Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would render the company’s plants inoperable, and that such a war would produce “no winners.”
Not only would Taiwan’s economy be destroyed in a cross-strait conflict, but the impact “would go well beyond semiconductors, and would bring about the destruction of the world’s rules-based order and totally change the geopolitical landscape,” Liu said in the interview, according to the Central News Agency.
Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands wrote on June 24: “A major war over Taiwan could create global economic chaos that would make the mess produced by Russia’s war in Ukraine look minor by comparison, for reasons going far beyond the nation’s crucial position in semiconductor supply chains.”
Brands said that fighting in the region would disrupt critical shipping lanes, and would result in accelerated decoupling of the US and Chinese economies. This could be followed by blockades, sanctions and seizing of each other’s assets.
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on April 6 confirmed Brands’ speculation in part when she said that the US would use all of its sanctions tools against China should it attack Taiwan.
Such sanctions would appear to have the support of the US public. A recent survey showed that a majority favored providing support to Taiwan in the event of a cross-strait conflict, with even those wavering on US military involvement supporting the severing of commercial ties with China, Morning Consult Holdings reported on Friday last week.
Beijing might have thought that sanctions imposed following an attack would be limited in scope, given the interdependence of the world’s largest economies. However, sanctions on Russia by the US and Europe — which is weaning itself off Russian energy — have shown otherwise. The effect of those sanctions has made it less capable of helping China in such an event by making up for other markets.
Russia’s economy is predicted to shrink by 10 percent this year, and Moscow has defaulted on its foreign debt. The country is unable to buy semiconductors, key auto parts such as transmission boxes and airbags, and other items that Russia is not easily able to make itself, economist Rachel Ziemba and journalist Adrian Ma said in a June 29 interview on National Public Radio’s The Indicator.
That last point relates to Liu’s comments regarding TSMC. China makes microchips, but it still relies on imports for the most advanced chips from Taiwan and South Korea. Liu said an invasion of Taiwan would render TSMC unable to produce chips “because of the extreme sophistication of TSMC’s plants, which require a real-time connection with partners across the world on matters ranging from raw materials and chemicals to spare parts and software.”
South Korea would also likely cut off the chip supply to China to comply with global sanctions on Beijing. Cutting off China and Russia from advanced microchips would put these allies at a major technological disadvantage.
There is no question that China would face crippling sanctions as a response to attacking Taiwan. Its economy would be left in tatters, but it might even face military action from nations concerned about the strategic impact of an attack on Taiwan.
A delegation by former Japanese defense officials arrived on Wednesday last week for four days of talks with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and other senior officials to discuss Taiwan-Japan security exchanges. The talks clearly spooked officials in Beijing, as they had their propaganda mouthpiece, the Global Times, write an op-ed the day after the delegation’s arrival to claim that Japan had nefarious intentions.
China needs no reminding that an attempted invasion of Taiwan — even if successful — would come at an insurmountable cost.
A failure by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to Israel’s brilliant 12-day (June 12-23) bombing and special operations war against Iran, topped by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the June 21 bombing of Iranian deep underground nuclear weapons fuel processing sites, has been noted by some as demonstrating a profound lack of resolve, even “impotence,” by China. However, this would be a dangerous underestimation of CCP ambitions and its broader and more profound military response to the Trump Administration — a challenge that includes an acceleration of its strategies to assist nuclear proxy states, and developing a wide array
Twenty-four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are facing recall votes on Saturday, prompting nearly all KMT officials and lawmakers to rally their supporters over the past weekend, urging them to vote “no” in a bid to retain their seats and preserve the KMT’s majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had largely kept its distance from the civic recall campaigns, earlier this month instructed its officials and staff to support the recall groups in a final push to protect the nation. The justification for the recalls has increasingly been framed as a “resistance” movement against China and
Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), former chairman of Broadcasting Corp of China and leader of the “blue fighters,” recently announced that he had canned his trip to east Africa, and he would stay in Taiwan for the recall vote on Saturday. He added that he hoped “his friends in the blue camp would follow his lead.” His statement is quite interesting for a few reasons. Jaw had been criticized following media reports that he would be traveling in east Africa during the recall vote. While he decided to stay in Taiwan after drawing a lot of flak, his hesitation says it all: If
Saturday is the day of the first batch of recall votes primarily targeting lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The scale of the recall drive far outstrips the expectations from when the idea was mooted in January by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). The mass recall effort is reminiscent of the Sunflower movement protests against the then-KMT government’s non-transparent attempts to push through a controversial cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014. That movement, initiated by students, civic groups and non-governmental organizations, included student-led protesters occupying the main legislative chamber for three weeks. The two movements are linked
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