One thing that differentiated Taiwan is that a lot of people left the country to study abroad and earn phDs in science or engineering and ended up working in th

One thing that differentiated Taiwan is that a lot of people left the country to study abroad and earn phDs in science or engineering and ended up working in the US tech industry. When the Taiwanese government began to make initiatives to support a local semiconductor industry, they had connections to the industry to be able to make deals with American and European companies--some of which had Taiwanese leaders or founders. Edit: On the note of Europe, Philips was one of TSMC's original investors and customers. Philips also co-founded ASML which other people have mentioned.