This is wholly contradicted by decades of Chinese statecraft and diplomacy, and more recently and directly by Xi’s repeated, insistent rhetoric about unification.

They badly want Taiwan. Not at any cost, but certainly at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives —- especially those of the ‘ungrateful’ and ‘unruly’ Taiwanese.

The existence of trade between them in no way contradicts those desires.

You have misread the comment and mixed up two separate but undeniably true things:

1. "... USA involvement in toppling some governments here" - if we go by the 20th and 21st Centuries we have at least Egypt (1952), Angola (from 1975 onwards), Congo/Zaire (1960s, 1977, 1978, 1996) and most recently Libya (2011).

2. "A country I know for certain it has invaded unilaterally others (USA)" - so numerous and well known it's pointless to bother listing them.

Are those numbers really comparable? Agriculture can use more or less any kind of water, can handle sporadic supply and is spread over a wide area. Fabs need very large quantities of highly purified water in very small high density locations and it's an industrial facility so can't handle interruptions well. It could easily be that there's a shortage of water affecting fabs whilst agriculture is fine.

You are right about the situation now. I was mainly talking about how did we end up here.

The "Taiwan is part of China" has been in the text book of China since the People's Republic of China founded. If you looked at diplomacy, one thing China did previously was to maintain the status quo to a degree that it has refused to take the few countries which recognize Taiwan in order to maintain the friendly relationship.

I have to say that now things changed. That's why it has become a hotspot for a potential war zone between US and China.

As for TSMC, I believe the decision should be attributed to Biden's government's push for having production capacity in the US rather than a pure business decision.

It does also say:

"In the early 21st century, writer Ludo De Witte found written orders from the Belgian government that had requested Lumumba's execution, and documents on various arrangements, such as death squads"

I realise that this may be a bit of confirmation bias on my side, regarding which of these I believe.

Noted. I've retracted my statement.

Are you serious?? You doubt that the "average citizen" lost out from having their resources plundered / dissidents murdered / genocides committed / food siphoned out during famines / outstandingly successful land reforms overturned because US companies wanted to hoard land ...

It's staggering how insulting your comment is. How would you feel if somebody invaded your country, dismantled your government, decided who got to rule you, and told you it was all for the best and you probably didn't even lose out. Would you like it?

> he "Taiwan is part of China" has been in the text book of China since the People's Republic of China founded

Well... The island has been a part of China historically, taken by the Japanese in the first Sino-Japanese war, and after WWII returned to China, which was in the middle of a civil war, in which the losing side ran away to the island. Their flag and official name are the ones of the Kuomintang party and regime, aforementioned losing side.

It'd be like if the CSA run away to Hawaii, assimilated the local population, called itself CSA with flag and all, and the USA still said from times to times it belongs to them.

And not only that, the UN and all members see it like that as well - officially and for diplomatic purposes, Taiwan doesn't exist and is a part of China.

The comment was written in a way that seemed to casually comingle the two claims.

Your #2, despite your smug certainty, is wrong as well. Go ahead and name some. I promise none were “unilateral invasions”.

You are right that fabs require a much higher grade of water but the overall quantity is much less. Yet with farmers suffering the worst effect of the drought it is very difficult for TSMC to expand production without looking like the bad guy who profit at other people's expense. Notwithstanding the fact that the actual amount of water they use is not significant.

NYT has a pretty good piece of reporting about the situation:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/tech...

The actual link instead of an AMP one (please stop using AMP)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/technology/taiwan-drought...

Both of these were mixed up in a parent post.

Chinas version of this includes forced communism, and a whole slew of lost freedoms as a result. When was the last time the US took away freedoms from an “elected” gov? Also who elected these govs? Free or forced citizens?

> the electricity problem is only going to get worse.

That's not a given at all - Taiwan could just build more nuclear power plants if they wanted.

Taiwan is geologically active and as a result there are few viable locations to build a nuclear power plant.

Ironically, the Taipei-Hsinchu metropolitan area is on very solid ground and would have been perfect for a nuclear power station if it weren't so heavily populated.

Taiwan already has three nuclear power plants, one of which is being decommisioned. Construction on a fourth was started but halted due to politics.

The new plant is fully constructed and permanently mothballed. They went as far as removing all fuel rods and shipped them back to the US manufacturer. Unless something drastic happens I don't think we will see it in operation ever.