6 ms·

How would this benefit the people living in Taiwan in case of invasion? It would just make them poorer.

mantas 5y ago
They'd be loose TSMC in either case. If Chinese would knew that TSMC is blown up once they start invasion, that'd be one less reason to invade.
- rat9988 5y ago
  > They'd be loose TSMC in either case. TSMC would be chinese, and the taiwanese too. It's not like they are gonna kick everyone from taiwan and claim the earth. > If Chinese would knew that TSMC is blown up once they start invasion, I'm not sure, they'd still be better with taiwain under their control than not.
- friendstock 5y ago
  China is invading Taiwan because of misguided nationalistic pride and internal legitimacy, not to gain TSMC. If possible, Taiwan should keep TSMC so that the West has a reason to defend Taiwan.
  - krona 5y ago
    Taiwan would be destroyed in an invasion, TSMC along with it. China would then have a de-facto monopoly on semiconductor manufacturing. This is why the manufacturing needs to diversify geographically.
    - FooBarWidget 5y ago
      Isn't Samsung also pretty close?
      - mantas 5y ago
        And South Korea is pretty close to China as well...
        FooBarWidget 5y ago
        China's relationship with South Korea is fundamentally different from China's relationship with Taiwan.
        arroz 5y ago
        South Korea is pretty close to North Korea which although much more unlikely could happen too
      - arroz 5y ago
        Samsung technology is used mainly for memories. Why? No idea. In any case, people would have to migrate their workflows which would take time, and then manufacture there. This would cause huge delays / price spikes There are other chip manufactures in the world too if people are willing to buy outdated technology (like 10 years in the past) Also intel is investing a lot in manufacturing technology, it plans to be better than TSMC by 2025 iirc. Will it happen? No idea, but they are working toward this. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US government were financing this in some way
  - mantas 5y ago
    More like communistic pride that opposing force is still doing well. Taiwan's KMT was the original nationalist party in China.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
    It goes both ways - China claims Taiwan as theirs, but also Taiwan claims China as theirs Due to some obscure legalities, Taiwan dropping the claim would amount to declaration of war
    - CogitoCogito 5y ago
      > Due to some obscure legalities, Taiwan dropping the claim would amount to declaration of war Your wording is a bit vague, but it sounds like you have it backwards. Taiwan's dropping of claims to the mainland may trigger a _Chinese_ declaration of war. That comes from certain interpretations of article 8 of the China's Anti-Secession law. Of course China doesn't actually have to declare war in this situation if they don't want to. They could always interpret it differently or they could simply ignore it (China's laws guarantee free speech after all and they certainly don't seem to have trouble getting around that).
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  > that'd be one less reason to invade China has cared about Taiwan for longer than semiconductors have been in existence. Whatever reasons China has, semiconductors is not one of them. Furthermore China prefers peaceful solutions where it can, so as long as China believes it can build its own advanced semiconductor industry it won't use military means to do so.
  - mantas 5y ago
    It's about making war too costly to China. Not about preventing China from taking control of TSMC. Destruction of TSMC would make such conflict very very inconvenient for large part of the world. And China wouldn't want to upset literally everybody. It's probably close to usage of a strategic nuclear weapon.
  - tromp 5y ago
    > as long as China believes it can build its own advanced semiconductor industry Gaining control of TSMC will vastly accelerate this process, which makes this one big additional reason China has to invade. Look at Hong Kong. Is China patiently waiting out the agreed upon 50 year period to assert their eventual control?
    - FooBarWidget 5y ago
      > Gaining control of TSMC will vastly accelerate this process, which makes this one big additional reason China has to invade. TSMC requires EUV. China is already banned from acquiring EUV so TSMC would be dead on arrival even without plans to blow it up.
  - m000 5y ago
    Agreed. For China TSMC will surely be a great bonus if they get it with the territory, but it is West that probably cares more about their services. Also, a strategic timing of an invasion and the threatened TSMC destruction may even boost the Chinese semiconductor industry: In a post-TSMC world, their less-advanced chips will suddenly be selling like hotcakes.
  - thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
- gsatic 5y ago
  But isn't there also a pro China group in Taiwan? Wouldn't they block such stuff?
  - arroz 5y ago
    There are pro independence, pro union and pro status quo people in Taiwan. People are mostly pro status quo as they don’t want a war nor want to be part of china. The current government is sort of pro independence, the president once said “we don’t need to declare independence, we are already independent”, which I guess is the furthest you can go before having a war there. The KMT party if I recall correctly is not necessarily pro China but pro unification. But of course unification with China would not really be unification but annexation and assimilation by a stronger authoritarian power (which can be done peacefully but yeah, no thanks)
    - mytailorisrich 5y ago
      Re-unification would not be annexation or assimilation, Taiwan is not a foreign country unrelated to China. Taiwan vs. mainland is technically like North vs. South Korea or East vs. West Germany. Taiwan is a recognised Chinese territory. It so happened that there was a civil war in China and that the communists overthrew the government (which was already authoritarian and controlled by the KMT), which withdrew to the last province not under communist control: Taiwan. For various reasons the communists never pursued them so the ROC remained in Taiwan while the communists founded the PRC on the mainland. That's why the KMT is officially also pro-unification, in fact the ROC itself is of course formally pro-unification since its formal policy is that they do not recognise the PRC and claim the whole of China (including the South China Sea) as rightful ROC territory. At first they thought they might come back or that the communists regime would collapse, but, well, they're still waiting... In practice that means that peaceful re-unification is not realistic, IMO, for as long as the communists rule the mainland. "part of China" is always an ambiguous term because it means different things to different people. For instance, 'China' does not necessarily mean PRC.
nkrisc 5y ago
The idea is that this would prevent an invasion in the first place.
- bnt 5y ago
  China doesn't necessarily want TSMC, they want the Island. TSMC would just be icing on the cake. Even if you destroy the TSMC facilities, you can't evacuate the thousands that work(ed) there over night, China would find them, round them up and force them to rebuild.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    Rebuild the walls yes, but rebuild the machines? I understood that some important parts are made in the Netherlands.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Which has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Among the most powerful weapons any block has against China, im case of an invasion of Taiwan, would be immediate recognition of Taiwan.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
- logicchains 5y ago
  Have you seen how much economic damage the Chinese leadership has been willing to inflict upon Hong Kong, and now Shanghai? And on its own tech companies? I don't think they care what happens to TSMC.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  The idea is US military just pre-emptively stating that if something like that happens we would be doing nothing and while we would be doing nothing and you would be being occupied could you please destroy your fabs as well, because US would prefer China not having that you know. Irrespective of what it actually means for the occupied populace. For US it’s “broken nest”, for the Taiwanese that’s the only nest - before or after invasion.
calyth2018 5y ago
It wouldn't benefit the Taiwanese. It's plainly obvious that US does not want the PRC to have access to TSMC, or anything like it. And this suggestion from US military academics is most likely based on the fact that the US is not going to send its troops in for Taiwan. So far, nothing new. PRC wants Taiwan back for reasons beyond just TSMC. It's probably the only one of the containment that the Chinese has a chance of breaching without going into full scale war. If the situation gets bad enough for Taiwan to blow up it's own crown jewel in anticipation for war, at that point, what's stopping the Chinese from bombing the shit out of the rest of the Taiwanese government and military installation and follow through? Probably nothing. Doing that is dumb for the lives of Taiwanese. It would only benefit the US and no one else.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  US Generals: "We had to destroy Taiwan to save it."

They'd be loose TSMC in either case. If Chinese would knew that TSMC is blown up once they start invasion, that'd be one less reason to invade.

rat9988 5y ago
> They'd be loose TSMC in either case. TSMC would be chinese, and the taiwanese too. It's not like they are gonna kick everyone from taiwan and claim the earth. > If Chinese would knew that TSMC is blown up once they start invasion, I'm not sure, they'd still be better with taiwain under their control than not.
friendstock 5y ago
China is invading Taiwan because of misguided nationalistic pride and internal legitimacy, not to gain TSMC. If possible, Taiwan should keep TSMC so that the West has a reason to defend Taiwan.
- krona 5y ago
  Taiwan would be destroyed in an invasion, TSMC along with it. China would then have a de-facto monopoly on semiconductor manufacturing. This is why the manufacturing needs to diversify geographically.
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    Isn't Samsung also pretty close?
    - mantas 5y ago
      And South Korea is pretty close to China as well...
      - FooBarWidget 5y ago
        China's relationship with South Korea is fundamentally different from China's relationship with Taiwan.
        arroz 5y ago
        South Korea is pretty close to North Korea which although much more unlikely could happen too
    - arroz 5y ago
      Samsung technology is used mainly for memories. Why? No idea. In any case, people would have to migrate their workflows which would take time, and then manufacture there. This would cause huge delays / price spikes There are other chip manufactures in the world too if people are willing to buy outdated technology (like 10 years in the past) Also intel is investing a lot in manufacturing technology, it plans to be better than TSMC by 2025 iirc. Will it happen? No idea, but they are working toward this. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US government were financing this in some way
- mantas 5y ago
  More like communistic pride that opposing force is still doing well. Taiwan's KMT was the original nationalist party in China.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
  It goes both ways - China claims Taiwan as theirs, but also Taiwan claims China as theirs Due to some obscure legalities, Taiwan dropping the claim would amount to declaration of war
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    > Due to some obscure legalities, Taiwan dropping the claim would amount to declaration of war Your wording is a bit vague, but it sounds like you have it backwards. Taiwan's dropping of claims to the mainland may trigger a _Chinese_ declaration of war. That comes from certain interpretations of article 8 of the China's Anti-Secession law. Of course China doesn't actually have to declare war in this situation if they don't want to. They could always interpret it differently or they could simply ignore it (China's laws guarantee free speech after all and they certainly don't seem to have trouble getting around that).
FooBarWidget 5y ago
> that'd be one less reason to invade China has cared about Taiwan for longer than semiconductors have been in existence. Whatever reasons China has, semiconductors is not one of them. Furthermore China prefers peaceful solutions where it can, so as long as China believes it can build its own advanced semiconductor industry it won't use military means to do so.
- mantas 5y ago
  It's about making war too costly to China. Not about preventing China from taking control of TSMC. Destruction of TSMC would make such conflict very very inconvenient for large part of the world. And China wouldn't want to upset literally everybody. It's probably close to usage of a strategic nuclear weapon.
- tromp 5y ago
  > as long as China believes it can build its own advanced semiconductor industry Gaining control of TSMC will vastly accelerate this process, which makes this one big additional reason China has to invade. Look at Hong Kong. Is China patiently waiting out the agreed upon 50 year period to assert their eventual control?
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    > Gaining control of TSMC will vastly accelerate this process, which makes this one big additional reason China has to invade. TSMC requires EUV. China is already banned from acquiring EUV so TSMC would be dead on arrival even without plans to blow it up.
- m000 5y ago
  Agreed. For China TSMC will surely be a great bonus if they get it with the territory, but it is West that probably cares more about their services. Also, a strategic timing of an invasion and the threatened TSMC destruction may even boost the Chinese semiconductor industry: In a post-TSMC world, their less-advanced chips will suddenly be selling like hotcakes.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
gsatic 5y ago
But isn't there also a pro China group in Taiwan? Wouldn't they block such stuff?
- arroz 5y ago
  There are pro independence, pro union and pro status quo people in Taiwan. People are mostly pro status quo as they don’t want a war nor want to be part of china. The current government is sort of pro independence, the president once said “we don’t need to declare independence, we are already independent”, which I guess is the furthest you can go before having a war there. The KMT party if I recall correctly is not necessarily pro China but pro unification. But of course unification with China would not really be unification but annexation and assimilation by a stronger authoritarian power (which can be done peacefully but yeah, no thanks)
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    Re-unification would not be annexation or assimilation, Taiwan is not a foreign country unrelated to China. Taiwan vs. mainland is technically like North vs. South Korea or East vs. West Germany. Taiwan is a recognised Chinese territory. It so happened that there was a civil war in China and that the communists overthrew the government (which was already authoritarian and controlled by the KMT), which withdrew to the last province not under communist control: Taiwan. For various reasons the communists never pursued them so the ROC remained in Taiwan while the communists founded the PRC on the mainland. That's why the KMT is officially also pro-unification, in fact the ROC itself is of course formally pro-unification since its formal policy is that they do not recognise the PRC and claim the whole of China (including the South China Sea) as rightful ROC territory. At first they thought they might come back or that the communists regime would collapse, but, well, they're still waiting... In practice that means that peaceful re-unification is not realistic, IMO, for as long as the communists rule the mainland. "part of China" is always an ambiguous term because it means different things to different people. For instance, 'China' does not necessarily mean PRC.

nkrisc 5y ago

The idea is that this would prevent an invasion in the first place.

bnt 5y ago
China doesn't necessarily want TSMC, they want the Island. TSMC would just be icing on the cake. Even if you destroy the TSMC facilities, you can't evacuate the thousands that work(ed) there over night, China would find them, round them up and force them to rebuild.
- pmontra 5y ago
  Rebuild the walls yes, but rebuild the machines? I understood that some important parts are made in the Netherlands.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Which has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Among the most powerful weapons any block has against China, im case of an invasion of Taiwan, would be immediate recognition of Taiwan.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
logicchains 5y ago
Have you seen how much economic damage the Chinese leadership has been willing to inflict upon Hong Kong, and now Shanghai? And on its own tech companies? I don't think they care what happens to TSMC.
crossroadsguy 5y ago
The idea is US military just pre-emptively stating that if something like that happens we would be doing nothing and while we would be doing nothing and you would be being occupied could you please destroy your fabs as well, because US would prefer China not having that you know. Irrespective of what it actually means for the occupied populace. For US it’s “broken nest”, for the Taiwanese that’s the only nest - before or after invasion.

calyth2018 5y ago

It wouldn't benefit the Taiwanese. It's plainly obvious that US does not want the PRC to have access to TSMC, or anything like it. And this suggestion from US military academics is most likely based on the fact that the US is not going to send its troops in for Taiwan. So far, nothing new. PRC wants Taiwan back for reasons beyond just TSMC. It's probably the only one of the containment that the Chinese has a chance of breaching without going into full scale war. If the situation gets bad enough for Taiwan to blow up it's own crown jewel in anticipation for war, at that point, what's stopping the Chinese from bombing the shit out of the rest of the Taiwanese government and military installation and follow through? Probably nothing. Doing that is dumb for the lives of Taiwanese. It would only benefit the US and no one else.

a9h74j 5y ago
US Generals: "We had to destroy Taiwan to save it."